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Texas: Why Rural Communities Oppose School Choice

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2022 //
4

Vouchers are a big issue in Texas. Governor Greg Abbott recently announced he would promote them. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick—the Rush Limbaugh of Texas—is a voucher fanatic. Senator Ted Cruz said that school choice is the most important issue of our time.

But vouchers have died every time they are introduced in the legislature. Legislators from rural communities stand firm against vouchers. Jay Leeson explained why in the Dallas Morning News.

He wrote:

Vouchers are unpopular in places where public schools are the lifeblood of community.

With Gov. Greg Abbott’s announcement that he’ll pursue “school choice” in the upcoming Legislature, there’s political math to be done.

The governor’s proposal is pencil whipping his previously reliable rural voting base, presuming that rural communities will stick with him as he looks past the November match-up against Beto O’Rourke, and moves to the next problem of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a probable 2024 presidential foe. But in rushing to check off another box on the national GOP purity exam, questionable work has been submitted.

Out where rural public schools constellate expansive Lone Star landscape, out where the real Texas economic miracle of food, fuel, and fiber is produced, there’s pencil scratching being done.

Rural folks know school choice will come at their expense. Almost like the same-old bait (moral convictions) and switch (economic interests) over and over. It’s been that way for more than 30 years, since the GOP came to power promising term limits and local control — and how has that gone?

We’ve voted for plenty of slippery-as-slop-jar scenarios, like numerous federal officials who vote against subsidies for the state’s $25 billion annual agriculture industry. In 2018, cotton had fallen out of a federal funding program to help producers break even, and it was Abbott who single-handedly stalled restoration from Austin. We’ve closed 26 hospitals since 2010. Now just 163 hospitals provide care for 85% of the state’s geography, many with limited services. We’ve incrementally upped local property taxes to fill state budget holes over three decades. And Abbott’s routing of state infrastructure, including pivotal rural telecommunications by his commissioned appointees, could make Santa Anna blush.

But the missing variable in the slippery school choice proposal is the importance of public schools to respective rural communities — and the pillars of community within those schools. I know because I attended them.

Gid Adkisson, a gargantuan man, long in kindness as he was physique, was a retired school superintendent in Abernathy (population 2,904, about 25 miles north of Lubbock) with a bad lifelong cotton farming habit. He’d head out from his homestead to the high school for Gid Night Lights to voluntarily tutor us in algebra on Mondays and Thursdays, so we could play under the Friday Night Lights.

Children, even deviant teenagers like I was, know goodness when they see it. When I first think of Gid, I don’t picture him physically; I think of his heart. The physical trait I most remember is the big dent on his forehead that shone in the lights of Ms. Hardin’s classroom.

Bettie Hardin was a petite, put-together woman — pristine white perm, horn-rimmed glasses, mock turtleneck. She played the Methodist piano every Sunday morning with the same precision she expected from our math during the week.

Sports were our world. And Ms. Hardin could end that world with the swipe of a red pen.

But Gid came to the rescue, helping us understand it all. The first time I figured out ratio and proportion equations, Gid was right there, two huge knuckles on the desk behind me, affirming and encouraging me as my mind translated through pencil what Hardin and he had worked so hard to cultivate. When the problem was solved, the huge knuckles rose above the suspenders past the dent and to the lights, “Good, golly. You got it.”

I don’t today use an acquired high school skill — from on or off the field — more frequently than that equation.

Sitting in Wayne Riley’s 6th Grade Sunday School with half a dozen others was the first time I ever first-hand witnessed a grown man weep; we’d know him later as Coach Riley, our varsity basketball coach.

When my grandmother passed, I was destroyed and my band teacher Harold Bufe took a knee and consoled me about the loss of my world and his longtime friend.

When Gid died, many of us learned what we didn’t know all along: he’d been rescuing people for a long time. He led the 317th Regiment, 80th Infantry Division up Utah Beach where dented-head man earned, but later refused, a Purple Heart. Too many missing human variables under his command for him to accept such an award.

Public education gave us a tutor who defeated Hitler, coaches who earned our respect, and band teachers who helped us outside the notes. And Ms. Hardin who played Amazing Grace as the soundtrack.

My story isn’t uncommon, which is the point.

We’ll vote against ourselves on a myriad of issues, but not our schools.

Add to it all, rural folks know a little grammar as well.

