An email exchange between Alamo Heights ISD and children’s author Chris Barton appears to contradict Superintendent Dana Bashara’s explanation to parents why the writer wasn’t allowed to visit two of the district’s elementary schools.
During Thursday’s well-attended AHISD board meeting, Bashara said the district canceled Barton’s visit to Woodridge and Cambridge elementary schools earlier this month because he refused to comply with Texas Senate Bill 12. That Republican-backed law bans Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI, in public schools and restricts instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation.
“Despite multiple good faith efforts with this author to move forward with a visit in compliance with the law, the author declined to provide those assurances to us as a district that he would meet those expectations, leaving the district with no other option than to cancel that visit,” Bashara told parents during the meeting.
However, emails obtained by the Current show that Barton explicitly agreed not to discuss the LGBTQ+ issues during his visit. A small group of parents raised concerns about his visit because his book Glitter Everywhere! mentions the LGBTQ+ community during one brief passage.
“I can certainly agree to your request that I not discuss ‘LGBTQ+, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any derivation of those terms,’ since I never have discussed these in my school presentations and I am aware that I am not trained or qualified to discuss them with an elementary audience,” Barton wrote in an email to AHISD assistant superintendent Frank Alfaro last month.
Even so, Barton pushed back at the district’s request that he not show the cover of Glitter Everywhere! during a slideshow tied to his appearance.
“[I] hope that we can all agree on keeping in my presentations the attached slides — which place GLITTER EVERYWHERE! [sic] in the context of my other nonfiction books … as well as in the contexts of my life as a
writer and of my publishing career as a whole — as a way to move forward that is in the best interests of the students at Cambridge and Woodridge,” he wrote in the same email.
The cover of Glitter Everywhere! makes no mention of the LGBTQ+ community, nor does it appear to depict anything directly related to queer culture.
AHISD’s email exchange with Barton about what was off limits during his scheduled visit began after three parents sent eerily similar emails to district officials, raising concerns about Glitter Everywhere! — a nonfiction children’s book about the history of glitter and its environmental impacts.
Glitter Everywhere! was not part of Barton’s planned presentation to students. Instead, he was to focus his reading and discussion on two other books he’d written, neither of which refer to LGBTQ+ people.
During Thursday’s school board meeting, nearly a dozen parents signed up to air grievances about Bashara’s decision to cancel Barton’s visit and the district’s handling of the situation.
“While Alamo Heights says it wants students to seek knowledge and understanding, think critically and creatively, and communicate and collaborate — those are not abstract ideals,” parent Julieanne Reeves told the board. “They’re supposed to guide real decisions. Canceling an author visit for students because of a handful of coordinated complaints undermines those values all at once.”
Meanwhile, Linda Cornwell, a new Alamo Heights resident with children attending AHISD schools, proposed that the district implement an “opt-out” option for parents who don’t want their children to take part in certain author visits.
“Books need readers, and readers need books, which is why I am here to beseech the board to vigilantly guard against actions that may block student access to books and leaders,” Cornwell said.
Bashara and the AHISD board said they wouldn’t address the concerns over the cancelation at the meeting. However, they pledged to follow up with the parents at a later time.
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