The Costs of Standing Strong

We had one last school board meeting as the school year ended. Our board meetings are typically in two parts. There’s a work meeting, and a few days later an official board meeting. These are usually on the first or second Monday/Thursday or Thursday/Monday combination of the month. This month these were June 13 and June 17.

Cy-Fair ISD board meeting Monday, June 17, 2024
screenshot from here

At last Thursday’s work meeting, June 13, I expected the major discussion to be related to changing the library book removal policy, because of activity in social media. I read through the proposed language and felt pretty good about it, although I had a couple of questions.

What happened at the Thursday meeting, however, was a lot of hubbub about the removal of certain chapters from textbooks before approving them for purchase in the district. This related to a vote taken at the previous board meeting, in May. I wrote about this in some detail then. And I made a prediction that has so far come true:

You can assume that the loud cohort will scream again, at the next board meeting, and the one after that…. Tolerating their tantrums is going to be one of the costs of standing up to them in order to stop allowing them to indoctrinate our kids.

And so it goes.

The Curriculum Selection Complaint

At the work session, a teacher who had been on the curriculum selection committee, specializing in earth science, filed a formal complaint against the board for violating policy by not rubberstamping the recommendations of the committee. She spoke, along with her lawyer.

The complainant (and the hoard of others complaining) failed to note that the board is instructed to use to committee to vet and select materials to be used; it does not say the board has to purchase all the materials recommended.

There was a point at which the board member who had moved to remove the particular materials last month, Dr. Natalie Blasingame, disagreed that a National Geographic text was the gold standard; she would have preferred a different text (a different text that was also approved by the SBOE, but that this committee did not select). She did not push to have her choice used instead; she limited her request to only those texts selected by the committee—and then asked for removal of particular chapters. It’s not clear to me whether the Board has the power to choose SBOE-approved books beyond what is recommended by the local committee, but the fact is they didn’t attempt to do so.

CFISD Board Vice President Dr. Natalie Blasingame
screenshot from here

During the discussion, the complainant and her lawyer both admitted that the board indeed had the authority to act as they did; in other words, they did not violate the policy the complaint claims they violated.

That should end the issue. But with these people, nothing but getting their way will do.

During the Thursday work session, we learned more details about what was being removed. One thing we learned was that it wasn’t Dr. Blasingame’s preference to remove entire chapters. She would have been satisfied with particular paragraphs being removed. However, the books could only be provided on a chapter-by-chapter basis. This means that, for students, those chapters will not be available to them for reading.

But what about the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills)? That was the insistent question. How are they going to learn materials required of them in annual testing, if they can’t get to these materials?

The short answer is, the same way they always have: by whatever means the teachers bring it to them.

To begin with, none of the problematic material is part of TEKS. There are, however, TEKS items in the removed chapters. But the way most classrooms work is not by simply having students read the textbook and then discussing and testing. In fact, only occasionally will the students be assigned reading from the texts (which are digital online copies, not physical books, by the way). Much of the material—including material coming from the texts—is presented in class by the teacher, with supplementary materials, graphs, charts, data, stories, etc., along with activities, labs, etc.

The teachers can use the full textbooks as a resource, just as they normally would; they just can’t present the problematic materials. So the hue and cry about all the extra work of creating curriculum is irrelevant. There was a complaint that teachers couldn't prepare and were way behind in their lesson plans, because of this unsureness about materials—except that it has been known, since last month, what was the minimum available, and there was no reason not to go ahead and lesson plan.

One item mentioned in the May meeting was “depopulation.” The complainant said she had done a search of all the material, and that word was not even used. However, when the problematic section was read last Thursday, the idea that humans are harmful to the planet and we need fewer of them was clearly there—and that is something this community does not want indoctrinated into our students.

In a private online forum, a participant tells this:

started reading some of the chapters that were removed from the science books.  ~98%+ of the material is fine however when you get to the statement saying we're all gonna die if we don't stop using fossil fuels you can see why people had an issue with the content…. Please show me the empirical peer reviewed study that proves that we're all gonna die if we don't stop using fossil fuels. It is not science.

