One of my favorite podcasts ends each episode with “reasons for hope.” Lost among the higher-profile results of the recent off-year elections was a scientific “reason for hope.”

Two years ago, Cy-Fair ISD (one of the largest in Texas), elected a slate of board members determined to sabotage the district’s science curriculum. The ringleader was Natalie Blasingame, who, in a fundraising email, vowed to tear down the wall between church and state.

Blasingame and the board immediately banned chapters within already adopted textbooks. Banned content included chapters on vaccines and climate change.  

Although it’s unfortunate that Cy-Fair students missed two years of instruction on some of the most important concepts in science, here’s my reason for hope:

In November, the board members responsible for the chapter-bannings were voted out and replaced with pro-science-literacy folks. 

And boy, do we need science literacy.

Three weeks after the election, the CDC (under the direction of RFK Jr.) updated its website to read “studies have not ruled out the possibility” that vaccines contribute to autism. 

Sigh.

Decades of peer-reviewed research say otherwise.

As one writer put it: we also can’t rule out that vaccines cause tornadoes.

Science literacy. Now more than ever.