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Texas Suburb Removes Ban on Gender Roles in Student Production of “Oklahoma”

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2023 //
19

The school board of Sherman, Texas, was faced with a dilemma. The theater department of the high school had planned for months to put on a production of “Oklahoma,” a standby of American musicals. The cast was selected, the students built a set, the play was scheduled. But when the lead left the cast, the director replaced him with Max Hightower, a transgender student. The district superintendent promptly canceled the production; the set was demolished. But then something amazing happened.

The New York Times reported:

A school district in the conservative town of Sherman, Texas, made national headlines last week when it put a stop to a high school production of the musical “Oklahoma!” after a transgender student was cast in a lead role.

The district’s administrators decided, and communicated to parents, that the school would cast only students “born as females in female roles and students born as males in male roles.” Not only did several transgender and nonbinary students lose their parts, but so, too, did cisgender girls cast in male roles. Publicly, the district saidthe problem was the profane and sexual content of the 1943 musical.

At one point, the theater teacher, who objected to the decision, was escorted out of the school by the principal. The set, a sturdy mock-up of a settler’s house that took students two months to build, was demolished.

But then something even more unusual happened in Sherman, a rural college town that has been rapidly drawn into the expanding orbit of Dallas to its south. The school district reversed course. In a late-night vote on Monday, the school board voted unanimously to restore the original casting. The decision rebuked efforts to bring the fight over transgender participation in student activities into the world of theater, which has long provided a haven for gay, lesbian and transgender students, and it reflected just how deeply the controversy had unsettled the town.

The district’s restriction had been exceptional. Fights have erupted over the kinds of plays students can present, but few if any school districts appear to have attempted to restrict gender roles in theater. And while legislatures across the country, including in Texas, have adopted laws restricting transgender students’ participation in sports, no such legislation has been introduced to restrict theater roles, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The board’s vote came after students and outraged parents began organizing. In recent days, the district’s administrators, seeking a compromise, offered to recast the students in a version of the musical meant for middle schoolers or younger that omitted solos and included roles as cattle and birds. Students balked.

After the vote, the school board announced a special meeting for Friday to open an investigation and to consider taking action against the district superintendent, Tyson Bennett, who oversaw the district’s handling of “Oklahoma!,” including “possible administrative leave.”

Suddenly, improbably, the students had won.

“I’m beyond excited and everyone cried tears of joy,” Max Hightower, the transgender senior whose casting in a lead role triggered the ensuing events, said in a text message on Tuesday. He and other theater students were at a costume shop on Tuesday, a class trip that had been meant as a consolation after the disappointment of losing their production. Instead, it turned into a celebration. “I’m getting new Oklahoma costumes!!” he said.

Before the school board vote Monday night, high schoolers and their parents had gathered at the district’s offices along with theater actors and transgender students from nearby Austin College. Local residents came to talk about decades of past productions at Sherman High School of “Oklahoma!,” which tells the story of an Oklahoma Territory farm girl and her courtship by two rival suitors. Many scoffed at the district’s objections to the musical, which school officials complained included “mature adult themes.”

“‘Oklahoma!’ is generally regarded as one of the safest shows you could possibly pick to perform,” said Kirk Everist, a theater professor at Austin College who was among those who came to speak. “It’s almost a stereotype at this point.”

Every seat in the room was filled, almost entirely with supporters of the production. Some lined the walls while others who were turned away waited outside. Of the 65 people who signed up to speak, only a handful voiced support for the district’s restrictions.

The outpouring came as a shock, even to longtime Sherman residents.

“What you’re seeing today is history,” said Valerie Fox, 41, a local L.G.B.T.Q. advocate and the parent of a queer high schooler. Ms. Fox said she was taken aback by the scene of dozens of transgender people and their supporters holding signs and flags outside the district offices. “This is one of the biggest things we’ve seen in Sherman.”

The town, a short drive from Dallas, has been a place where many conservatives have gone to escape the city. Some were supportive of the superintendent’s initial decision to restrict the musical.

“Adult content doesn’t belong in high school; they’re still kids,” Renée Snow, 62, said earlier on Monday as she sat with her friend on a bench outside the county courthouse. “It’s about education. It’s not about lifestyle.”

Her friend, Lyn Williams, 69, agreed. “It doesn’t seem like anyone is willing to stand up for anything anymore,” she said.

At a local shoe store, no one needed to be reminded of the details of the controversy. One shopper, shaking a pair of insoles, said that she believed that God made people either male or female, and that the issue was a simple as that.

Inside the courthouse, Bruce Dawsey, the top executive for Grayson County, described a rural community coming to terms with its evolution into a place where urban development is altering the landscape. Not far away, more than a half-dozen cranes could be seen towering over a new high-tech facility for Texas Instruments. The high school, with more than 2,200 students, opened on a sprawling new campus in 2021, its grass still uniform, its newly planted trees still struggling to provide shade. With all the growth, the school is already too small.

“The majority is Republican, and it’s conservative Republican,” Mr. Dawsey said. “But not so ultraconservative that it’s not welcoming.”

Still, some in and around Sherman have chafed at the changes. When Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic candidate for governor, campaigned through the county last year, he was met with aggressive protesters who confronted him over gun rights, some carrying assault-style rifles. A few wore T-shirts suggesting opposition to liberal urban governance: “Don’t Dallas My Grayson County.”

But the controversy over “Oklahoma!” came as a surprise. The musical had been selected and approved last school year, casting was completed in August and more than 60 students in the cast and crew — as well as dozens of dancers — had been preparing for months. Performances were scheduled for early December.

