I remember how it was -- JR
Friday, July 28, 2023
Top Texas School District Removes LGBTQ Terms, Returns Religion to Nondiscrimination Policy Language
School board trustees in a top-ranked Texas school district voted to approve revisions to language in its nondiscrimination and harassment policies to align with state and federal definitions of protected classes.
The Carroll Independent School District (CISD) in Southlake, Texas, passed several revisions to its 2023-24 student code of conduct and student handbooks, including updated language that adds religion and removes LGBTQ-related terms from its nondiscrimination and harassment policies, as recommended by the district’s Policy Review Committee.
“CISD prioritizes the safety and well-being of our students with award-winning training protocols and procedures. The newly-approved Student Handbook details our nondiscrimination policy, which ensures that no student may be discriminated against on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, or age,” a CISD spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.
In addition, the board adopted a policy that will not require teachers to call a student by a pronoun that does not match their biological sex and another that requires students to use the bathroom matching their sex and not their gender identity.
The seven-member board heard public comments before voting to pass the policy revisions for the 2023-24 school year, which begins on Aug. 15. Several nearby independent school districts (ISDs), Keller and Grapevine-Colleyville, have similar policies in place.
CISD is ranked No. 2 in the state of Texas by the Public School Review. The affluent Tarrant County district serves more than 8,400 students across 11 schools.
Since 2021, the district has been accused of “gender and sex discrimination,” racial discrimination, and violating the rights of students with disabilities. The allegations have led to eight investigations by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, according to The Dallas Morning News.
Nondiscrimination Language Changes
Late last year, the district removed references to religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity from its nondiscrimination statement.
Assistant superintendent for administration and Policy Review Committee member Tamy Smalskas introduced the revisions to the board and other attendees.
She said the committee had spent numerous hours reviewing the student code of conduct and student handbook before making its most recent recommendations to the school board.
Ms. Smalskas explained that the committee’s recommendation to add religion back to its statement of nondiscrimination would not change the protections previously provided for all students and staff. Rather, it reintroduced religion to be consistent with the nondiscrimination language used in federal and state policies.
“The District prohibits discrimination, including harassment, against any student. Discrimination is an action taken against or in favor of a student based on the student’s race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, age, or any other basis prohibited by law that denies access to an education program or activity,” according to the revised statement of nondiscrimination as outlined in an online document.
Throughout the document, LGBTQ-related terms—including gender identity, gender-based, and sexual orientation—were struck from the nondiscrimination and harassment policies for staff and students.
“I want the board to know that any changes to gender-based harassment [are] protected under sexual harassment and the Title IX law,” Ms. Smalskas said. “CISD will keep all our students safe from discrimination or harassment.”
Gender and sexual orientation were also removed from the district’s definition of harassment to align with the nondiscrimination policy, she explained.
“Harassment of a student is defined as physical, verbal, or nonverbal conduct based on the student’s race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, age, or any other basis prohibited by law,” the document states.
The board also passed two new policies.
The first requires students to use the designated bathrooms and locker rooms that matching the sex on their birth certificates.
“Individuals shall be required to use the facility that corresponds to their biological sex at birth,” the policy states, adding that the policy “does not prohibit the district from providing reasonable accommodations upon request.”
The board also moved to formally adopt a second policy that prohibits the requirement for teachers and other employees to promote, encourage, or call a student by a pronoun that is inconsistent with their biological sex.
“Previously, Carroll didn’t have a formal policy on this,” Trustee Andrew Yeager said during the discussion. “The practice that CISD followed was that it left it up to the individual to decide whether or not to accommodate another individual’s request to use a certain pronoun.”
“This new policy essentially codifies the practice,” he added.
The trustees approved the policies in a vote of 6-0, with one member not in attendance.
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Parents Warn That Social-Emotional Learning Is Not What It Appears
During the pandemic, millions of children in the United States had to attend virtual school on their computers at home, and parents began to witness that their children’s lessens were wrapped in critical race theory, gender ideology, and inappropriate sexual topics.
But one area of concern is more difficult to detect, and it’s catching more parents’ attention.
Parents are concerned about social-emotional learning (SEL), which is often infused within all subjects and in the culture of a school itself, which makes it more difficult to separate and detect. SEL has managed to stay below the majority of parents’ radar because it is packaged as therapeutic and promoting compassion.
Marsha Metzger is the president of a parental rights group in Georgia called Parents on the Level.
Ms. Metzger told The Epoch Times that she has been researching and exposing her school district’s use of SEL because school administrators in her district refused to answer her questions about sex education and SEL, which made her determined to find why the curriculum was not readily available.