“Choice” is a political synonym for “consolidation” and “consolidation” is another way of saying “closing” our communities — and our organists, Purple Hearts, and Sunday school teachers.

The political math for Abbott and statewide Republicans is they desperately need rural Texas votes to overcome deficits in the likes of Dallas, Tarrant, Travis, and Harris Counties. Their campaign commercials running longer loops every four years are evidence.

And while Oltons, Borgers, Ballingers, Floydadas, Abernathys, and the 85% of Texas geography won’t become Beto O’Rourke Country anytime soon, if ever, these places might just not vote.

Pull the lever, do your duty, get the sticker, but leave the gubernatorial box left open.

The collective rural Republican state representative silence on the governor’s initiative is already telling. Silence from electeds who backed Abbott’s $118 million for pre-K public education funding in 2015, only to have Abbott abdicate in subsequent far-right primary challenges.

Mr. O’Rourke may well come for some of our guns, but that’s highly unlikely with a legislative and judicial GOP stronghold.

But Abbott’s open threat is against the lifeblood of our communities: our schools. And he’s making it with a three-branch majority.

That’s Abbott’s math now. And Gid’s currently unavailable to tutor.

Jay Leeson is a freelance writer and artist in Lubbock. He wrote and illustrated this for The Dallas Morning News.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Republicans, Rural Schools, Supporting public schools, Texas

Gov. Abbott Explains Why the Police Did Not Break into the Classroom Where the Shooter Was

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2022 //
133

We now know why the police did not enter the classroom where the murders occurred. We now know that a large contingent of officers waited for nearly an hour before entering the classroom and shooting the killer.

The commander made a mistake. He thought the classroom was empty. He thought the shooter was alone in an empty classroom.

The police waited outside the classroom even as little children called 911 and begged for help.

CBS says:

The decision by the on-site commander to delay breaching the classroom of a Texas elementary school during the mass shooting this week was the “wrong decision,” authorities said Friday. Nearly 20 officers stood in a hallway outside of the classrooms during the attack on Robb Elementary School for more than 45 minutes before agents used a master key to open a door and confront the gunman, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said at a news conference.

The on-site commander — identified by the Associated Press as the school district’s police chief — believed 18-year-old Salvador Ramos was barricaded in a classroom in Uvalde during Tuesday’s attack and that the children were not at risk, McCraw said.

“He was convinced at the time that there was no more threat to the children and that the subject was barricaded and that they had time to organize” to get into the classroom, McCraw said.

“Of course it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision,” he said.

Friday’s briefing came after authorities spent three days providing often conflicting and incomplete information about the 90 minutes that elapsed between the time the gunman entered the school and when U.S. Border Patrol agents unlocked the classroom door and killed him. The gunman killed 19 students and two teachersduring the attack.

McCraw said there was a barrage of gunfire shortly after the gunman entered the classroom where they killed him but that shots were “sporadic” for much of the 48 minutes while officers waited outside the hallway. He said investigators do not know if or how many children died during those 48 minutes.

Throughout the attack, teachers and children repeatedly called 911 asking for help, including a girl who pleaded: “Please send the police now,” McCraw said.

The reason the police did not charge in to the room to save anyone who was still alive was a combination of bad judgment and stupidity.

Categories Accountability, Guns, Stupid, Texas

Uvalde: Agents in Tactical Gear Were in the Scene, Held Back by Local Police

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2022 //
41

The New York Times reports that a federal team of officers in tactical gear arrived on the scene and were kept out of the school by local police.

When specially equipped federal immigration agents arrived at the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday, the local police at the scene would not allow them to go after the gunman who had opened fire on students inside the school, according to two officials briefed on the situation.

The agents from Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, arrived at some point between 12 p.m. and 12:10 p.m., according to the officials — far earlier than previously known. But they did not breach the adjoining classrooms of the school where the gunman had locked himself in until a little before 1 p.m. Members of the federal tactical team killed the gunman.

The officials said that members of the Uvalde Police Department kept the federal agents from going in sooner.

The new details deepened questions about the tactics used to respond to the shooting and the length of time it took officers on the scene to end the carnage…

The federal agents reported that they arrived to a scene of chaos — people pulling children out of windows while the local police, carrying only handguns and a few rifles, were trying to secure a perimeter, according to one official, who like the other spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

The Border Patrol and ICE agents did not understand why they were left to wait, according to the official. Eventually, the specialized Border Patrol team went into the building.