Max, 17, had been cast in a minor role. But then, in late October, one of the leads was cut from the production, and Max got the part, the biggest he had ever had. He was elated.

Days later, his father, Phillip Hightower, got a call from the high school principal, who told him that Max could not have the part because, under a new policy, no students could play roles that differed from their sex at birth. “He was not rude or disrespectful, but he was very curt and to the point,” Mr. Hightower recalled.

The district later denied having such a policy. But the principal also left messages for other parents whose children were losing their roles, one of which was shared with The New York Times.

“This is Scott Johnston, principal at Sherman High School,” a man’s voice said on the recording. “Moving forward, the Sherman theater department will cast students born as females in female roles and students born as males in male roles.”

The message diverged from the rules for high school theater competitions in Texas, which allow for students to be cast in roles regardless of gender.

The district did not make Mr. Johnston or the superintendent, Mr. Bennett, available for an interview.

In his previous role as an assistant superintendent, Mr. Bennett had objected to the content of a theater production by Sherman High School, according to the former choir director, Anna Clarkson. She recalled Mr. Bennett asking her to change a lesbian character into a straight character in the school’s production of “Legally Blonde” in 2015, and to cut a song entitled “Gay or European?”

At the school board meeting on Monday, theater students from the high school described how things had become worse for gay and transgender students at school since the production was halted. Slurs. Taunts. Arguments in the halls.

“People are following me around calling me girl-boy,” said Max.

Kayla Brooks and her wife, Liz Banks, arrived at the meeting bracing for a tough night. Their daughter Ellis had lost a part playing a male character, and they had been actively working with other parents to oppose the changes.

“We were both nervous, because we live in Sherman,” said Ms. Banks. Then they saw the large, supportive crowd outside. “We began weeping in the car,” Ms. Brooks said.

The school board sat mostly stone-faced as dozens of people testified in support of the theater students, sharing personal histories. A transgender student at Austin College said he had not before come out publicly. Sherman residents lamented the way the school district’s position had made the town look.

“I just want this town to be what it can be and not be a laughingstock for the entire nation,” one woman, Rebecca Gebhard, told the board.

After nearly three hours, the board went behind closed doors. The crowds left. Few expected a significant decision was imminent.

Then, after 10 p.m., the board took their seats again and introduced a motion for a vote: Since there was no official policy on gender for casting, the original version of the musical should be reinstated. All seven board members voted in favor, including one who had, months before, protested against a gay pride event.

“We want to apologize to our students, parents, our community regarding the circumstances that they’ve had to go through,” the board president, Brad Morgan, said afterward.

Sitting in their living room on Tuesday morning, Ms. Banks and Ms. Brooks recalled how their daughter delivered them the news. “She just said, ‘We won,’” Ms. Brooks said. “She was beaming, smiling ear to ear.” The musical would be performed in January.

The couple decided, for the first time, to hang a pride flag in the window of their home. For now, they felt a little more confident in their neighbors than they had a day before.

Categories Arts Education, Bigotry, Censorship, Courage, Creativity, Gender, Parents, Students, Texas

“In Texas, the Only Good Voucher Bill Is a Dead One”

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2023 //
8

The Houston Chronicle published a stunning editorial denouncing the voucher legislation that Governor Abbott demands. Abbott has called four special sessions of the Legislature, and so far rural Republicans have blocked vouchers. Now the Governor threatens to run a candidate in the primary against every Republican who opposes vouchers. Why the pressure? To satisfy two billionaires.

The editorial board writes:

In March, when Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed the state’s new school voucher program into law, she repeated several talking points that advocates use to justify using taxpayer dollars to subsidize private school tuition.

“We’ve seen how the status quo condemns Arkansans to a lifetime of poverty,” said Sanders. “We’re tired of sitting at the bottom of national education rankings.”

Arkansas tried to avoid the pitfalls of some other states’ voucher programs. Participating private schools would have to select a standardized test to use — a small measure of, if not accountability, at least transparency. Likewise, the schools must prove they are accredited or working toward accreditation. And the state set eligibility requirements that should have helped target funds toward the neediest students, including those in foster care, enrolled in failing public schools, experiencing homelessness or living with a disability.

But in the first annual report on the program since its launch, the state found that of the more than 4,700 participants, nearly all were either new students enrolling in kindergarten or existing private school students.

The promise of transforming the lives of poor students trapped in failing public schools hasn’t materialized. Instead, the state has taken on significant new costs to fund both existing public school students and voucher recipients.

SPECIAL SESSION: School vouchers, border bills fall short as Gov. Abbott calls fourth session

From what we can see, Texas lawmakers — whom Gov. Greg Abbott called abruptly back into special session Tuesday for the fourth time this year — have worked to craft school voucher bills that also seek to avoid some of the worst abuses seen in other states. Bills have included some degree of required testing, fraud guardrails, effective enrollment caps and prioritization for lower-income students and those with disabilities. There have also been sweeteners for folks planning to stay in public schools: an increase in the per-student allotment and one-time teacher bonuses, among others. As voucher bills go, the House version proposed last special session was one of the most palatable around.

It still wasn’t good enough for Abbott, who continues to push for a more universal program.

And it isn’t good enough for us, either. Because there is no such thing as a good voucher bill. Not the bill passed by the Senatethat would create $8,000 vouchers nor the one that, for the first time this year, made it through the House committee Friday that would offer students $10,500 annually to attend private schools. Even seemingly benign or narrowly tailored bills have a way of ballooning in cost and generating underwhelming results.

