Mission CISD says it won’t actually remove 676 challenged books

The Mission Consolidated Independent School District says it won’t actually be removing or reviewing 676 books the school system’s former superintendent committed to purging earlier this summer.

In May Mission CISD, like other Rio Grande Valley districts, received an email from local representatives of a conservative advocacy group.

The letter urged the district to ban a list of books it deemed “filthy and evil.”

Former Superintendent Carol G. Perez unequivocally agreed to remove all of the books on the group’s list minutes after receiving their email.

Perez, however, left her position as the district’s chief last month and Mission’s new superintendent says no books were removed or are going to be removed based on the group’s request.

In fact, Interim Superintendent Cris Valdez says doing so would have gone against district policy that essentially limits requests for something like a book review to direct stakeholders in the district.

“It must be a parent of a student, a student who is 18 years of age or older, an individual employee or any district resident [who] may challenge an instructional resource,” she said.

Valdez said she couldn’t speak to Perez’s commitment to remove the books.

“I was not here and I don’t know,” she said.

Perez didn’t respond to requests for comment.

In May, Perez forwarded the list of books to Deputy Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Sharon Roberts, who said she’d begin tracking them and having them removed.

According to Valdez, Roberts contacted another administrator who cited relevant policy that indicated the district couldn’t actually do that.

“She quotes she extracts excerpts from [local policy] and brings it to Dr. Roberts’ attention,” Valdez said.

On June 14 the Progress Times filed a public information request with the district requesting documents or communications that resulted from Perez’s original decision to remove the books, a request Valdez said should elicit a response that told “the rest of the story.”

Attorneys for the Mission CISD, however, said this week that the district needed more time to process the request — potentially another two weeks.

Asked Wednesday why the district needed more time to process the request, the school district’s attorneys replied with a new letter that said Mission CISD had been able to complete its search for those documents after all.

That letter said that “after a diligent search” the district had found no documents responsive to the request.

Local representatives of Citizens Defending Freedom, a conservative group that’s challenged books nationally, made the original request asking for Mission CISD to remove those 676 books.

Dan Thomas, a spokesperson for the group, said Wednesday that they hadn’t heard anything new from Mission CISD since their exchange with Perez in May.

Mission was poised to be the group’s first unmitigated win in the Rio Grande Valley to have become public, though the activists have seen more modest gains elsewhere.

Brownsville ISD removed a handful of books in response to their concerns and the group says it received a similar response from Harlingen CISD.

At least four area superintendents gave the activists in person meetings about their concerns this summer.

The group’s efforts also attracted the attention of Governor Greg Abbott.

In May, the advocates attended a Brownsville school board meeting, reading in public comment explicit passages from books they felt should be banned.

Things got confrontational after the school district’s attorney said they wouldn’t be allowed to read obscenities at the meeting.

Abbott, responding to a clip from the meeting posted on social media, sided with the activists.

“If a book cannot be read out loud at a school board meeting in Texas then there is no reason for Texas children in school to be able to read it,” he wrote. “School Districts cannot have it both ways.”

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