Texas law enforcement officials have said that the gunman was locked in a pair of adjoining classrooms and had already shot a number of students there in the first few minutes; with him pinned down there, they said, the local police initially focused on evacuating students and teachers from elsewhere in the school.

Law enforcement officers had initially tried to enter the classroom but fell back after the gunman fired on them, injuring two officers, state law enforcement officials said.

Most if not all of the 21 victims in the attack, including 19 students and two teachers, died in the area where the gunman, identified as Salvador Ramos, had locked himself in. The gunman was fatally shot by the federal team that entered the rooms more than an hour after the initial 911 call of a man with a gun outside the school, which came around 11:30 a.m.

The federal officers had driven up from the Mexican border, one official said. The official said it was not clear to the federal agents why their team was needed, and why the local SWAT team did not respond.

Also from the same source:

The authorities now say that local officers first entered the school at 11:35, two minutes after the gunman, and that there were 19 officers in the hallway by 12:03 p.m., but that they did not breach the door and kill the gunman until 12:50, even as they continued to hear him firing.

From the Houston Chronicle:

It remains unclear when the scene changed from an active shooter to a potential hostage barricade situation, a transition that could have altered the police response, San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said.

“The response to someone who is actually actively shooting, that response has to be immediate, and it’s through the door,” McManus said. “If it turns into a barricade situation, we are not going to make an entry while nothing is happening. We’re going to go in if something happens — shooting starts, screaming starts.”

That thinking reflects changes law enforcement agencies made after the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado, said Fulshear Police Chief Kenny Seymour, who described that 1999 massacre as “the pendulum swing” that prompted law enforcement’s current response to active-shooter situations.

“We can’t wait,” he said. “These shootings don’t allow us to call those specialized units in. We have the training, the tools, to make a difference in these shootings.”

From the Texas Tribune:

Law enforcement response: It took police an hour to stop a gunman once he entered a South Texas elementary school and killed 19 children and two teachers, according to recent details from state law enforcement officials. 

Officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety walked back their original claims that the shooter encountered a police officer employed by the school district before entering Robb Elementary School in Uvalde through a back door. In a press conference Thursday, Victor Escalon, an official with Texas DPS, did not explain why it took officers between 40 minutes and an hour to kill the gunman once he entered the school. Here are two key timestamps we do know: 

  • Uvalde police received the first call about the gunman around 11:20 a.m., when his grandmother called 911 from her home, about two minutes from Robb Elementary, after he shot her in the face. The gunman then fled in her pickup truck, crashing it in a ditch near the school and prompting a 911 call from a neighbor.
  • At 1:06 p.m. the Uvalde Police Department posted on its Facebook page that the shooter was in police custody.

The law enforcement response has sparked growing concern, and state law enforcement officials have given vague and conflicting answers on what exactly happened after the gunman arrived at the school.

Categories Guns, Safety, Texas

Washington Post Editorial: Why Did Police Not Enter the School While the Killer Was Shooting?

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2022 //
19

Many people have been trying to understand what the local, state, and federal police did after they arrived at the Robb Elementary School while an active shooter was killing children and teachers. And they wonder about conflicting accounts from officials.

The editorial board of the Washington Post says that Governor Abbott of Texas must create an independent commission. Frankly, Governor Abbott is so pro-gun that it’s hard to imagine that any commission appointed by him would produce anything but a whitewash of his vicious policies, which made it legal for an 18-year-old to buy military assault weapons and to carry them openly. His actions and policies should be part of an independent investigation, and that is not likely to happen if he chooses the commission members.

What’s needed in Uvalde, Texas, is a credible investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI.

The editorial board writes:

When police in Littleton, Colo., responded to reports of gunfire at Columbine High School in 1999, they did what they had been trained to do: set up a perimeter, summon specially trained SWAT and hostage teams, wait for demands and allow no one, including first responders, into the building. Hours passed before the building was secured, authorities realized the shooters had killed themselves, and the wounded received medical attention. Thirteen people — 12 students and a teacher — had been slaughtered.