Not only have wide-scale voucher programs largely failed to produce resounding academic improvements for participants, states have consistently seen the programs benefit existing private school students, whose parents most likely could already afford the tuition. They don’t really benefit the struggling public school students often used to sell them.

In Arkansas, restrictions meant to target students with disabilities have been almost meaningless after the state lowered its standards for approval. Investigative reporting there revealed that some of the 44% of students who were granted vouchers based on disabilities had as little as a doctor’s note worth of documentation. Here in Texas, the current House version — an omnnibus school spending bill with education savings accounts wedged inside like a booby trap waiting to spring — makes clear that students who are currently in private schools would still be eligible for the voucher.

TOMLINSON: Texas school vouchers would be financially ruinous, fundamentally unfair or quite likely, both

Then there’s the price tag. The estimated price of the Senate’s voucher program put forward in the previous session was $500 million for the first year.

But buyer beware, that’s just the first year. What voucher advocates want is a foot in the door. And within two or three budget cycles, the number of participants will soar and — more than likely — all those careful (or not so careful) restrictions meant to narrow the program would disappear.

“They’re telling you you’ve got an interest free payment: You can sign up to get vouchers for the next, say, two, three budget cycles. And then the price tag really comes due,” said Josh Cowen, a policy analyst and professor of education policy at Michigan State University. He has been following voucher bills — often nearly identical ones — working their way through state legislatures and sees a cautionary tale in Arkansas.

While some districts may feel the loss of public funding, the real threat, Cowen explains, is that this program will end up helping existing private school families. Meaning the state — and you, dear taxpayer — will be on the hook for two systems.

There are many reasons to oppose vouchers: They don’t guarantee academic improvements; they’ve been shown to increase segregation; they don’t protect the legal rights of students with disabilities in private schools that can discriminate against them; they use public dollars to support private and often religious instruction.

Lawmakers can nip and tuck to address some concerns. But there’s not much they can do to make vouchers less economically disastrous or to slake the thirst of deep-pocketed, pro-voucher advocates pouring in buckets of dollars. Those Wilks and Dunn types aren’t funding this because they want to help low-income students escape failing public schools. They want a universal program that undoes the power of the public school as a secular, accountable, publicly funded institution.

CARTOON EXPLAINER: Austin’s the new Kremlin! A guide to vouchers and puppet masters Wilks and Dunn.

Some want to use carrots to lure lawmakers. Others prefer a stick, threatening to primary out those rural Republicans who have stood up time and again for their communities and against vouchers. There’s a reason this is so hard. It’s clear that, after decades of bipartisan rejection, Texans don’t want this voucher scheme.

So why are we on the verge of passing it, of making the same mistake as Arkansas and other states?

State Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, said it best amid the marathon testimony that opened the latest special session: “All this for one man and two billionaires.”

Only Abbott, Wilks and Dunn will benefit if bipartisan opposition crumbles. Texas public schoolchildren and taxpayers will lose.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Courage, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Rural Schools, Texas

Texas: Gov. Abbott Calls 4th Special Session to Offer Bribes for Vouchers

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2023 //
2

The Texas legislature is reconvening for a fourth special session, where Governor Gregg Abbott will twist arms and offer bribes, all in hopes of getting Republican votes for vouchers in the House. Rural Republicans have steadfastly opposed vouchers because their districts don’t want them or need them. Will they resist his bait again? In the election just concluded, Governor Abbott awarded a $13 billion property-tax cut to homeowners, but not a penny to raise teachers’s salaries. Texas has a $33 billion surplus due to the rising price of oil and gas, but nothing for public schools unless they agree to fund religious schools with public money.

Edward McKinley of The Houston Chronicle reports:

As the fight over school vouchers drags on to another special session, the Texas House’s top education policymaker has been thrust into a Frankensteinian role: trying to breathe life into the once-dead bill by melding it with stacks of loosely related education policies and members’ pet priorities.

Thursday was set to give the first glimpse of whether Rep. Brad Buckley’s creation will live when his committee began a public hearing for the controversial package. Gov. Greg Abbott called lawmakers back to Austin this week for renewed negotiations after the Texas House never took up his priority plan to subsidize private education with public dollars.

“I’ve been striving to strike the right balance between the viewpoints of those that support parental choice, and those that are just as passionate about our public schools,” Buckley, R-Salado, said at the start of Thursday’s hearing.

Besides giving families approximately $10,500 to spend on private school tuition or expenses, Buckley’s House Bill 1 would give public school teachers, nurses, counselors and librarians a $4,000 raise and lift the base level of per-student funding by more than $500, a significant jump but one that falls short of amounts requested by education groups. It would also create automatic future public school funding increases tied to inflation.

Capitol insiders see the grab-bag approach as a way to entice hesitant members who may be willing to get on board with vouchers in exchange for the right mix of concessions. 

For instance, the bill boosts per-student funding for smaller school districts, which could appeal to rural members or Democrats who support charter schools. The bill also creates funding for fine arts programming favored by Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian, a longtime voucher opponent who’s recently been working behind the scenes to broker a deal on vouchers.

READ MORE: What ‘Friday Night Lights’ shows about one rural Republican’s resistance to private school vouchers

Rep. Harold Dutton – a Houston Democrat who opposes school vouchers but has said he would be open to negotiations – said two measures he pushed for previously are included in the catch-all voucher bill: funding for an early literacy program and one for teacher residency.

Still, he said on Tuesday those tweaks won’t be enough.

“The Legislature has spoken on this issue,” Dutton said. “From my standpoint, this has gotten to be less about students and less about bills and more about Abbott. And that’s a losing proposition for me.”

The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment. 

