A Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) member representing San Antonio is raising the alarm about statewide curriculum changes that could require Texas students to learn Bible verses in class and receive a whitewashed version of U.S. history.
The Republican-led SBOE opted Thursday evening to allow final votes on a rewrite of Texas’ kindergarten through 8th-grade social studies lessons and a mandatory reading list for all public schools that includes Christian stories. A final vote is expected Friday.
“It’s a massive shift in how we approach social studies. We are no longer going to be focusing on world cultures or international relations and global learning. It has been completely diminished,” SBOE member Marisa Perez-Diaz told the Current. “There is an emphasis on U.S. and Texas exceptionalism in a way that downplays even the histories of Texas’ people.”
Perez-Diaz, who holds a Master of Education degree, served as director of strategic partnerships for San Antonio’s Edgewood ISD before taking her current job as executive director of Firstmark Credit Union’s charitable foundation.
The board voted Tuesday afternoon to preliminarily approve the curriculum and a reading list for all public schools across the state, though changes will not fully go into effect until 2030. However, members on Thursday delayed proposed changes to the high school curricula for U.S. history, world history, geography and government.
As the board conducted hearings throughout the week, its members heard from hundreds of professionals and community members voicing their opinions on the proposed changes.
If approved, the curriculum changes would dramatically restructure history education for K-8 students, introducing subject matter chronologically for 3rd through 7th graders rather than the current topic-based approach.
The changes also include eliminating world cultures as the focus for 6th graders, instead weaving in the topic over the years.
That shift deemphasizes world history and Texas’ multicultural background while pushing a one-sided narrative to public-school students, Perez-Diaz said.
“The indigenous influence in Texas has been diminished. The Mexican and Mexican American experience and the influence that that has had on Texas has been diminished,” Perez-Diaz said. “It’s so one-sided and not a holistic honest view of how Texas came to be.”
The SBOE has not yet finalized the state’s reading list. However, certain history text editions in circulation include requiring biblical literature for children as young as 6.
Perez-Diaz said the emphasis on teaching Christianity in public education is troubling.
“Over and over again, we’re seeing a forced injection of Christianity and biblical references, and tying them to historical points in time, and it’s a complete stretch,” said Perez-Diaz, a practicing Catholic. “For me, this is about separation of church and state, loving my neighbor and respecting difference.”
The SBOE first set these changes in motion in October 2024, when it established a committee to evaluate social studies curriculum standards. However, the focus on changing history education has long been a mainstay for Texas conservatives.
On Monday, 61 Republican members of the state House of Representatives sent a letter to the SBOE arguing the new changes reflect what Texas parents have been calling on leaders to do for years.
“They want a Texas education system that teaches honest history, promotes love of country, instills civic virtue and prepares young Texans to be stewards of the freedoms they inherit,” said the letter, tweeted out by SBOE Board member Julie Pickren. “This Board has before it the opportunity and the responsibility to honor those expectations.”
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott voiced his support of the proposed changes in a Monday tweet.
“I think Chair [Aaron] Kinsey is taking the board in the right direction,” Abbott wrote. “I trust him in making sure the curriculum standards are going to be consistent with where we as Texans really want them to go.”
Regardless of the outcome, Perez-Diaz is taking matters into her own hands. The SBOE member has already started collecting books for her children to fill in the gaps she says will be left by Texas’ new social studies curriculum.
“I have started collecting books personally and creating my own personal library for my kids, because if we leave this week approving what has been proposed to us, I am incredibly fearful that my own children will not get a full picture of what Texas history and U.S. history is,” Perez-Diaz said.
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