ROUND ROCK, Texas (KXAN) – Three days before the bill allowing Ten Commandment posters in Texas public schools became law, the principal of Cedar Ridge High School got an email.
“Our family would like to donate a Ten Commandment poster for every classroom in Cedar Ridge High School. Could you please verify the number of classrooms in the school?”
The email was from Christie Slape – a parent and member of conservative political organization Moms for Liberty in Williamson County. She – along with several other parents, including a former Round Rock Independent School District trustee – pooled their resources to purchase 170 posters displaying the Ten Commandments.
Two weeks later, Slape showed up to the school with enough posters for every classroom.
“There would be a visual reminder in each classroom of how our country was established,” Slape said.
Who is donating Ten Commandments posters to Texas classrooms?
Despite ongoing legal challenges to Senate Bill 10, the donation of Ten Commandment posters to Texas public school districts has been overwhelming and swift. Records obtained by KXAN show that across just 14 Central Texas school districts, donors have given at least 6,400 posters since SB 10 became effective.
The law does not require school districts to spend any money on the posters, but it does mandate schools put the posters up once they’ve been donated. Records show districts across the state got similar donation inquiries, like Slape’s, from lawmakers, national evangelical groups — and even educators at their campuses.
In the same district where Slape donated, Round Rock ISD, records show a teacher at a local high school donated 30 Ten Commandments posters. Bastrop Independent School District leaders said it had nearly 900 posters donated from “multiple unknown individuals.” In Liberty Hill, district leaders said a local pastor donated more than 100 posters now hanging in two of its school buildings.
At least one school district, Frisco ISD, told KXAN it used $1,800 in district funds to purchase more than 4,000 Ten Commandment posters for its classrooms. The ACLU is suing the district over its decision to hang the posters up.
Sen. Adam Hinojosa, R-Corpus Christi, was one of the authors of SB 10, and since its passage, he has boasted about donating enough posters for every classroom in his district along the Texas Coastal Bend.
Some of the largest donations in Texas have come from national evangelical organizations.
Georgetown ISD told KXAN Citizens Defending Freedom, an organization that says part of its mission is to “champion faith in schools,” donated more than 1,500 Ten Commandment posters to the district. The ACLU is suing the district on behalf of parents who don’t want the posters up. A district spokesperson said the posters are not currently displayed pending the outcome of the lawsuit.
The CEO of Citizens Defending Freedom Colby Wiltse told KXAN his organization has donated more than 13,000 Ten Commandment posters to Texas public schools so far, including more than 1,350 posters to Allen ISD in Collin County. A spokesperson for Allen ISD confirmed that a local community member worked with CDF to donate the posters and said the displays are now in classrooms as required by law.
“We respect diverse viewpoints and any debate on the establishment clause,” Wiltse said. “Ultimately, we believe in exposing people to these foundational and moral principles that benefit society.”
Sen. Hinojosa also credited Citizens Defending Freedom with his effort to get posters in classrooms. A spokesperson with Hinojosa’s office said a member of Citizens Defending Freedom delivered the posters to campuses throughout the Corpus Christi area.
In July – months before the law went into effect – a woman claiming to work with Christian non-profit My Faith Votes asked Hays CISD leaders how many classrooms were in the district. The same woman donated 2,550 posters in August – but listed the donor as Million Voices. The posters are now in every Hays CISD classroom hanging next to the Bill of Rights.
My Faith Votes and Million Voices are both Texas-based groups that are tied to Vision America Mobilized, a Christian organization incorporated in Texas in 1998 by Richard Scarborough, his wife Tommye Scarborough and Mark Lanier.
In 2021, Vision America added Million Voices Inc as an entity it could do business under. In 2024 it added Faith Voices, and in 2025 My Faith Votes, according to Texas Secretary of State business filings.
Another Christian nonprofit, Restore American Schools, is also tied to Million Voices, according to its website, and is actively making donations. In mid-October, Restore American School’s website said it had “adopted” nearly 4,800 schools in Texas, which would “impact” almost 168,000 classrooms and over 3.1 million students.