My guess is he’s not directly quoting from the text, but we’ve all read similar assertions from the “mankind is bad for the planet” faith viewpoint. It doesn’t coincide with science—and is even less something you could call settled science. Why did it pass with the SBOE? You’ll have to ask your SBOE representative. Ours has made a point of telling school boards that they didn’t have to accept a text just because the statewide board approved it. They could and should make local decisions.

There was another example of vaccines. There’s a concept, new to me, called “phenomenon-based instruction.” It appears to me to mean that concepts are taught using particular event, a phenomenon, possibly from the news. The phenomenon in this particular section of the textbook was COVID-19. So when the concept of vaccination comes up, we’re not dealing with actual vaccines (remember, they had to change the definition of vaccine to apply the word to the COVID-19 jab). We are not dealing with something that causes immunity, reduces spread, or even necessarily lessens the intensity of the virus. And we’re taking on serious risks by taking this non-vaccine non-helpful intervention. All that aside, when a chapter (in that context) states flatly that vaccines save lives, even that is questionable, which board member Todd LeCompte pointed out. (There’s a clip here.) Which vaccines have saved lives? What is the evidence? We used to have maybe three required. Now there are over 70 required. And since the rise in required vaccines, there is a dramatic rise in autism (from 1/10,000 children to 1/36). Is the link between autism and increased vaccination causal? There are people who think so. Which means it is not settled science, and to state it as if it is fact does not increase the critical thinking of our students; it uses authority to stop them from critically thinking.

There was a fair amount of attack on the board for not being the experts, and that they ought to defer to the experts. First of all, Dr. Blasingame is an expert. Second, teaching is not rocket science (even when you’re teaching rocket science). We members of the community can read the material and see clearly what ought not to be there. We’ve seen it before; we’ve put the requests to remove it from schools in our platform and have accomplished some legislation.

And I’ll just mention here, anyone who graduated from high school ought to be able to understand with sufficient clarity any materials used in K-12. The expertise is almost always about how to manage a factory-style group of students, not how or what information to pass along to students. And, I don't want to overstate this, but I’ve been a textbook writer—biology was one. Textbooks are collections of knowledge, for convenience. And some are worthwhile. But every important concept can be taught without a textbook, maybe better than with one, as our teachers already know.

The opponents are claiming the removal of the materials is censorship. It is a decision not to buy materials that the board—and the community that voted them in—find objectionable and untrue. Censorship is the refusal to have certain ideas heard, often true ideas. A student’s speech can be censored, for example. A guest speaker could be censored by being uninvited or shut down through the heckler’s veto. Materials not used are not censored; they are simply not chosen as the materials to use.

The Pre-Purchase Review of Books

There was another issue at the meeting that drew attention of the media, again questioned by board member Julie Hinaman. It related to an update in the policy for acquiring library materials. There’s a 30-day window for the public to review what is being considered for purchase. Again, anything not chosen is money not spent, not books being censored. But the “they’re denying books for our students” crowd are really upset that they can’t put everything they want, not just before their own children, but before all the children. This includes pornography, which they are claiming is valuable for some of our “diverse” students. Anyone who claims pornography should be provided to minors ought to be labeled a child predator. Let’s be clear on what they’re wanting to do to our kids.

Anyway, there’s a proviso that the books would be listed for the board members five days before the list goes public for that 30-day window. As the board counsel explained, the intention was a courtesy to the board. If they are going to receive complaints about books on the list, it would be helpful to them to be aware of the books a little ahead of time. Since the books aren’t yet purchased, it is only the names of the books being provided to the board; they would still have to seek them out themselves to read or learn about them, which can take time. There is no provision for board members to remove books from the list prior to that 30-day public window. (There’s a clip of this exchange here.) But that is what they were being accused of—having some backroom mechanism for influencing the list before the public even sees it.

CFISD Board member Julie Hinaman
screenshot from here

There’s an awful lot of uproar about this supposedly rogue board depriving students of their educational opportunities. We will have to continue to disagree on this—because we worked very hard to elect a board that would finally be responsive to the community, to stop the sexualizing agenda, the SEL and DEI agendas—the agendas pushed by teacher unions and other nefarious moneygrubbing tyrants who have been working for decades to dumb down our kids while claiming they’re the ones caring for the children.