Other components in Buckley’s latest bill are aimed at making changes favored by public school teachers, including making it easier for schools to rehire retirees and increasing a statewide merit-based pay program. Public schools would see a dramatic increase in special education funding and several tweaks to Texas’ labyrinthian system of school finance formulas. Under the proposal, the controversial A-F accountability system used by the state to grade public school districts would also be put on hold amid complaints that it doesn’t accurately capture a school’s performance.

Even charter schools would see benefits, including a boost to their per-student funding through changes to state formulas and quintupling the dollars for new buildings from $50 million to $300 million. The Texas Charter School Association is neutral on the bill despite those boons, spokesman Brian Whitley said on Tuesday. Although the group has long pushed for increased facility funding, Whitley said it doesn’t have a public position on vouchers.

Bob Popinski, senior director of policy for Raise Your Hand Texas, a research and advocacy group that supports public education, said it’s not unusual for school finance bills in Texas to become grabbags of related policies.

“Everyone is trying to get their provisions in there to fix a perceived or real problem,” he said, which is typical when the Legislature opens up the state’s school finance system to changes. 

The House committee, comprised of members picked by Speaker Dade Phelan over the summer to “develop a workable roadmap for legislation in the House,” is expected to ultimately vote on the bill by the end of the week. If it wins support, the proposal would then be considered by the full House – where it may be met with some pitchforks.

An alliance of Democrats and rural Republicans in the House have long blocked any bill containing a voucher plan, and those members show no public sign of budging en masse. They contend vouchers would divert money from public schools and say the money would amount to a taxpayer-funded discount for families already attending private schools. 

If the bill falls short in a climactic House vote, it would be a major thumb in the eye of the governor and could spell the end of his efforts to pass a voucher program with this Legislature. 

Phelan has said he’s “hopeful” a bill could pass, describing it as “maybe the most difficult piece of legislation in the history of the state of Texas.”

“My members need to vote their districts. They need to represent their districts, as they’re elected,” he told Hearst Newspapers in an interview earlier this week.

Although the Senate has already passed a handful of voucher bills this year, the cost of the latest proposal could become a problem if it continues to grow, said Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston.

The Legislature is $6 billion away from reaching a spending limit set in the state Constitution. Lawmakers could vote to exceed the threshold, but that would set a new, higher floor for future spending and would be a difficult vote for fiscally conscious members.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Funding, Texas, Vouchers

ProPublica: Voters in Midland, Texas, Defy Billionaire, Pass School Bond Issue

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2023 //
3

Last week, ProPublica wrote about billionaire Tim Dunn and his efforts to defeat a $1.4 billion bond issue in Midland, Texas. Dunn ran his campaign through a Dark Money nonprofit that is staffed by his colleagues. Dunn wants a voucher program for the state and opposes new funding for public schools.

Allies of influential Texas billionaire Tim Dunn are pushing ahead in Austin with efforts to create a private-school voucher system that could weaken public schools across the state. Meanwhile, Dunn’s associates in his hometown of Midland are working to defeat a local school bond proposal that his district says it desperately needs.

Dunn, an evangelical Christian, is best known for a mostly successful two-decade effort to push the Texas GOP ever further to the right. His political action committees have spent millions to elect pro-voucher candidates and derail Republicans who oppose them. Defend Texas Liberty, the influential PAC he funds with other West Texas oil barons, has come under fire after The Texas Tribune revealed that the PAC’s president had hosted infamous white supremacist Nick Fuentes for an October meeting and that the organization has connections to other white nationalists.

Less known are Dunn’s efforts to shape politics in his hometown of Midland, which will come to a head next week. On Tuesday, residents in the Midland Independent School District will vote on a $1.4 billion bond, the largest in its history, after rejecting a smaller measure four years ago. A dark-money organization whose leaders have ties to Dunn’s Midland oil and gas company, as well as to a prominent conservative public policy organization where Dunn serves as vice chairman, have become among the loudest voices against the bond.

On Sept. 21, less than two months before the Midland bond election, three Midland residents with deep connections to Dunn and his associated public policy organization registered a “social welfare” nonprofit called Move Midland.

The nonprofit is headed by Rachel Walker, a public affairs manager for Dunn’s oil and gas company, CrownQuest Operating LLC, according to public records. A second member, Ernest Angelo, is a former Midland mayor and board member of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank that Dunn has helped lead for more than two decades. The third member of the nonprofit’s board is Elizabeth Moore, a former West Texas development officer for the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

But then the voters got a chance to be heard. They said NO to Tim Dunn!

Update, Nov. 8, 2023: On Nov. 7, Midland school district voters approved a $1.4 billion bond proposal by a 56% to 44% vote, rejecting arguments against the measure from a nonprofit led by associates of billionaire oilman Tim Dunn.

Categories Billionaires, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Reform, Elections, Privatization, Texas

Texas: Black and Brown Activists Invite You to Join Them Sunday Morning at State Capitol in Austin

By dianeravitch
November 11, 2023 //
1

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

From: Black Brown Dialogues on Policy co-founders: Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. and

Gary Bledsoe, Esq. , Chair of the Texas NAACP

 

For more information, please contact Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. at

blackbrownpolicy@gmail.com (512) 232-6008

 

In this moment of a dismantling of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives in Texas colleges and universities, along with toxic, polarizing battles in the Texas State Legislature and in local school boards throughout Texas, we invite you to the Inaugural Black Brown Dialogues on Policy Capitol Storytelling Event during the Texas Book Festival.