Officials with Cherokee ISD — a small district in San Saba County — told KXAN it received a small donation of 30 posters along with a document from Restore American Schools that provides instructions on how to deliver Ten Commandment displays to school campuses.
KXAN sent emails and called the organizations but did not receive a response.
Some Texas school districts can’t put posters up yet
Although school districts have received, in some cases, enough posters for all their classrooms — what districts do next has been more varied.
Within days of Slape sending the email to the Cedar Ridge High School principal offering to donate Ten Commandment posters, she got a response. But it wasn’t from school leadership.
Instead, she got an email from the district’s general counsel.
Round Rock ISD’s lead attorney Cynthia Hill told her in the email the district was “awaiting further judicial guidance” before posting donated posters.
Hill was referencing an ongoing lawsuit filed by parents and religious leaders against 11 Texas school districts. The suit alleges the state mandate to post the Ten Commandments would “coerce students into religious observance.”
U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, out of San Antonio, presides over the case and temporarily ordered school districts not to post the Ten Commandments while the case was ongoing.
One day after Judge Biery issued the order, attorneys with the American Civil Liberty Union also sent a letter to every school district in the state, warning districts that posting the Ten Commandments could result in them being sued, too.
“The federal law clearly says these displays are unconstitutional,” Texas ACLU Attorney Sarah Corning said. “The law is crystal clear.”
But in the days following Judge Biery’s order and the ACLU’s warning, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a warning, too. In a letter, Paxton advised school districts across the state that only the 11 districts involved in the lawsuit have been ordered not to post donated posters — and said any district not in compliance would be “subject to legal action” from his office.
The Attorney General’s office has not responded to KXAN’s question about potential consequences if a district doesn’t display them. Paxton also said in his letter to districts that his office would defend school districts against any legal challenges arising from compliance with SB 10.
“The fact that they don’t know what exactly that consequence is, is even more problematic. We should be incredibly clear with our school districts,” Corning said.
Round Rock ISD has still not yet displayed the posters Slape delivered. In response to Slape’s following emails asking how and when the posters would be delivered to individual classrooms, the district said they were being “safely stored at the campus.”
“If the district were to immediately display the donations, we would not only be in danger of a lawsuit, we would be sued by a number of families and several organizations. This would be a tremendous waste of district resources when the question will be fully addressed by the Fifth Circuit in an upcoming decision,” Round Rock ISD spokesperson said in a statement to KXAN.
Round Rock ISD is not the only district not displaying the donated posters. In a tweet, Republican State Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Houston, said he would propose a bill to remove “rogue” school board trustees after learning Galveston ISD, which is not part of any SB 10-related lawsuit, did not hang the Ten Commandment posters he donated.
‘Responsibility’ and ‘Duty‘
The decision to wait on the outcome of the ongoing lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of SB 10 has come as a relief to some Round Rock ISD families — and a source of frustration to others.
Rev. Dr. Josh Robinson is the father of a Round Rock ISD student and the senior pastor at Hope Presbyterian Church. He worries posting the Ten Commandments without faith leaders present to provide appropriate context can be harmful. He also worries about the message the display sends.
“We have the right, responsibility and the duty within our faith tradition to raise disciples, grow disciples, to be theologically sound, educated and informed as they practice their faith,” Robinson said. “It is not our duty to go and force that into the faces of the Muslim community or the Jewish community or the non-practicing spiritual but religious community.”
Slape — and former school board trustee Mary Bone — in an interview with KXAN said the posters in classrooms amount to a “passive display” and insist their desire to hang the Ten Commandments in classrooms has more to do with history and morals than converting children to Christianity.
“Our God gave us free will, so I am not putting them in there to force anybody,” Bone said. “I did think, ‘Hey the Christian children that are in our schools — and the Jewish children, those of faith — need to be able to see that, hey, your ancestors built an amazing country.’ And we are going to put back in the classroom a passive display that shows that these are good moral codes of our country and if students read them and they come to faith through them, that’s amazing.”
Investigative Photojournalist Chris Nelson and Digital Director Kate Winkle contributed to this report.
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