Columbine resulted in fundamental changes in how law enforcement responds to mass shootings. The Columbine Review Commission formed by then-Gov. Bill Owens recommended in 2001 that “law enforcement policy and training should emphasize that the highest priority of law enforcement officers, after arriving at the scene of a crisis, is to stop any ongoing assault.” Active-shooter programs in which officers were trained to immediately target the gunman or gunmen became standard police protocol.

So why did it take 40 minutes to an hour before law enforcement authorities in Uvalde, Tex., stormed an elementary school classroom to stop a gunman who had gone on a shooting rampage? It is just one of the questions that parents whose children were killed, wounded or traumatized are asking — and it is one that authorities would do well to answer with clarity and urgency.

Since Tuesday’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, in which 19 children and two teachers were murdered, conflicting and confusing narratives have emerged. After initial accounts that the gunman had been confronted by a school resource officer and suggestions that there was an exchange of gunfire, a Texas law enforcement officer said on Thursday that the gunman entered the school “unobstructed” through a door that was apparently unlocked. Victor Escalon, a regional director at the Texas Department of Public Safety, said that Salvador Rolando Ramos, the alleged gunman who was killed when a Border Patrol tactical team burst into the room where he had been barricaded, did not initially encounter any law enforcement officers. Why the discrepancy?

Equally troubling is a harrowing video posted to a parent’s Facebook account that shows frantic family members on Tuesday begging police to take action. “Why let the children die? There’s shooting in there,” one woman pleaded. “They’re little kids, they don’t know how to defend themselves. … Six-year-old kids in there, they don’t know how to defend themselves from a shooter!” a man cried. Parents talked about rushing the building themselves, as they said police were just standing around. One parent was tackled to the ground. A national school safety expert told Post reporters that any delay in going inside will be hard to explain.


Make no mistake: The person responsible for the murder of these little children and brave teachers is the deranged 18-year-old who fired an AR-style rifle. But it is important to know whether errors were made that might have cost some lives. What lessons can be learned that might save lives in the future if — as sadly seems inevitable — there are more mass shootings? There needs to be a full public accounting. Just as the governor in Colorado once ordered a rigorous review of the events surrounding Columbine, so should Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

Categories Accountability, Guns, Safety, Texas

Uvalde: Husband of Murdered Teacher Dies of a Heart Attack; Lt. Gov. Patrick Blames Massacre on Video Games, Not Guns

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2022 //
92

This is heartbreaking news. According to the Houston Chronicle, Joe Garcia, the husband of Irma Garcia, died of a heart attack. She was one of the two teachers murdered at Robb Elementary School. The Garcias were parents of four children.

The husband of one of the two teachers killed in the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School has passed away “due to grief,” according to a nephew of the woman.

Joe Garcia of Uvalde reportedly suffered the heart attack, John Martinez tweeted at noon on Thursday. He was the husband of fourth-grade teacher Irma Garcia. They were married for 24 years.

In addition:

Update 12:22 p.m. The Georgia-based manufacturer of the assault rifle model used in Tuesday’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary has pulled out of the NRA convention in Houston this weekend, according to a report from the Daily Beast.

Daniel Defense — who designed the DDM4 V7 rifle — was originally slated to host a booth at the George R. Brown Convention Center but now the booth they were assigned to will be occupied by the NRA itself.

The Houston Chronicle previously reported that the Uvalde gunman, Salvador Ramos, purchased two weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in the days immediately after his 18th birthday, which was on May 16. One weapon was the Daniel Defense rifle; the other was a Smith & Wesson MP 15, which retails for about $1,300.

Update 11:39 a.m. Larry Gatlin and Don McLean have both pulled out of their respective performances at the NRA’s annual convention held in Houston, according to The Chronicle’s Joey Guerra.

Gatlin released a statement on the heels of Thursday morning’s news that McLean would not be participating in Saturday’s Grand Ole Night Of Freedom Concert at the George R. Brown Convention Center.

“I pray that the NRA will rethink some of its outdated and ill-thought-out positions regarding firearms in America,” he said, adding he could not “in good conscience” perform and that he is in support of background checks.

The performance lineup still includes Lee Greenwood, Restless Heart’s Larry Stewart, T. Graham Brown, “NRA Life member” Jacob Bryant and Danielle Peck.

Update 11:15 a.m. As negotiations on possible gun reform got underway in the U.S. Senate on Thursday, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer blasted Gov. Greg Abbott as an “absolute fraud,” according to a report from The Chronicle’s Washington correspondent Benjamin Wermund.