The Organized Opposition

You might not be aware of the organizing of the opposition—trying to make themselves look like a vast majority. I use the word “organized” in the sense of “community organizing,” as in Obama's life work. There are going to be several organization names. One of them is Cypress Families for Public Schools. Board member Julie Hinaman (the lone opposition on the board) belongs to this one. A number of names you would recognize from the public comments and citizen participation each month belong to this group.

When reducing the number of campus librarians became part of the budget discussion last month—at the suggestion of school principals, as a way to handle the budget deficit—there was another organization formed, recruiting people by telling them librarians were being fired (not true), and campus libraries were being closed (also not true), so they could recruit more anti-board furor. I believe the group is CFISD Parents for Librarians. I think parents joined thinking it was an open forum and a way to support libraries (the policy for which they were not being told the truth). But it has been used as a recruitment to the board opposition (i.e., opposition to the majority of voters who elected this board purposely intending to repair the damage over the past two decades from the previous board members). Here’s an example of the ugliness our board members are getting thrown at them in this group:

If we want to protect librarians, teachers/staff, and CFISD, we GOTTA also understand just who is governing our district, their history, their intentions and agenda, and the company they keep.

After the meeting last night, Christian Nationalist extremist trustee Lucas Scanlon said to a community member that he felt the public comments were "mean." Oh, REALLY?!?!

The poster goes on to make multiple accusations against Scanlon, and his wife, Bethany. I am in multiple groups with Bethany (an excellent source on the library books we’d like removed). She often shows examples of these people telling lies about her. I see her defending herself and her husband; I do not see any “vile” or “mean” posts against such persons as this poster—ever.

After my blog post on last month’s meeting, the opposition let me know—because I’d mentioned an email exchange with the board president in which I asked about the ad hominem attacks from the citizen participants, the entirety of the brief contents I had stated—that they were doing a freedom of information request (I’m unsure of the specific title for such a request in our district) to obtain all such correspondence between me and the president, and I’m assuming between him and any other citizen. This is an attempt to intimidate. Fortunately, there’s nothing to see there. But it’s also a warning to all board members to avoid any written exchanges with citizens, despite their board emails being available on the website for the purpose of open communication with the community. Every correspondence is likely to be construed as collusion.

We heard from former board president (whom we voted out), Bob Covey, earlier in the meeting. The Houston Chronicle caught a photo of him later in the meeting, yelling at the board, out of turn. Board counsel threatened to remove him from the meeting (and he did leave). Because I listened online, I missed the outburst; it didn’t get picked up on the microphones, so what he yelled was not in the transcript. But the lack of decorum is astounding.

Former CFISD board president Bob Covey, who had spoken earlier,
yells at the board before leaving. Photo from Houston Chronicle.

A couple of years ago we had similar (but less vile) disruptions from our side—when we were not allowed to voice our opinions. But these people are being heard. In fact, they organized well enough to fill up the entire slate of citizen participation, leaving supporting citizens no time to speak.

Texas House Rep. Jon Rosenthal also spoke. He accused the board of violating the open meetings act by colluding behind the back of Julie Hinaman last month, because the other board members were ready —after a month of study following the April meeting—to vote to remove those chapters and she was not. Hinaman was clearly blindsided by that vote. But if she had spent her time using that extra month to read the materials, she could have predicted what would be problematic to the rest of the board. The board meeting’s conversation (I think this was in Thursday’s work session) made it obvious Dr. Blasingame had spent plenty of time discussing openly her concerns and how to handle them with Dr. Macias, the curriculum director for the district. Others were present during those conversations. It wasn’t something that happened in the darkness of some secret board meeting that excluded Julie Hinaman.

book cover image from Amazon.com

There’s another organization that might be behind some of what’s going on. This is a rabbit hole I went down last night, after a conversation with a friend who had attended Monday’s board meeting. She saw two separate community members carrying a book called We Are Indivisible. It’s written by the founders of a group called Indivisible.org. In a 2017 interview with one of the founders, Ezra Levin, he says the movement started during a Thanksgiving break in an Austin, Texas, bar, shortly after the election of Donald Trump in 2016. He and his wife, Leah, came up with a 23-page document laying out a strategy for political activism, which got boosted by such pro-tyrannists as Robert Reich and George Takei. He relates:

As former congressional staffers, Leah and I decided in that bar to write a guide aimed at demystifying the congressional policy process and copying the Tea Party strategies and tactics (minus the racism and violence).