Ms. Metzger thought it would be easy to get authorization to teach a class on abstinence or sexual risk avoidance in Tift County, Georgia, generally considered to be a conservative area. She even had grant money to teach this sex education program in public schools, but her request to the school district was met with silence, she said.
She did not take “no” for an answer and went to district administrators.
Fighting for Information
One of the school administrators along the way told Ms. Metzger the district combines sex education with SEL, and then they “follow the data,” which piqued her curiosity, and she began to research and expose SEL.
“I had to go toe-to-toe with them, and push them and threaten a lawsuit, and finally, I got an access code to this social-emotional learning platform,” Ms. Metzger said.
Ms. Metzger is not the only one who has had to confront their school district to get access to SEL curriculum.
Stephanie Lindquist-Aurora, a Virginia parent of three in Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), told The Epoch Times she had to file an open records request to gain access to her child’s SEL curriculum, which the district did not fulfill, so Lindquist-Aurora was forced to find another way to get the SEL lessons.
“I’ve filed a PPRA violation complaint against FCPS for their refusal to share curricula information with me. It is currently underway,” Ms. Lindquist-Aurora said, referring to the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment.
The PPRA is meant to protect students and parents from invasive evaluations and surveys that collect sensitive information.
Despite claims of its benefits, Ms. Lindquist-Aurora, Ms. Metzger, and other parents told The Epoch Times there is more to SEL than meets the eye.
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The ruinous miseducation of Gen Z, who actually believe America is worse off today
The average college student graduates with nearly $30,000 in debt.
But if a stunning new poll is anything to go by, students shell out all those tuition dollars just to finish remarkably misinformed.
North Dakota State University researchers polled students from 131 colleges and universities — and the results are quite something.
For one, college students are remarkably pessimistic about American and world history, to the point of complete historical illiteracy.
The survey finds nearly 60% of students think life in America has gotten worse or stayed the same over the last 50 years.
Only 41% correctly understand it’s overall gotten better over the last five decades.
And it’s not a partisan phenomenon: This delusional belief was shared roughly equally among liberal-leaning, conservative-leaning and independent-leaning students.
Just how inaccurate this perception is becomes clear when you consider the exact question pollsters asked: “Based on what you have learned in college so far, do you think that life in the United States has generally been getting better or worse over the last 50 years (considering issues such as life expectancy, income per person, and level of education)?”
Let’s look at those metrics.
In 1973, 50 years ago, US life expectancy was 71.4 years, per the World Bank. In 2020, it was 77.3 years.
By any objective measure, that’s a huge improvement.
In the same vein, average income per person has significantly improved since 1973.
To accurately compare across time and account for inflation, we can look at income with all figures adjusted to reflect, say, 2015 dollars.
When we do that, we see income per person in America rose from $28,114 to $66,866 over the last 50 years.
Yep — it’s more than doubled.
And that’s to say nothing of the rapid social progress and change that’s occurred over the last five decades, which you’d think “woke” college students wouldn’t be so quick to discount.
America has, for example, made tremendous progress toward racial acceptance since 1973.
Back then, according to Gallup, only 29% of Americans approved of interracial marriage — now, 94% do.
(It’s kind of hilarious to think of the prototypical white woke college student trying to explain to an elderly African American just how much worse America has gotten over the last five decades.)
It’s not just race where we’ve seen tremendous progress either. Heck, as Forbes reports, many women couldn’t even get credit cards in their own name in 1973.
And gay people faced anti-sodomy laws on the books in many states that literally criminalized their lifestyle — gay marriage was still a pipe dream.
That’s all radically changed.
Are woke college students really unaware of this basic history?
In a funny twist, 77% of students told pollsters they believe their college education is helping them develop “a more accurate view of the United States.”
So much for that, huh?
None of this is to say things have exclusively improved since the ’70s or there are no problems today.
But to earnestly believe that America is worse off today than in 1973 requires an astounding level of economic and historical ignorance.
That ignorance actually gets worse.
Among those students who somehow believe the United States has gotten worse over the last 50 years, a majority think this imagined lack of progress has occurred because we don’t have “enough government programs to make sure resources are used wisely.”
This belief betrays a remarkable unfamiliarity with our economic system.
Even back in 1970, we were dedicating so much to government programs that it amounted to 32.3% of our economy, per the International Monetary Fund.
By 2021, that figure had risen to 42.36%.
That’s right: More than 40% of our resources are funneled into government programs — but somehow, the problem is that we don’t have enough government programs.
So does it really seem like students are actually developing “a more accurate view of the United States” in college these days?
The price of university is already outrageously high.
But the status quo becomes all the more intolerable when you realize Americans are paying tens upon tens of thousands of our hard-earned dollars — only for students to become more ignorant about our country.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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