Schumer accused Abbott of offering nothing but “empty platitudes about healing and hope” during a press conference in Uvalde on Wednesday.

“This is the same Gov. Abbott who tomorrow — tomorrow — will go speak at the NRA convention in Houston,” Schumer said. “Gov. Abbott, will you ask your MAGA buddies and your NRA pals to put aside their agendas and think of someone other than themselves like you asked the families to do?”

Update 10:20 a.m. Although Uvalde CISD had an extensive security plan in place for moments of crisis, the district’s planning failed to stop 19 children from being shot and killed at Robb Elementary School, according to an article from NBC News.

The district had doubled its security budget in recent years, according to documents, after legislation was passed in the aftermath of the 2018 Santa Fe High School in which eight students and two teachers were killed.

Update 9:15 a.m. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick appeared on Fox & Friends this morning and spoke on “hardening’ schools” and mental health in the wake of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.

“We are a country in the ditch,” Patrick said. “We have violent music, violent rhetoric, everything is anti-everyone. Where are we as a nation? We have people in this nation who want to pull us away from God.”

Patrick also took issue with identifying some people with mental health issues as “loners,” saying some are not really alone but connect via the Internet with others who would praise their violent acts.

“They are on the Internet all day long where they play their violent video games where they kill hundreds of people a day.”

Update 7:17 a.m. Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel opened his show without an audience Wednesday evening, speaking to the camera uninterrupted for about 10 minutes in an impassioned segment on Uvalde and gun reform.

Kimmel initially got choked up when mentioning the “little boys and girls whose lives have been ended.” He then took aim at Republican lawmakers, Fox News, Sen. Ted Cruz and others over the current state of U.S. gun laws.

“If your solution to children being massacred is armed guards, you haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on,” he said. “There was an armed guard in Buffalo. There was an armed guard in Parkland. There was an armed guard in Uvalde.”

Update 6:15 a.m. As the tragedy unfolded at Robb Elementary School, a crowd of frustrated onlookers were urging police to charge in and stop the violence, the Associated Press reported.

“Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,” said Javier Cazares, whose fourth grade daughter, Jaclyn, was killed in the attack.

Categories Guns, Hypocrisy, Propaganda, Texas

Uvalde: Parents Pleaded with Police to Enter the Building and Save Their Children

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2022 //
76

A video was posted on Facebook showing Uvalde parents pleading with police officers in the school grounds to enter the school and stop the shooting. Some wanted to charge into the building on their own. They yelled, they cursed, pleaded, to no avail. The response from the officer they encountered was to push them back. The video is posted on this article in The Washington Post. It will undoubtedly be all over the other news sites soon. (I’m not on FB.)

The police seemed to have no plan. They sat in their patrol cars, waiting for instructions.

As more and more law officers arrived—local, state, and federal—their confusion about what to do and who was in charge must have grown intense.

There was one evil guy with an AR15 and (as the saying goes among gun advocates) more than 100 good guys who had weapons, maybe even their own AR15s. Without action, their presence was not enough to save the 21 souls in the classroom the evil one entered. No one even tried to save them. The decision was made by someone to isolate the classroom instead of entering it.

This is not a time to take pride or offer congratulations on a fast response. This is a time for grief and shame. Grief for those who died at the hands of a heartless killer. Shame for the officials who failed to develop action plans to save those in danger.

Who should be held accountable?

Governor Greg Abbott.

Categories Accountability, Failure, Guns, Texas

CBS: Why Did the Police Wait So Long to Enter the Classroom in Uvalde?

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2022 //
19

I asked the question yesterday as the news trickled out. More than 100 law officers converged on the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde while a shooter was killing students and teachers. Between 30-60 minutes assed before they broke into the classroom and shot the killer. Why did they wait so long when every second counted?

Parents and neighbors are asking the same question. Why the delay?

CBS reports:

Uvalde, Texas — Frustrated onlookers urged police officers to charge into the Texas elementary school where a gunman’s rampagekilled 19 children and two teachers, witnesses said Wednesday, as investigators worked to track the massacre that lasted upwards of 40 minutes and ended when the 18-year-old shooter was killed by a Border Patrol team.