This in-person and online event takes place in the Member’s Lounge (E2.1002), at the Texas

State Capitol on Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 10:00 a.m. CST in partnership with National LULAC, the Texas NAACP, Mexican American Legislative Caucus, Latino Texas Policy Center, and the Texas Center for Education Policy.

Virtually, this event will be livestreamed and available live online at www.facebook.com/TeamBlackBrown.

Now, more than ever, we must come together as a Black and Brown community to amplify our collective power through community storytelling.Treat yourself on this day to oral stories of Black and Brown coalitional and partnership work that has been carried out throughout time in Texas. Author and Texas oral history researcher Dr. Max Krochmal will present from his book, Civil Rights in Black and Brown (University of Texas Press). UT History Professor Emilio Zamora and Texas NAACP President Gary Bledsoe will share instances in history when Black and Brown people worked together in solidarity. The Honorable Aicha Davis will discuss the importance of Black and Brown coalitional work at the Texas State Board of Education.

Former Ft. Worth ISD Board Member Dr. Jacinto “Cinto” Ramos, My Brother’s Keeper

Director Rickie Clark, Round Rock ISD’s Tiffanie Harrison will present on local school board struggles. Independent Scholar Martha P. Cotera will share her wealth of experience in Austin and enduring accomplishments by Austin’s Black and Brown working class community. A panel of students will close the event with their reflections of what was shared and how we move forward.

“Organizing this event is a dream come true,” says BBDP co-founder Gary Bledsoe. “It is to our own detriment if we fail to come together as a Black and Brown community to address matters of mutual concern.” This event is free and open to the public. We encourage community members, university faculty, students, advocates, and lawmakers to attend in person and online.

For more information about the town hall meeting, please contact Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. at

blackbrownpolicy@gmail.com.

WHEN: Sunday, Nov. 12, 2023 at 10:00 a.m.

WHERE: Member’s Lounge (E2.1002), Texas State Capitol Annex Underground

Virtual: https://facebook.com/TeamBlackBrown

INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITY: Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. and Gary Bledsoe, Esq.

Categories Censorship, Civil Rights, Creativity, Education Reform, Equity, Freedom, Joy, Texas

Texas: The Rightwing Plot to Capture Local School Boards

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2023 //
15

Steven Monacelli wrote this article for The Texas Observer about the network of rightwing groups flooding local school board elections with big money. He also supplied the photographs.

As the article points out, about 75% of local school board candidates spend less than $1,000 to run for office. In districts targeted for takeover, such modest spending is no longer a path to success.

Monacelli writes:

Over the last three years, an interconnectednetwork of political action committees (PACs), largely funded by billionaires who support school privatization, has begun to transform the nature of local school board elections across Texas. They’ve done this with the help of consultants whose efforts have largely gone unnoticed.

On August 15, 2022, members of the Carroll Independent School District (CISD) board of trustees, all dressed in Southlake Dragons’ green, posed for a photo with representatives of Patriot Mobile, a Christian Nationalist phone company that spent big last spring to help secure the victories of three trustees. The occasion honored the company’s donation of posters that read “In God We Trust.”

The trustee’s acceptance of the red, white, and blue star-spangled posters immediately drew opposition from critics who see those words not just as a motto that appears on dollar bills, but also as a declaration of allegiance to conservative causes. One disapproving parent attempted to donate signs with the same words in Arabic and on a rainbow background but was rejected; the board president said they already had enough.

Other school districts got the posters around the same time. And not all parents who spoke out were critical.

Erik Leist, who resides in the neighboring Keller ISD area, spoke to multiple news outlets about the posters after they were donated. He approved of the state law passed in 2021 that requires schools to display donated signs bearing the national motto in a “conspicuous place.”

“If it’s important to communities, the community will come behind it,” Leist said, according to accounts published in Fox News and the Texas Tribune that identified him only as the father of a kindergartener.

Leist, however, is much more than a concerned dad: He’s a conservative political consultant who at the time had already been paid tens of thousands of dollars by multiple PACs to support the campaigns of new ultraconservative school board members in Carroll and neighboring school districts, trustees who were eager to accept those posters and who later passed policies restricting students’ access to library books and rolling back accommodations for LGBTQ+ students.

Leist is just one well-connected node in a sprawling, hydra-like network of PACs and consulting firms that increasingly are targeting Texas school board races and politicizing those formerly low-budget, nonpartisan campaigns, an investigation by the Texas Observer reveals.

The Observer’s examination of campaign finance records shows that dozens of ultraconservative school board candidates around the state have been backed by PACs that collectively employ a handful of conservative political consulting firms.

Viewed together, the connections among these individuals and organizations reveal a network of major funders and political operatives focused on winning control of the state’s local school boards. The strategy this network employs has been trumpeted in the right-wing press as a blueprint for school board takeovers: Create a PAC, endorse candidates willing to run on politicized issues, hire a consulting firm with ties to the Republican Party, raise enough to outspend opponents, and if victory is secured, pass policies that align with statewide party priorities. The biggest known backers of this network are conservative billionaires who generally don’t live in the districts being targeted but all of whom support school privatization efforts.

The timing of the network’s activities corresponds to revived efforts by Governor Greg Abbott and Republican lawmakers to support vouchers for private schools in the 2021 and 2023 legislative sessions.

To understand how this network developed over time, it’s best to begin in CISD—a district located in Southlake, a wealthy suburb of Fort Worth that is over 70 percent white. It’s where Leist got his start as a school board campaign consultant, supporting an effort praised by the conservative press as a model for other school districts.

In August 2020, the seven-member CISD board held a hearing on something called a Cultural Competence Action Plan, a proposal created in response to a 2018 viral video of Carroll high school students shouting the N-word.

