The ALLENISD-PIA-001 production was delivered to LION by Allen Independent School District (Allen ISD) on May 5 and May 6, 2026. The production was transmitted by J. Renee Cunningham — Communications and Marketing Specialist for Allen ISD in fourteen parts, designated PT1 through PT14, totaling roughly 775 pages. ALLENISD-PIA-001 was the records request LION filed under the Texas Public Information Act (PIA) — Texas Government Code Chapter 552, which gives any Texas resident the right to request records held by a governmental body. The request sought the source materials behind the 818-book proposed library purchase known as List 4, scheduled for a Board of Trustees vote on May 26, 2026.
The fourteen-part production covered the four campus groupings used by the district to organize List 4: Elementary (PT5 through PT8), Middle School (PT9 and PT10), Lowery Freshman Center (LFC, PT11), and Allen High School (AHS, PT12). PT13 contained internal email correspondence among librarians and administrators. PT14 contained the district’s written selection methodology. The remaining parts covered cover sheets, transmittal materials, and supporting documentation.
The production became the documentary base for LION’s audit of the List 4 proposal. The audit, published as the LION Report on May 17, 2026, drew its findings entirely from the language of the district’s own response. The source-label distribution across the 818 entries was tallied from the PT5 through PT12 entry blocks. The 158 explicit “no review” admissions were counted from the verbatim Librarian Note text in those same parts. The Sunrise on the Reaping cross-part contradiction — the same title carrying full School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly reviews at PT10 page 60 and a “No reviews; approved list 1” entry at PT11 page 58 — was identified by reading the two parts of the production against each other.
Two of the strongest findings later surfaced in LION’s May 25 deep-dive report came from a single page of the production. The Librarian Note for Wild Blizzard by Rodman Philbrick, at PT5 pages 132 and 133, read in full: “Not yet published. Set to be released October 2026.” The Librarian Note for I Survived #26 by Lauren Tarshis, at PT5 page 61, read: “This book is number 26 in an extremely popular series already in our library. This one is not yet published. Expected release September 2026.” Both entries appeared on the list of books the district proposed for board approval on May 26.
The full ALLENISD-PIA-001 production is preserved in LION’s files in its original transmitted form. Page numbers cited in LION’s public reports refer to the page numbering of the OCR’d production PDFs as delivered by the district.
Questions about this record or the audit findings drawn from it can be sent to press@lionwatchtx.org. Corrections to any factual claim should be sent to corrections@lionwatchtx.org with a citation to the underlying source.
