April 2026

APRIL 2026

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Summer may be almost here - the heat is already beginning. But first, let's celebrate the work of libraries in HISD. There may not be very many these days, but the few there are work very hard to support their students and school curricula.

Friends of HISD Libraries (FOHL) Grants
Friends of HISD Libraries (FOHL) funded 11 HISD library staff to attend the full Texas Library Assn conference in early March. If not for this grant opportunity many, if not all, of these recipients would not have been able to attend this conference which was held this year right here in Houston.  Professional development is the cornerstone for improving practice. There are limited opportunities HISD offers library staff to continue to grow in their roles. FOHL was delighted to provide funding for this event.
       We asked the recipients to tell us what they learned and these are some of their comments. In the same way that every library and campus are different, every library staff person has a different focus when looking for new and better ways to engage their students. Every one of their students is different as well, which is why the library experience matters so much! If only every HISD student across all 274 schools had access to these library programs as they exert curiosity about our world.

FOHL Grantees and Board members

GRANTEE COMMENTS about their TLA Experience
Elementary

• Elizabeth Awani-Holmes - The session that had the greatest impact for me was "Bringing Non-Fiction to Life: Gamification for Library-Classroom Connection. I learned to use nonfiction titles to create fun, engaging and interesting lessons using non-fiction books.
• Kersten Hunt - The Library on their Terms session gave lots of ideas for programming. This session reminded me that programming doesn't have to be grandiose, but that consistency is key. It gave a lot of good ideas for simple, but engaging ideas to get kids in the library. 
• Tien Nelson - I can't believe this was my very first time to participate in the Texas Bluebonnet Award (TBA) session! It was lots of fun and inspiring! My school will order several copies of the TBA titles this year - we will also get the kids excited to "read five - then decide" and host a voting party in January.
• Carrie Pena - The Teacher’s Day session - With your grant for my attendance, I was able to fund a 3rd-grade ELA colleague to join me for the Teacher's Day session. We had such a great experience and made plans for my assistance with enrichment activities as well as creating a lunch book study group with her bubble babies. I truly feel this opportunity has opened how my teacher colleagues will view me as an educational partner and not just an ancillary drop-off.
• LeAnne Raimond - My most meaningful sessions were the author panels- to hear directly from authors gave me a deeper understanding of what they do and new ways to look at and share their books. I wrote down several idea sparks I had during sessions or conversations, some to immediately act on and many as idea seeds to marinate and reflect on for the future. 
• Marisa Hartling - K-8 - I went to several sessions on new books (2x2 books, Little Mavericks, etc.) and a few sessions on nonfiction and manga.

 
Middle School

• Carly Brown - By far, the most practical presentation was Amanda Hunt's session called "AI Ethics". She is on top of the AI developments (as on top as anyone can be). Her ideas about how to teach children/middle schoolers strategies for using AI were so helpful. For example, to teach AI copyright issues, have students create something ridiculous (she used "Snoop Dog ice skating on a rainbow") in Adobe that only uses Adobe copyrighted material; then create the same thing in Gemini or Copilot and compare the results.
• Celeste Cooper - I got so many great ideas from [HISD’s] very own Mary Chance at her session, "Getting Middle Schoolers to Show Up.'
• Brooke Corso - I wanted to focus on technology tools and integration this year with sessions such as "Innovative Tech Ideas that Work" and "Digital Breakouts".

 
High School

• Rowena Verdin - One idea I am excited to bring back to my campus is being more proactive about AI. Our students are already using it and it is important that we help them understand its significance and incorporate an ethical information literacy component into their learning.

AI is Everywhere
Three of our grantees focused on AI as it impacts schools and libraries, including the TLA Librarian of the Year Brooke Corso of Pin Oak MS. I have also been collecting articles about AI in schools that may be of interest to readers of this newsletter.
       Here are three different perspectives on AI as it impacts our schools and students, plus example images of how HISD is using AI to the detriment of our kids.
       FYI, "AI" is not even intelligent. It is a conglomeration of all the data that has been given to it, then searched by various algorithms. It's answers are somewhat random and remain unreliable.

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How Accurate Are Google's A.I. Overviews? "The company's A.I.-generated answers look authoritative, but they draw on an array of sources from trustworthy sites to Facebook posts." You’ve all noticed the omnipresent AI Overviews that now appear at the top of every Google search. These are BUYER BEWARE temptations. This NYT article tells readers that Google AI Overviews are correct over 9 of 10 times - which also means they are wrong tens of millions of times every hour. They link to websites that don’t really say what the Overview indicates, or otherwise adjust the finding to make sense in their AI perspective on reality. All of us who use Google are advised to double-check our finding; this advice is increasingly hard to follow. Read the article for more detail.

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The screen she is reading says, " Bananas can help remove splinters." It also includes a word that does not exist.

The AI School Librarian substack offers
“When Search Stops Teaching,” 
which suggests that
       “The issue is not just that AI gets things wrong.
         It is that it changes how people decide what is true.”
The article goes on to discuss how schools and libraries need to teach students new ways to vet the information they get through Google or any other search tool. They cannot just accept that AI Overview that shows at the top of the page -
and we all know how much we want to take the easy path.
       “When the first answer becomes the only answer, access is not equal.
        This is not just a literacy issue.
        It is an access issue.”
Students need to learn not to accept pre-processed answers. They need to analyze the sources so that they are not getting AI hallucinations - that’s a new technical term for the info AI sometimes invents. They need school librarians to help them learn these skills. Read the article.

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Why Librarians Matter in Curating Collections
AI and Libraries: Why Librarians May Become Arbiters of Reality (20 April 2026)
​​Lastly, “Librarians are not working in the realm of “what if” when it comes to AI; they’re managing the real-world effects right now.“ 
​While yes, AI can help librarians accomplish some aspects of their jobs better, AI is the death of peer review for scholarly articles and even for books for K-12. The two articles above mention how AI reworks content to make an answer that may not be correct. How can that tool correctly determine if scientific research has been managed ethically or if a book is well-written literature for children? Human voices need to be involved. Librarians are becoming “arbiters of reality” even as some school districts in Texas are using AI to find book titles to remove. Librarians matter! And HISD students do not have them in too many schools.
​IMAGE SOURCE: https://the-digital-librarian.com/2023/01/23/artificial-intelligence-in-the-library/

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Returning the AI lens to HISD, remember that many of the lessons required in NES schools are designed by AI. Here are two images from HISD lessons in recent months. I’ve put them in full size so you can see the hash they make of truth and reality.

The first illustration is intended to show the Harlem Renaissance. Rather than choose an actual piece of art from the era, HISD chose to let AI provide a mash up that includes Picasso-esque faces and bodies wearing different clothes at the same time. What other bizarre bits can you see???

The next one is a biology illustration of organs in the human body. Please note the confusion where the LUNGS should be, and the caption “Mungs”. I have no idea what mungs are either. And there is a vertebra labeled on the top slice that cannot be right!
 
These are excerpted from actual papers students brought home from HISD schools.

AI, like every tool in history, can be used for good and for ill.
It is our job as librarians, parents, elected officials and even K-12 students to be ever vigilant that we are using it for good and not losing our own skills of discrimination and truth-seeking. 
 
This newsletter uses old-school methods to protest the Takeover. Well, email is pretty old school after 30 years. But we also work to keep you up to speed on new tech as it impacts libraries and K-12 education. Please continue to speak out about the need for strong school libraries in all HISD schools – even in a budget crisis. The crisis of undereducated students will be worse when our city cannot run properly.