Less than two weeks later, Tim O’Hare, the former chair of the Tarrant County Republican Party and current Tarrant County judge, teamed up with Leigh Wambsganss, a conservative activist and the wife of a former Southlake mayor, to create Southlake Families PAC.

In November 2020, Southlake Families PAC—which describes itself as “unapologetically rooted in Judeo-Christian values”—paid a Keller-based marketing company called 221b Ingenuity, of which Leist was a managing partner, to help set up a website to promote two conservative CISD school board candidates. They ran in opposition to the Cultural Competence Action Plan in the spring 2021 race that featured PAC-funded mailers accusing opponents of pushing “radical socialism.” Both PAC-backed candidates won.

In June 2021, the right-leaning National Review lauded Southlake Families’ victory as a “model for conservative parents confronted by similar situations around the country.” When Southlake Families helped a third candidate win a special election for a vacant CISD seat that fall, the three joined with a fourth PAC-endorsed incumbent to form a conservative majority on the board.

Since then, seven federal civil rights investigations have been opened into allegations of discrimination against Carroll students based on race, disability, and gender or sexual harassment. The most recent began in January 2023, one month after the board removed references to religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity from the district’s nondiscrimination statement, stoking further controversy and making news.

What has drawn less press attention is that the situation in Carroll has inspired a network of copycat PACs supporting conservative candidates in other historically low-budget nonpartisan school board races across the state, in which PACs and the candidates they endorsed hired from the same handful of consulting firms to help with campaigns.

Tentacles of this big-spending network have already reached more than two dozen Texas school districts. The Observer has identified 20 PACs formed since late 2020 that, through early September, have collectively spent more than $1.5 million to support the campaigns of 105 conservative candidates in 35 districts.

Most of the time, that investment has paid off: 65 PAC-supported candidates—or 62 percent—won their elections from 2021 to 2023.

The majority of those PACs are focused on only one school district each. The ultraconservative committees have typically spent tens of thousands of dollars per election, with less than $100,000 in total expenses since they were formed. A handful of PACs have spent more than six figures in total, including Southlake Families, which has spent more than $239,000 since late 2020.

Campaign finance records show that these seemingly grassroots groups often use the same consulting firms like Leist’s Edgerton Strategies, which has worked on behalf of PACs and candidates in at least 14 school districts. Other consulting firms that have made over six figures working on school board campaigns include Axiom Strategies and CAZ Consulting—and both companies’ subsidiaries. They’re the same consultants used by big-spending conservative political PACs like Patriot Mobile Action and Texans for Educational Freedom, which have respectively spent more than $500,000 and $330,000 on school board races and together have endorsed 66 candidates across at least 23 districts.

At least one federal-level super PAC, the 1776 Project, has also invested in 28 school board candidates across eight Texas school districts that were also endorsed by either Patriot Mobile Action, Texans for Educational Freedom, or one of the Southlake Families-style PACs.

This level of outside spending is highly unusual in school board races. The results of a 2018 survey conducted by the National School Board Association showed that 75 percent of all candidates reported spending less than $1,000 per race, with only 9 percent spending more than $5,000.

Analysis of campaign expenses by the nonprofit OpenSecrets shows that spending more money doesn’t always ensure victory—but often does. Given the relatively low cost of school board races, the influx of even a few thousand dollars of outside funding can transform the nature of such elections at a time of high turnover: According to a 2022 survey from School Board Partners, a national organization focused on recruiting and training anti-racist school board members, nearly two-thirds of school board members nationwide said they planned not to seek reelection…


In the southeast Texas city of Humble, another 2021 school board race became a quieter testing ground for a new conservative PAC. Unlike in Carroll ISD, there was no dramatic national coverage or clash over diversity and inclusion. The district, in one of Houston’s sprawling and forested northern suburbs, was the first foray into school board races for Texans for Educational Freedom, a PAC with a mission of “fighting against Critical Race Theory and other anti-American agendas and curriculums.”

Funded primarily by a coterie of conservative billionaires, Texans for Educational Freedom—originally known as the Freedom Foundation of Texas—was founded in early 2021 by Christopher Zook Jr., a former field director for the Harris County Republican Party and senior fellow at Texans For Lawsuit Reform.

In the May 2021 election, the PAC spent more than $10,000 to help three candidates—a significant investment from one source, given that Humble school board candidates tended to spend only about $3,300 from all contributors in contested races. The PAC money was spent on a national political consulting firm called Axiom Strategies. All three of the PAC’s candidates won.

Unlike in majority-white Southlake, the school board election in Humble—where white students are a minority—didn’t feature inflammatory, politicized rhetoric. That helped Texans for Educational Freedom keep a low profile.

“I wasn’t aware there was outside PAC spending,” said Brian Baker, a father of two students in Humble ISD. “I had been paying attention to stories in other parts of the state and I was looking out for candidates and mailers using certain buzzwords like ‘woke,’ but I didn’t really notice any.”

After the initial victory in Humble, Texans for Educational Freedom targeted two more districts near Houston, Cypress-Fairbanks and Klein, in 2021. This time, messaging around critical race theory came to the fore. All three PAC-backed candidates in Cypress-Fairbanks ran against the ostensible inclusion of critical race theory in school curriculum and teacher training, as did one PAC-backed candidate in Klein. Six of the seven candidates won.

By the end of 2021, candidates backed by Texans for Educational Freedom had established near or outright majorities in all three districts—and all three would later rank on a list of book-banning districts put together by PEN America, a nonprofit organization focused on the protection of free expression.

