Julie Hinaman had questions. Lots of them. She dropped a three-ring binder on the dais, her blond bob and dark-rimmed glasses peeking over the edge of the tome that felt to her like contraband: thirteen chapters of science and career-tech curriculum her fellow board members had stripped from textbooks the year before, citing concerns over pro-vaccine propaganda and climate science’s implication that “humans are bad.”

The purge had happened swiftly, without meaningful discussion or debate, and Hinaman’s attempts to revisit the decision had been rebuffed. So, she asked, why now, a year after the purge and four days before the April 14 Cypress-Fairbanks ISD board meeting, had she received this binder with no instructions or explanation? The decisions surrounding the curriculum—from its origi

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