Beat Back Book Bans
Who: Candidates Who Oppose Book Bans
What: Texas Local School Boards
Where: Grapevine-Colleyville (Dallas-Fort Worth area), Alamo Heights (San Antonio area) and Lake Travis (Austin area)
In 2022, a Christian Nationalist wireless provider called Patriot Mobile created a political action committee to funnel more than $400,000 into school board races in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Funding from Patriot Mobile Action swept conservative candidates into office on a platform of banning books, adopting anti-LGBTQ policies and snuffing out Critical Race Theory from curricula. Patriot Mobile Action supported 11 candidates, all of whom won. (The PAC’s Executive Director then and now is Leigh Wambsganss who, as DITB readers will recall, lost her special election bid for a Texas State Senate seat against Democrat Taylor Rehmet in January.)
Not long after, voters began experiencing buyer’s remorse, and all but two of the 11 have been voted out of office, resigned, or didn’t run for re-election. Nevertheless, turmoil continues to be inflicted upon Texas students and teachers by the actions of pro-censorship groups who have pushed through a bill in the State Senate (SB 12) that severely restricts instruction related to diversity, equity, inclusion and gender identity. Explains Franklin Strong, a teacher in Austin, “I’m forbidden by law from assigning any essay or poem from the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project, even as a part of a balanced collection of perspectives on race in the U.S.”
For the past nine election cycles, Strong has authored “The Book-Loving Texan’s Guides to School Board Elections” to help voters volunteer for, donate to and organize around candidates who resist book bans and promote school environments that are supportive of all students. Strong is heartened that for the first time, “the challenge [for the upcoming May 2 school board elections] is less about defending districts from bad candidates; instead, we have the opportunity to elect a slew of great candidates.”
One of the best opportunities on May 2 to change the composition of a school board is in the Grapevine-Colleyville school district. Grapevine is known for the 2023 NBC podcast Grapevine, which documented the story of a popular high school English teacher who was caught between a transgender teen and a fringe religious movement.
The Grapevine-Colleyville candidates who can lead that change are Darrell Brown, Lindsey Sheguit and Matthew White. Brown is a retired principal whose spouse is a teacher. Sheguit is a product of Grapevine-Colleyville schools and a veteran prosecutor in the District Attorney’s office; her spouse is also a teacher. White is an attorney and former school administrator. They are campaigning as a unified slate to put compassion and student achievement over chaos and culture wars, and to attract talented teachers rather than watch them leave in frustration.
In the Alamo Heights school district, Bianca Cerqueira has been outspoken against what she sees as her district’s “overly restrictive” interpretation of SB 12 as well as book banning. Cerqueira’s grandmother, mother and two aunts were teachers; she herself has a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering and works as a neuroscientist supporting federally-sponsored biomedical research. Says Cerqueira, “The views of a single parent should not dictate what material the entire district can access.”
In the Lake Travis school district, where elections are typically decided by just 300 or so votes, two strong challengers—Tiffany Bennett and Natalie Nugent—are taking on book-banning incumbents. Both Bennett and Nugent are native Texans and Lake Travis parents who are deeply involved as volunteers and Parent-Teacher Organization leaders.
Even as state education officials attempt to bend school districts to their will by threatening to withhold funding, Bennett and Nugent say that they would oppose, for example, adopting the state’s own Bible-infused “Bluebonnet Learning” curriculum for Lake Travis students as a way to ameliorate Lake Travis school district’s budget shortfalls.
Sources: Ballotpedia, The Book-Loving Texan’s Guides to the May 2026 School Board Elections, CommunityImpact.com, EdWeek Market Brief, San Antonio Report, The Texan