Texans for Educational Freedom has intervened in races across the greater Houston area, including Houston, Conroe, Katy, and Spring Branch. The PAC has also backed candidates in the wooded Austin suburb of Leander, in the oil-rich flats of Midland, in several suburbs of Fort Worth, and in the Panhandle’s Canyon ISD. The PAC backed 12 candidates in 2021, 10 in 2022, and 20 in 2023, covering a total of 17 school districts. Out of all those candidates, 76 percent won their elections.

“Things like this have happened before but not in such a coordinated way,” said Ruth Kravetz, a retired public school administrator and teacher who co-founded Community Voices for Public Education, an advocacy group that seeks to strengthen Houston’s public school system. “In the past it was to promote charter expansion. And now it seems like it’s about promoting the destruction of public education.”

Candidates backed by Texans for Educational Freedom have regularly run on hot-button issues that tie in with state-level Republican policy and rhetoric, such as notions that children are being “indoctrinated” into radical ideologies or “sexually alternative lifestyles.”

In Conroe ISD, three candidates backed by Texans for Educational Freedom ran as the “Mama Bear” slate and won their November 2022 elections after being involved in a push by a group known as Mama Bears Rising to restrict student access to certain books.

“The PACs were able to support a massive printing of voter guides and distribution of mailers,” said Evan Berlin, a resident who lost to one of the Mama Bears. Berlin, a first-time school board candidate who has a conservative voting record, told the Observer he wanted to run on providing education in a non-politicized manner. “I think with PAC money coming from out-of-district donors, just by nature of that we could assume that it’s part of a larger, more strategic effort,” he said.

Last year, while Texans for Educational Freedom was concentrating on Houston area races, Patriot Mobile Action and another 17 PACs were backing candidates in 22 districts across the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Those candidates largely ran on issues that have become a common refrain: allegations of ideological indoctrination, critical race theory, pornography in schools, and the sexualization of children.

Fifteen of the 18 PACs targeting North Texas school districts tapped either Axiom Strategies, Edgerton Strategies, or CAZ Consulting for campaign consulting—as did many school board candidates in the area. The outliers were: McKinney First PAC, which endorsed candidates that worked with those consulting firms; Metroplex Citizens for a Better Tomorrow and Decatur ISD Parents Unite, two groups primarily funded by a Republican mega donor who has contributed to Texans for Educational Freedom; and Collin Conservatives United, a self-described PAC that does not appear in the state PAC registry, whose endorsed candidates received donations from the same megadonor.

As this larger cluster of PACs and consulting firms has grown, its strategy has proved potent. Fourteen of its 17 candidates won in 2021. Another 42 candidates ran in 2022 and 27 won. And so far in 2023, 48 more candidates ran and 26 won.

Open the link to finish the article. I hope it’s not behind a paywall.

If you open the link, you can then see the diagram that displays the intricate interconnections among the rightwing groups and their funders.

Categories Censorship, Corruption, Dark Money, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Texas, Vouchers

Texas: Vouchers Remain Stalled; Rural Republicans Not Budging

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2023 //
6

Governor Gregg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick expressed optimism about getting a voucher bill passed by the third special session of the Texas legislature, but it’s looking unlikely. The session ends Tuesday, and there is no House bill. Rural Republicans know that vouchers will hurt their schools, and they have with Democrats against them.

Hours after Gov. Greg Abbott said he believed the Legislature could pass a school vouchers bill before the end of the special legislative session, the House all but killed any deal.

The House met briefly Wednesday evening and recessed likely until Monday or Tuesday, pending the Senate’s approval of bills related to border security.

The special session ends Tuesday, and the House has not so much as considered a voucher bill in committee, an early step in the lawmaking process.

Abbott is ready to call a fourth special session. That’s likely to annoy the holdouts, who are tired of his pressure campaign.

Categories Education Industry, Privatization, Religion, Supporting public schools, Texas, Vouchers

Texas Clergy Speak Out Against Vouchers

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2023 //
4

Texas clergy spoke out against Governor Gregg Abbott’s plan to promote voucher legislation. Governor Abbott has vowed to keep convening special sessions of the legislature until he wins vouchers, which will benefit students already in private and religious schools. Abbott has campaigned for vouchers by visiting private schools, which stand to benefit from his plan. Meanwhile the state has a budget surplus of nearly $33 billion. The governor has blocked any increase in teachers’ salaries until he gets vouchers. To date, rural Republicans have stood strong against vouchers, which would hurt their communities and turn off the “Friday night lights” (the football games).

The Network for Public Educatuon distributed their statement. In addition to the three who wrote the statement, it was co-signed by more than 100 other members of the clergy.

Texas Clergy: Texas schools don’t need vouchers.

Three Texas religious leaders say that Abbot’s voucher plan is not what schools need. Dr. Michael Evans, Re. Dr. Mary Spradlin, and Rabbi Brian Zimmerman wrote this op-ed for the Star-Telegram, and over 100 other clergy signaled their agreement.

We are Fort Worth- area clergy and advocates for public education, driven by our faith to support the well-being of our state’s children. Our belief in community responsibility to provide the best possible education for every child is unwavering. The sad truth, however, is that we are falling short of this commitment.

Across Texas, our schools grapple with underfunding, overcrowded classrooms and overworked teachers. Educators face numerous challenges, including the disruptions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Most are disheartened by the increasingly politicized environment that undermines their abilities and integrity without a factual basis.

Some argue that the main issue in public education is teachers promoting controversial ideologies, undermining traditional values and neglecting core subjects such as reading and math.