Isn’t that sweet. Just like us tea partiers—minus the absolutely nonexistent “racism and violence.” Except maybe adding in the anti-racism version of racism, maybe along with some violence, or at least obstructionism in the style of Cloward and Piven. And fundraising—they do a lot of that, unlike our local tea party, which has never handled money at all, and doesn’t organize any protests ever. (We do learn about the legislative process and share information with each other, and freely contact our legislators.) And they add in a whole lot of lying, because you can’t recruit people to such causes by telling the truth about them. They’re very much about killing the preborn—that’s a priority above almost all else.

They have collaborated with Organizing for America, MoveOn, Working Families Party, and Planned Parenthood, among others, to “stand strong against the Trump Administration’s racist, misogynistic, and broadly bigoted agenda.” So, just like the Tea Party—except the exact opposite in every conceivable way.

There are thousands of Indivisible groups, according to Levin. And I am told there is a group in Katy, Texas, aiming particularly at the County DA race, to oppose the Republican, Dan Simons, and put in the radical tyrant who primaried out the Democrat DA, Kim Ogg, because she wasn’t willing to put all the violent felons back out on the streets. Rep. Rosenthal and one other speaker hinted that we’re going to find out in November (in a year when the school board is not on the ballot) just how much trouble we’re in. I think this means they are targeting every Republican near us who is on the ballot.

So this is the enemy army we are up against. These are the ones using social media to lie about what is actually happening in our school board. They are setting their sights on every political race. They will be showing up—with signs already made—at every possible event. And they are calling the media to be there, telling their side of the story to any willing-to-be-partisan reporters.

Stand with Our School Board Heroes

I will note that the school board positions are unpaid. What they are going through is likely to give anyone pause before signing up to run in the future. But we can thank them for being heroes—to our community and to our kids.

There’s no board meeting in July—except a “special called board meeting” on July 23; I don’t know what that is about (no agenda posted yet). The next official meetings are the work session August 3 8 and regular board meeting August 7 12. [Apologies for the error; I thought I was looking at the coming 2024-2025 year, but I was mistakenly looking at the 2023-2024 schedule.] All are at 6:00 PM, in the board meeting room of the Henry Administration Building.

These are not times in which you can sit back and trust that all will go well. In August, you might want to put the next meeting on your calendar, so you can show up to support these brave board members.

More on CSCOPE

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about curriculum, with some info about CSCOPE, the Texas version of Common Core. I went to a presentation about it Monday evening and learned a few more things. The full presentation is available at King Street Live, with speakers radio commentator Ben Streusand and Peggy Venable of Americans for Prosperity-Texas. Some details I picked up by monopolizing Mr. Streusand’s time afterward with my questions; if I have things wrong, however, please assume I got it wrong while gathering info during conversation without taking notes.

Ben Streusand, Peggy Venable, and Catherine Engelbrecht

I learned that it has been used for nearly a decade in some districts, mostly rural. In fact, it’s more a problem in rural areas than in cities—although my large suburban district has been using it, at least for some subjects. (Fun fact: CSCOPE isn’t an acronym for anything; it just seemed like an appealing name.)

There are Education Service Centers, (ESCs) across the state, where districts can combine, maybe county-wide or bigger, to share information, curriculum, and other resources. In cities, there are so many districts within a county that this simply isn’t an issue. Of those districts using ESCs, 80% use CSCOPE; they pay a hefty chunk of taxpayer education dollars for access to the materials.

To review, CSCOPE is supposedly a collection of lesson plans, 1600 or so, submitted by teachers, former teachers, and curriculum writers across the state. Submitters had to sign away their rights to review their materials and how they were used. No organization previewed the entire set of materials before implementing them, possibly not even the board of CSCOPE. And there are rumors that many of the materials were written by the same curriculum writers as the federal Common Core.