“Go in there! Go in there!” nearby women shouted at the officers soon after the attack began, said Juan Carranza, 24, who saw the scene from outside his house across the street from Robb Elementary School in the close-knit town of Uvalde. Carranza said the officers did not go in.

Javier Cazares, whose fourth grade daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, was killed in the attack, said he raced to the school when he heard about the shooting, arriving while police were still gathered outside the building.

Upset that police were not moving in, he raised the idea of charging into the school with several other bystanders.

“Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,” he said. “More could have been done.”

“They were unprepared,” he added.

Carranza said the officers should have entered the school sooner.

“There were more of them. There was just one of him,” he said…

Carranza, the neighbor, said he watched as the gunman, identified by authorities as Salvador Ramos, 18, crashed his truck into a ditch outside the school, grabbed his AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle and shot at two people outside a nearby funeral home who ran away uninjured.

Officials say he “encountered” a school district security officer outside the school, though there were conflicting reports from authorities on whether the men exchanged gunfire.

After running inside, the shooter fired on two arriving Uvalde police officers who were outside the building, said Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson Travis Considine. The police officers were injured…

Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw told reporters that 40 minutes to an hour elapsed from when the gunman opened fire on the school security officer to when the tactical team shot him, though a department spokesman said later that they could not give a solid estimate of how long the gunman was in the school or when he was killed…

“The bottom line is law enforcement was there,” McCraw said. “They did engage immediately. They did contain (the shooter) in the classroom.”

Olivarez said the officers who first responded to the scene “were at a point of disadvantage” and were not able to make entry.

“There was no way they were able to make entry, especially with the amount of manpower that was on scene,” he said. “So at that point, their primary focus was to evacuate as many children as possible.”

A specialized tactical unit made of local, state and federal law enforcement officers were eventually able to enter the classroom, authorities said. Three officers were injured, and all are in good condition, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said.

McCraw commended the officers who engaged the shooter before the tactical unit entered, saying they saved lives by keeping him “pinned down” at his location.

“Obviously this is a situation we failed in the sense that we didn’t prevent this mass attack — but I can tell you, those officers that arrived on the scene and put their lives in danger, they saved other kids,” he said. “They kept him pinned down, and we’re very proud of that.”

So, commendations to everyone involved. “We’re very proud of that.” Governor Abbott is proud, so is Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. There were three good men with a gun who “engaged” the shooter. There were more than 100 good men and women with heavy weaponry who kept the killer pinned in one classroom. “Only” 21 died.

The dozens of officers debated what to do and who was in charge as the killer did his deadly work. They kept him “pinned down.” It was a single classroom, for God’s sake, not a bank vault! Wasn’t there one brave officer who would charge in and shoot the murderer dead before he finished off 21 beautiful souls? No. Thoughts and prayers. Maybe next time.

Categories Accountability, Guns, Safety, Texas

Uvalde: Why Did Law Officers Leave Killer in 4th Grade Classroom for Almost an Hour?

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2022 //
46

As the details emerge about the Uvalde massacre of children, a puzzling situation appears.

According to CNN, nearly 100 law officers converged on the Robb Elementary School.

More than 100 federal officers responded to Tuesday’s deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, according to Customs and Border Patrol.

“When it was all said and done, we had over 80 officers immediately on the scene, and then right after that, 150 or so officers converged on this area,” Customs and Border Patrol chief Raul Ortiz told CNN on Wednesday.

Ortiz said those officers came from several divisions, including the Border Patrol, Air and Marine Operations and Homeland Security Investigations.

But then, says CNN:

The Robb Elementary School shooter was on the premises for up to an hour before law enforcement forcibly entered a classroom and killed him, officials said Wednesday.

“It’s going to be within, like 40 minutes or something, [within] an hour,” Texas Department of Public Safety director Steven McCraw told CNN’s Ed Lavandera at a news conference.

Rep. Tony Gonzales, whose district includes Uvalde, told CNN’s Jake Tapper he was briefed that shooter Salvador Ramos was in a standoff with law enforcement for about a half-hour after firing on students and teachers.

“And then it stops, and he barricades himself in. That’s where there’s kind of a lull in the action,” Gonzales said. “All of it, I understand, lasted about an hour, but this is where there’s kind of a 30-minute lull. They feel as if they’ve got him barricaded in. The rest of the students in the school are now leaving.”