This is a false narrative. As pastors, many of us regularly convene with school leaders to assess students’ progress. Our teachers are driven to improve education for their kids in the classroom. Elementary teachers aim to help early readers move toward goals set by people with little understanding of the life of families who, for example, may have already had to move many times in their young child’s life.

The claim that “public schools are failing” is overly simplistic and diverts attention from our collective responsibility. We fail our kids when we buy into this hysteria — part of a national playbook determined to undermine public education. We fail our kids when we have a historic $32.7 billion state budget surplus but refuse to raise the basic allotment to fund schools.

We fail our kids when we blame school districts and teachers for campus ratings without speaking against a system that prioritizes one STAAR test score. We fail our kids when we refuse to acknowledge the correlation between poverty and school performance. We fail our kids when we buy into the claim that the best thing to do is to “pull kids out” of public schools.

Some argue that vouchers or education savings accounts, known as ESAs, would provide options for all students, but the numbers reveal otherwise. Texas has more than 347,000 kids in private schools and more than 5.5 million in public schools. An ESA allotment of $8,000 for a child from the projected $500 million the Legislature is considering would help only 57,500 students after administrative costs. The cost/benefit analysis of this plan doesn’t add up.

Read the full op-ed here. 

You can view the post at this link : https://networkforpubliceducation.org/blog-content/texas-clergy-texas-schools-dont-need-vouchers/

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Funding, Rural Schools, Texas, Vouchers

Texas: Catholic Schools Fight for Vouchers to Offset Declining Enrollments

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2023 //
13

The Texas Tribune reports that Catholic leaders are leading supporters of Governor Abbott’s push for vouchers, which would offset enrollment declines.

As the Texas Legislature debates school vouchers, one of the staunchest supporters of the initiative has been the Catholic Church.

Texas Catholic leaders have been among the longest-running advocates for Gov. Greg Abbott’s top current legislative priority, which would allow parents to use taxpayer money for private education expenses. That’s true even as some other religious leaders have firmly opposed the legislation.

Why are they divided? Catholic leaders say other religious leaders don’t fully appreciate the voucher program’s benefits, particularly its potential to expand access to private education. Voucher critics say Catholic leaders are acting in the interest of their own schools, which have experienced declining enrollment for decades, while promoting a program that could harm public schools.

A voucher program would give parents the opportunity to choose a religious education regardless of their income level, said Jennifer Allmon, executive director of the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops, which oversees all 254 Catholic schools in Texas.

“It’ll take a few years, but our primary hope is that it will open the doors of our schools to even more low-income families and provide even greater access for those who wish to use Catholic schools for the education of their children,” Allmon said.

Categories Funding, Religion, Texas, Vouchers

Houston: Teachers of Special Ed and Bilingual Ed Object to Standardized Curriculum

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2023 //
15

In Houston, the backlash against the authoritarianism of state-imposed superintendent Mike Miles continues to grow. Teachers of special education and bilingual education don’t like the standardized curriculum.

If I’m focused on what’s happening in Houston, there are two reasons:

1. I’m a graduate of the Houston Independent School District, and I don’t like to see it under siege by a know-nothing Governor and his puppet state superintendent.

2. This state takeover demonstrates the utter bankruptcy of state takeovers. It was concocted out of whole cloth, on the claim that one school in the entire district was “failing.” Before the takeover, that school—Wheatley High School—received a higher score (based on state tests) and was no longer “failing,” but the state took over the entire district anyway. So Houston is a national example of the vapidness of “education reform,” meaning non-educators like Miles, Governor Abbott, and State Chief Mike Morath telling professional educators how to do their jobs.

Anna Bauman of The Houston Chronicle writes:

A cornerstone of the New Education System introduced by Superintendent Mike Miles is a highly specific and rigorous instructional model.

As many students and teachers know by now, the system includes a standardized curriculum provided by the district, frequent classroom observations and grade level materials. Each day, teachers in core classes provide direct instruction for 45 minutes, give students a timed quiz and then split the children into groups based on their understanding of the lesson, with struggling learners getting more help from their teacher.

Miles says the model is meant to improve academic achievement, especially among student populations whose standardized test scores often lag behind their peers, and has disputed any claims that the system fails to accommodate the diverse needs of students.

In conversations over recent weeks, however, seven teachers at five different schools told me they are struggling to meet the needs of children with disabilities or emergent bilingual studentsbecause the model is too rigid, fast-paced and inflexible to provide accommodations for these learners.

For example, one teacher at an NES-aligned campus told me she cannot realistically give students extra time, a common accommodation for special education students, on the timed Demonstration of Learning. If she lags behind schedule, administrators will enter her classroom and demand: “Why aren’t we where we’re supposed to be?”

A teacher at Las Americas Newcomer School, home to many refugee and immigrant students, said district officials instructed educators to remove alphabet posters from their classrooms and limit the use of dictionaries, which many non-native English speakers rely on during class.

“Many of them, it’s their first year being in school. They don’t know the language. I have a classroom with at times four different languages spoken. And we’re forced to do the same slides and the same work as a regular, general education school,” the teacher said.

Only time will tell whether the new system will boost academic achievement as Miles intends, but for now, teachers are speaking out because they are concerned about doing what is right for their most vulnerable students.

“When I go home at night, I want to know when I put my head down on my pillow that I did the best I could by my kids,” said Brian Tucker, a special education teacher at Sugar Grove Academy.

You can read more in-depth about these issues in separate stories published this week about special education students and English language learners.

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Education Industry, Education Reform, English Language Learners, Extremism, Failure, Houston, Special Education, Stupid, Teachers, Texas
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