LGISD School Board Hears Opposing Views

Monday night’s meeting began with comments from two individuals concerning differing views of education.

Jeff Parker spoke about his recent attendance at the Republican state convention. He mentioned the topics that were on the agenda platform. Some of them were parental rights in education, instructional excellence, American identity and heritage teaching, abolishing the department of education, school safety. He quoted from the convention platform, “We support passage of legislation encouraging local law enforcement to provide handgun safety and proficiency training for all educators and allowing LTC (licensed to carry) holders to carry concealed firearms on all school campuses for security and protection purposes.” He also mentioned gender ideology and school choice. He elaborated on the topic of school choice stating that he is “for school choice because it’s going to force all parties to compete, and when you are in a competitive situation you fight as hard as you can. We live in a county that votes 80% Republican, 80% conservative Christian. Since school choice is coming, compete by paying attention to the things that the county is concerned about are happening in our public schools.”

Parker also spoke about the library book purchase issue. He said it seems that the board should be more concerned about how the list is created. He went on to say that it seems it comes from book fairs. He has noticed that the school uses Scholastic for the book fairs. He is concerned that “Scholastic, being a large national educational organization, brings a world view and not necessarily a Fayette County conservative Christian world view.” He went on to say that there are other book fair companies that offer a different world view. He said, “I’m not suggesting replacing Scholastic, but we want to take a hard look at supplementing with another book fair.”

He continued to talk about budget. He said, “No more money, increased expenses, the budget is going to be hard to balance this year. There is a company called Seidlitz that LGISD employs in the English as a second language program and they definitely have a world view. Let me read you their world view from their website. ‘At Seidlitz Education we recognize that we have a lot of work to do to reform systems that perpetuate racism in this country. As educators, in particular, we have a great responsibility to equip young people with the knowledge, values, and courage they need to be social justice leaders. Talking about race in the classroom isn’t always easy, however, we know we have a lot to learn.’

Do we want to pay somebody, in six figure checks, to import a world view that is not native to this area?

Jaci Elliott spoke to the board about a story that came out of Granbury ISD, written by Jeremy Schwartz and copublished in ProPublica and The Texas Tribune on May 15. She quoted from the article, “Weeks after winning a school board seat in her deeply red Texas county, Courtney Gore immersed herself in the district’s curriculum, spending her nights and weekends poring over hundreds of pages of lesson plans that she had fanned out on the coffee table in her living room and even across her bed. She was searching for evidence of the sweeping national movement she had warned on the campaign trail was indoctrinating schoolchildren.

Gore, the co-host of a farright online talk show, had promised that she would be a strong Republican voice on the nonpartisan school board. Citing “small town, conservative Christian values,” she pledged to inspect educational materials for inappropriate messages about sexuality and race and remove them from every campus in the 7,700-student Granbury Independent School District, an hour southwest of Fort Worth.

But after taking office and examining hundreds of pages of curriculum, Gore was shocked by what she found — and didn’t find.

The pervasive indoctrination she had railed against simply did not exist. Children were not being sexualized, and she could find no examples of critical race theory, an advanced academic concept that examines systemic racism. She’d examined curriculum related to social-emotional learning, which has come under attack by Christian conservatives who say it encourages children to question gender roles and prioritizes feelings over biblical teachings. Instead, Gore found the materials taught children ‘how to be a good friend, a good human.’

Gore rushed to share the news with the hard-liners who had encouraged her to run for the seat. She expected them to be as relieved and excited as she had been. But she said they were indifferent, even dismissive, because ‘it didn’t fit the narrative that they were trying to push.’

So, in the spring of 2022, Gore went public with a series of Facebook posts. She told residents that her backers were using divisive rhetoric to manipulate the community’s emotions. They were interested not in improving public education but rather in sowing distrust, Gore said.

‘I’m over the political agenda, hypocrisy bs,’ Gore wrote. ‘I took part in it myself. I refuse to participate in it any longer. It’s not serving our party. We have to do better.’

“Gore’s open defiance of far-right GOP orthodoxy represents an unusual sign of independence in a state and in a party that experts say increasingly punish those deemed disloyal. It particularly stands out at a time when Republican leaders are publicly attacking elected officials who do not support direct funding to private schools,” Elliot said.

“‘It’s a rare event to see this kind of political leap, especially in a world that’s so polarized,’ said University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus. ‘You rarely see these kinds of changes because the people who are vetted to run tend to be true believers. They tend not to be people who are necessarily thinking about the holistic problem.’” Elliott continued, “My response indeed, Mr. Rottinghaus and Mr. Schwartz, Ms. Gore’s adherence to the facts is essential in our places of learning and for our future citizens.”

She went on to talk about the issues that were mentioned as part of the Republican platform.

On safety in the schools stating that she does not wish to substitute teach in a school in which the teachers are armed as she does not feel that is a safe situation to work in.

On abolishing the department of education, she asked, “Shouldn’t we have children represented in government since they can’t even vote? They need a voice.”

On school vouchers she remarked, “This will literally defund public schools. We have seen what happens in other states when this kind of legislation is passed.”

On school choice, she stated, “It’s not an even playing field. So, it’s not about competing. We (in public schools) have to take every single student who walks through the door in public education and we should be equipped to deal with that.”

On the library lists, she asked, “Shouldn’t we be curious about the world around us? We’re here. We live here. We are lucky to live in the United States. But it is a country that was built on people moving from other places and indeed I argue that students need to know about the world in which they live.”

Administrative Reports 

Superintendent Andy McHazlett told the board that the final enrollment total for the 2023-24 school year was 1,906 students. This total, broken down by campus, is 1,009-elementary school, 305-middle school, and 592high school. The average daily attendance (ADA) was 1,789.42. This is the number that determines state funding.