Left to right: Alabama State Board of Education Members, Tonya Chestnut, Jackie Zeigler, Allen Long and Wayne Reynolds listen during a debate over regarding social studies textbooks on Feb. 12, 2026. (Andrea Tinker/Alabama Reflector)
Alabama State Schools Superintendent Eric Mackey Thursday gave members of the Alabama State Board of Education four options to resolve a long-delayed decision on social studies textbooks.
Vote on recommendations made in a state textbook committee report; amend the report; vote on individual sections of the report, or delay a decision until 2027.
“We are back on not the original plan, which was, of course, to vote in November, but we’re on plan B, and that is to talk about today and to bring it back for a vote in March,” Mackey told the board.
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That sparked a heated discussion among board members over why adoption of the new textbooks had been delayed in the first place.
“We’re not out there as content experts, and I think we’re getting into the weeds and the trees, instead of the students listening to constituents who overall are not following the process that we have been elected to do,” District 4 Representative Yvette Richardson said. “So when you talk about amending and changing, we’re not adhering to what we were supposed to do, which is the number one [option] that he gave.”
Alabama’s social studies textbooks have not been updated since 2013. Members were given recommendations by the Alabama State Textbook Committee in October. The two committees, one for education and one for social studies, were appointed last year to review and score textbooks. Once completed, the ratings were sealed and given to board members.
Textbooks were initially set to be voted on by board members in November, but due to concerns from members, the vote was delayed. Several Republican members of the board said the books didn’t reflect the values of Alabamians but didn’t give specific examples before Thursday. The two Democratic members said they had no issue with the textbooks recommended.
“I felt in November that some board members just did not feel prepared to vote one way, that they weren’t yes or no. They just didn’t feel like they had enough information to vote, period,” Mackey said. “I didn’t want anybody to feel like they were being put in a situation to vote without all the information, or like I was trying to rush something through, and they would regret their vote later.”
Tonya Chestnut, a Democrat who represents District 5, said she wasn’t sure why the vote was being delayed at all.
“There is no reason, and I truly, honestly feel like it’s political, but we’re dealing with children,” she said. “Most of my districts cannot buy books without using the state plans. We don’t have that luxury. And to keep putting it off and putting it off for a reason that no one has said does not make sense.”
Other board members said the textbooks were not up to their standards for what children in schools should be learning.
“I looked at a few of those books. I had no time to look at all of them, but to me, and you know, I’m used to reading technical material, but some of it was like reading the comic book,” said Dr. Allen Long, a Republican who represents District 7. “We owe it to our kids to give them some meat to be nourished with and to chew up and digest and think about. But there were a whole lot of blank pages. I mean, honestly, a picture was the best you got of a page.”
School Board of Education President Pro Tempore Kelly Mooney, a Republican, said some of the textbooks’ values “are not the values of Alabama” and gave a specific example of one textbook labeling a log truck as “deforestation.”
“That is Alabama’s number one industry as an agricultural product. So that may be what it might be in Washington State or somewhere else, but that’s in the Alabama textbook that we have for our social studies curriculum,” she said.
Richardson, a Democrat, said textbooks don’t teach values.
“We align our textbooks to standards. There’s no document that our school systems have that says these are the values that you should be teaching,” she said.
District 8 Representative Wayne Reynolds, a Republican, said social studies “has multiple ramifications that we cannot escape.”
“When there are actual factual presentations in textbooks, It goes on to parents, even misstating the date that Alabama became a state, or doing things like picturing the Vietnam War in a half page [spread], which doesn’t really reflect What My memory was. That’s not moral or ethical, it’s a fact,” he said.
Another board member, Tracie West, a Republican who represents District 2, said she had issues with the quality of the textbooks.
“I visited the different presentations, it was very clear to me the difference in the quality of the materials and as an elected person with a commitment to excellence in every classroom for our students, it’s difficult to it’s difficult for me to approve something that I feel is lacking in quality, because I want the very best for every student,” she said.
Mackey told the board at the start of the presentation that he would “prefer” if the members voted on the existing report given to them by the textbook committee, because each grade level has six options to choose from.
State Board of Education Vice President Marie Manning, a Republican who represents District 6, said a lot of the confusion around textbooks could be solved by educating the public.
“The public sees the textbook and says that’s what we’re teaching. But it’s not because a teacher doesn’t have to teach every page in that textbook, and many don’t,” she said. “And so that’s what I tell my folks, we don’t teach textbooks. We use a textbook to teach what we’re supposed to teach, but we don’t teach textbooks.”
Mackey also said that Gov. Kay Ivey has slated $7 million for the department to write their own social studies textbooks.
“I think that’s a good idea long term, because remember that in the new standards third, fourth and fifth grade are Alabama history and so, there’s not that many textbook companies out there that do Alabama history,” Mackey said to the board. “There’s six vendors in each grade, but a lot of them, it’s kind of American history with Alabama included.”
Gina Maiola, communications director for Ivey, said in a statement Friday afternoon that the $7 million is in the governor’s fiscal year 2026 Education Trust Fund Supplemental budget. That budget has not been released. Supplemental budgets fund items only if the money is available to do so.
West voiced her support for the department writing its own textbook for elementary social studies.
“I wish we would write our own materials, because I think we have very able teachers and writers in our state that are so talented that could do that work for us,” West said.
The board is scheduled to vote on the recommendations in March.
From Alabama Reflector Post Url: Visit
Author: Andrea Tinker