Department of Public Safety spokesperson Sgt. Erick Estrada declined to be more specific about the timeline in a CNN interview Wednesday night.

Why did this large contingent of law officers wait for 30-60 minutes before breaking into the classroom?

There were scores of “good men with guns” and one “bad man with an AR15 and a handgun.” They didn’t stop him. Why?

We will learn more in the days to come. I hope we learn why armed officers stood back and waited while 19 children and two teachers were murdered.

Categories Guns, Texas

Texas: Voters Oppose Vouchers!

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2022 //
3

Governor Gregg Abbott has endorsed vouchers, which have repeated failed to pass the legislature. Lt. Governor Dan Patrick is a voucher fanatic, and Senator Ted Cruz says that school choice is the most important issue in the nation. Pastors for Texas children has worked with a bipartisan coalition of legislators to stop vouchers.

Despite the enthusiasm of the state’s top elected officials, a new independent poll shows that the people of Texas don’t want vouchers.

Prepping for a war over private school vouchers in Texas, public school advocates are out with a new poll that shows the majority of likely voters oppose voucher programs that would hurt funding for public schools, and the opposition is deep in rural Texas.

The poll released Tuesday showed that 53 percent of likely Texas voters are against taxpayer-funded private school vouchers when hearing vouchers mean less money for their local public schools. And 71 percent of voters in rural areas said vouchers wouldn’t do anything to help them…

“These poll results show that Texas parents support their public schools, have confidence in their teachers, and are demanding investment in all of our students’ education,” said Julie Cowan, co-chair of Texas Parent PAC, which opposes private school voucher programs. “They do not support a blank check for private school voucher giveaways and charter school CEOs.”

The results come just over a week after Abbott declared in San Antonio that he was ready to make another run at passing a private school voucher plan that he insists won’t take money from public schools — a claim critics have questioned….

The poll released on Tuesday is from Change Research, a San Francisco-based firm. The poll surveyed 1,083 likely Texas voters. It had a margin of error of +/- 3.3 percentage points.

“Texas parents want to be absolutely clear to Governor Greg Abbott and every politician in office — don’t mess with our public schools,” said Dinah Miller, another co-chair of Texas Parent PAC.

Pro-voucher groups counter with a poll of Republican voters after the March 1 primary:

In the March 1 primary, Republican voters were presented a non-binding question previewing the school voucher fight. About 88 percent of GOP voters said yes to: “Texas parents and guardians should have the right to select schools, whether public or private, for their children, and the funding should follow the student.”

The wording of the question matters. Voters should be asked how they feel about taking money away from their local public school to pay for private and religious schools.

Here’s a copy of the poll results that should cause Governor Abbott to cut back on his support for vouchers.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Industry, Religion, Resistance, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Texas

Texas: Trump Brings His Profitable Tour to Austin

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2022 //
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Christopher Hooks of the Texas Monthly attended Trump’s latest tour date in Texas and reviewed the show. It seems to be a political revival show, with expensive tickets and opportunities to spend more money, with no explanation of what the money’s for. You really should subscribe to the Texas Monthly. It’s informative and delightful about a politically key state.

On Saturday, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee came to Austin to speak at a day-long conference attended by some six or seven thousand of his most passionate fans and supporters. In Ye Olden Days, that first sentence would be followed by a description of the future candidate’s remarks on politics and policy. But this has never been the way to cover a Donald Trump speech, and yesterday there wasn’t any new material. The only mystery was why his fans would wait for so long to see him, lining up before dawn to secure good seats.

Saturday’s riffs included an extended description of the contracting process for the replacement of Air Force One, and the story of how Trump crushed ISIS with the help of a general he identified only as “Raisin’ Cain.” I have been to a dozen or so Trump rallies, and these are stories I’ve heard several times. As had members of the audience, apparently: when Trump described how nervous he was flying into Iraq to visit troops, a man called out the punch line—“perhaps I should have been given a medal”—before Trump got there. When the former president caught up, the man laughed twice as hard as his neighbors.

Far more interesting were Trump’s supporters and allies. The conference, featuring speakers such as rock musician Ted Nugent and attended by allies such as Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, showed a movement falling deeper into a suffocating circle of televangelist-adjacent scammery—while its adherents grow ever more comfortable with the idea of the need for violence to triumph over their political opponents. Things are going great, in other words.