Teachers and others who use CSCOPE are required to sign an oath not to share the materials with the parents of students or anyone else. Supposedly this was for copyright protection of materials that are only digital. But it appears more secretive than that purpose deserves. Curriculum is subject to review by the State Board of Education, but CSCOPE sidestepped that requirement by claiming it is just “lesson plans,” not curriculum.

I looked up an official definition of “lesson plan”:

A detailed description of the individual lessons that a teacher plans to teach on a given day. A lesson plan is developed by a teacher to guide instruction throughout the day. It is a method of planning and preparation. A lesson plan traditionally includes the name of the lesson, the date of the lesson, the objective the lesson focuses on, the materials that will be used, and a summary of all the activities that will be used. Lesson plans are a terrific set of guidelines for substitute teachers.

What’s the difference between that and curriculum? Nothing. A lesson plan is just a small unit of curriculum. It’s like saying, “That’s not bread; it’s a slice.” Pretending it’s something else by using a different word is kind of a creepy way to get around having oversight, especially when you look at it in tandem with the no disclosure policy. Under those circumstances, we’d be remiss not to be suspicious.

Dan Patrick, my state senator and the head of the Senate Education Committee, introduced a bill to create oversight. As of today, the bill looks like it’s making progress. A public hearing was held Tuesday, and SB 1406 was approved in the Education Committee Thursday (voted 7-0 in favor). Next it moves on to the full Senate for a vote. Then it moves on to the House. It looks like it has a good chance. (There’s a similar bill in the House, HB 760, referred to the Education Committee, but not making as much progress yet.)

The legislation is the result of an agreement with the CSCOPE board, to implement oversight. Dan Patrick’s press release on February 8 describes what the legislation is designed to do.  In short, the agreement includes:

·         the State Board of Education (SBOE) to review all the materials;

·         CSCOPE board meetings must be public meetings;

·         teachers who submitted lesson plans will be allowed to review and reveal the plans;

·         parents will be allowed to review the lesson plans online.

Of course eliminating the curriculum entirely would be better than just overseeing it. Senator Patrick would have preferred legislation to eliminate CSCOPE altogether. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get enough votes to make that happen. It’s not really a problem of persuading Democrats to join in; Dems tend to represent larger inner city districts that don’t use ESCs, and therefore aren’t very interested in CSCOPE in the first place. It’s the GOP representatives of rural districts that are the challenge.

If you’re looking for someone to influence, a polite call or email to the following, suggesting they take into account your disapproval of CSCOPE, could be helpful. It’s too late to put forth legislation this session to eliminate CSCOPE (with the unlikely exception that SB 1406 could be amended to the point that it essentially gets substituted with elimination, but I don’t foresee that). But approval of SB 1406 at least improves the situation and gives us a first step.

·         Senator Robert Nichols, District 3

·         Senator Kevin Eltife, District 1

·         Senator Craig Estes, District 30

·         Senator Kel Seliger, District 31

·         Senator Robert Duncan, District 28 

Here’s one more opportunity for you Texans. This bill creates a method of review of the extremely large mass of lesson plans. The SBOE members aren’t going to be doing that alone. You could become one of the reviewers. Contact your representative on the State Board of Education and offer your services. The review is starting with social studies first, and then will move on to science. I don’t yet know all that being a reviewer entails. Pretty certain this would be volunteer work. But it could be extremely valuable.

It’s possible that, as we speak, the CSCOPE powers-that-be are scrubbing the materials of the most blatantly objectionable content. But if problems are found, those portions can be eliminated. Presumably if massive portions are objectionable and overall value is seen as negative, maybe the SBOE can disapprove of CSCOPE as a whole.

You can also find out if CSCOPE is used in your district and go directly to your local school board to insist on it being eliminated. No need to wait for the next legislative session, if we assert the power of parents, where the power belongs.

Americans for Prosperity-Texas provides basic information as well as links to more details. Also review Glenn Beck's March 7 story.