GRAPEVINE, Texas — The Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District board on Monday night voted 4-3 to adopt a policy that bans the teaching of critical race theory and implements a strict review process for library books.
The policy also includes items that center on not promoting, requiring or encouraging the use of pronouns that are not aligned with the gender assigned at birth. It also includes an item that would require bathrooms to be designated for genders assigned at birth.
The vote happened shortly before midnight Monday at a regularly-scheduled Grapevine-Colleyville ISD Board of Trustees meeting Monday night. Nearly 200 people had signed up to give a public comment on the proposed policy, which tallied 36 pages.
Hours before the start of the meeting, dozens lined up to get a seat. The board room only seats about 55, outside of board members and administrators.
Before the regularly scheduled meeting, there was a special meeting called to discuss board policy and the tax rate. About 10 people signed up for public comment to address the board on these topics.
Multiple speakers addressed political action committees from outside of the community coming to speak at board meetings and asked for priority to be given to people who live in the community.
Last week, Grapevine-Colleyville ISD pulled the plug on the Scholastic Book Fair and is searching for another vendor.
The district said the company didn't provide a full list of every book it would sell at the fair.
In an email to WFAA, the district said there were two instances where a book was "mis-merchandised" and students bought books that were "not age-appropriate" during a previous fair.
In a statement, Scholastic said it was only aware of one instance where a student purchased an adult book, but said it hopes it can partner with the district in the future.