In late January, Trump held a rally in Conroe at the high point of the Texas’s GOP primary season. That rally, like most of the former president’s, was held by the joint fund-raising committee of Save America, an extension of Trump’s former (and possible future) campaign. Huge billboards hawked Trump’s new book, but the event was relatively civic-minded. He read, from the teleprompter, a careful speech endorsing all the requisite Texas GOP candidates.

By contrast, the event Saturday in Austin, at the city’s convention center, was a project of the American Freedom Tour, a for-profit traveling show that brings speakers to MAGA-heads around the country. The purpose is not to back candidates or even to get out the vote but to sell tickets. Trump was the headliner, while the undercard was filled out with relative heavyweights like former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and lighter weights, such as Kevin Sorbo, the actor who once starred in the nineties shlock show Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. While the turnout of seven thousand might not be impressive in another context, it was large given that each attendee had paid quite a bit to be there. The cheapest tickets, for the seats at the very, very back of the warehouse space, sold for between $45 and $95.

Attendees could purchase a seat halfway to the stage with a ticket at the “VIP” or “Delegate” level, at some $800 to $1,000, respectively. Both came with access to a breakfast with Dinesh D’Souza—the conservative filmmaker whose new work, 2000 Mules, makes the case that the 2020 election was stolen—and an invitation to an afterparty with Donald Trump Jr. Only the Delegate level, though, came with a “Full Color American Freedom Tour Program,” which turned out to be a mostly blank booklet in which attendees were encouraged to write notes about speakers’ remarks. The best seats, however, were reserved for the “Presidential” ticket holders, who paid some $4,000. As it turned out, attendees could actually pretty much sit anywhere. I walked in without a wristband and sat in an empty seat that was supposed to cost $3,000.

With this kind of cash exchanging hands, you might think that the American Freedom Tour was a fundraiser for conservative causes. Many folks who shelled out for a ticket doubtless expected this to be the case. But there is no information anywhere on the tour website about how the proceeds will be distributed. It is not a PAC, of course. The money goes to the speakers—including Trump and Trump Jr., presumably—and the folks who put the rally together.

The only stated goal of the American Freedom Tour is to hold more incarnations of the American Freedom Tour. Its website’s FAQ doesn’t explain exactly what the money is used for, but it does helpfully emphasize that no recording of any kind is allowed inside. There is a cursory “our values” page that explains that the four pillars of American Freedom are “faith, family, finance, and freedom,” which each are given a short paragraph. “Men, in particular our fathers and husbands,” it says, “are under attack, being maligned and parodied in popular culture.”

In the past, I’ve written that the marketplace for well-compensated speakers and evangelists for the right—sometimes derided by the left as an ecosystem of “grift”—is an enormous asset for conservatives. If oleaginous liberal would-be demagogues could make a healthy living touring the country, all the while firing up Democrats in tent rallies, the party might be in a better place. But there are limits, man. My jaw dropped a little when Brian Forte, CEO of the American Freedom Tour, got on stage for a fund-raising appeal for his own company. A giant QR code appeared on screen directing attendees to a donation page, and the older folks around me struggled to make it work. Forte, a thirty-year veteran of the motivational speaking industry, was asking for money from attendees who had already paid to be there.

He did it in unbelievable terms. “Freedom is not free! Think about that,” he told the audience, appropriating a phrase typically used to refer to the sacrifice made by dead American soldiers. He urged the audience to donate at least $20 for Trump’s sake, but the donation page offered options of up to $5,000. “You can’t afford to not do this,” he reasoned, “because America is at stake!”

He went on. “If you see someone next to you who does not have their phone out,” he said, give them the hard sell. “Tap them on the shoulder and say, ‘Come on, let’s do this together.’ Go ahead and do that now. Everyone should have their phone out.”

He wasn’t done. “This is your chance. We need you now. The president needs you now! America needs you now! It’s now or never! We’re warriors on the front lines to save America,” he said. “This is a battle between good and evil!”

The spiel went on for several more minutes, without Forte ever saying what the donations were for. Anyone who has ever been exposed to an evangelist of the Righteous Gemstones variety recognizes this kind of preaching. “Give me money and you’ll get into heaven” becomes “give me money and the country will be saved,” and it’s a more effective approach when you don’t explain the how.

Categories For-Profit, Lies, Texas, Trump
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