This blog on Texas education contains posts on higher education, as well as preK-12 policy accountability, testing, bilingual education, immigration, school finance, race, class, and gender issues at both the state and national level. It also represents my digital footprint, of life and career, as a community-engaged scholar in Texas.
This vandalism and harassment is so despicable on so many levels. The concept of "racialized voter suppression" and associated candidate intimidation should no longer be abstractions if they were to begin with. And please, telling a U.S. citizen to “deport yourself” based on her ethnicity and culture is racist to the core.
It's also misogynistic, designed to push Latinas and women, generally, out of their pursuit of public office. This aligns with the regular defaming and misrepresenting of AOC, Jasmine Crockett, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush, and others is a way to discredit their policy positions and to manufacture disfavor with those they represent.
Castillo’s past advocacy for bilingual, community-engaged students earning graduation sashes should be uplifted rather than put down, considering her wonderful sense of civic duty and helping marginalized students. At the base of this civic harm to where she feels unsafe in her own home is trying to impact broader publics from ever considering running for office. I hope she wins her school board race in Humble ISD.
Great quote by Castillo.
"This is the time where we Latinos have to unite, because our students are our priority right now. Our students deserve to have an equal education like anyone else."
I hope they have a LULAC Chapter in Humble or that they form one. I hear that Houston LULAC is on top of this.
The Harris County Sheriff's Office is investigating an alleged incident of vandalism at the home of a candidate for the Humble ISD school board, where the words "deport yourself" were found on her door on Friday.
Judith Castillo, who is running for a trustee position in Humble, said she's been targeted and harassed since her campaign began. In addition to the messages telling her to "deport herself," she said she's received harassing messages with name-calling and sexual content. She also said she's been followed to work and her social media accounts have been hacked.
Although Castillo’s campaign centers on anti-bullying, she says she has been the target of similar hostility throughout the election. Much of the backlash, she says, has focused on her race—driven by the false belief that her platform only supports Hispanic students.
"It's been an ongoing issue where people are saying I'm just running to represent Hispanic students. I'm not running just to represent Hispanic students, I'm running to represent all students," Castillo told Chron. "I am running to have a voice for my community."
Humble, Texas is 56.2 percent Hispanic or Latino, according to data from the U.S. Census.
Some parents have criticized Castillo over an incident a few years ago, when Castillo, then a teacher, stood up for her students after the superintendent removed their graduation sashes. The sashes had previously been approved by the administration to commend the students for their volunteer work every week through mentorship programs aimed at improving bilingual literacy at the local elementary school.
"A lot of parents thought I was trying to promote only my race and help only my people," Castillo said.
Following the incident, Castillo raised the issue with the school board. But some parents have continued to lambaste her for her advocacy at the time, sending her messages saying "the clown wants to continue her show."
"People are stating, 'well, English is the official language now, you shouldn't worry about any Spanish students now," Castillo said.
Since she reported the alleged act of vandalism, the hate hasn't let up.
"They're mocking my incident as if I'm doing this to get more votes instead of actually seeing it as a threat to a candidate, actually seeing it as violence," Castillo said.
The hateful messages have come at the expense of her mental health, Castillo said.
She has begun having anxiety attacks. She can't sleep at night.
"I wake up and I'm just shaking," Castillo said.
Her family feels unsafe to the point where they might consider moving if she doesn't win the election, Castillo said.
"It just reminds me of the little girl riding on the bus. Little Judy riding on the bus, eight years old, and being called a wetback," Castillo said. The term "wetback" is a derogatory term used for a Mexican citizen living in the U.S.
"This is the time where we Latinos have to unite, because our students are our priority right now. Our students deserve to have an equal education like anyone else," Castillo added.
For now, Castillo said she's showing up and talking to the community as election day approaches on May 3.
"I'm just eagerly waiting for election day. I'm still going to go out to the polling places. I'm still going to greet people."
There is a lot to appreciate from this story by a former member of the University of Texas at Austin faculty, Dr. Dan Acosta, who also previously served as Dean Emeritus of Pharmacy at the University of Cincinnati. He offers a powerful narrative that resonates deeply with struggles faced by Mexican Americans. In my own research, I describe the systemic erasure of our identities as "subtractive schooling," a deliberate process that undermines our cultural heritage, as well as individual and community power.
Dan Acosta, Ph.D.
In Dr. Acosta’s story, I sense profound pain and frustration rooted in a long history of prejudice and discrimination. The inability to speak Spanish, or not speaking it “correctly,” reflects the success of assimilationist policies designed to strip away cultural ties. The stakes are high for those in power—especially as manifest throughout ongoing battles within the State Board of Education over culturally relevant curriculum and Ethnic Studies programs.
The irony here is striking. Current anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies seek to suppress initiatives that promote these very principles. Albeit with a few exceptions, the tragedy here is that DEI efforts have rarely been abundant in any meaningful way, as Dr. Acosta’s experiences illustrate. On the contrary, his story reveals a history of exclusion to which I can relate as one who has fought for her own place in higher education despite my Stanford Ph.D. and credentials.
Anti-affirmative action and DEI opposition appear to be preemptive strikes in an environment where people of color might otherwise gain access to higher education and subsequently assume their rightful places at the table in culture and society. These policies send a clear message: These opportunities are reserved primarily for white people. So wrong-headed. So sad.
So much talent has been wasted. It is truly a shame. Thanks, Dr. Acosta, for your story. We need more of these so folks out there don't believe the lies about the academy getting overtaken by "woke" students and faculty of color. Rather a more sinister agenda is at play.
By Dan Acosta | Summer/Autumn 2024 | Rise Up Review, Resistance is Fertile
Now that I am retired one of my weekly tasks is to read what is happening at the Society of Toxicology, the largest professional group for toxicologists of all types--academic, government, and industrial- in the world. As the first elected Hispanic president of the organization, I like to keep up to date with issues facing the society. One current topic is to increase membership and to bring in more diverse scientists into the discipline, especially non-toxicologists who want to learn more about toxicology. Without getting too much into the weeds about the issue, I was struck by a comment made by a past president who strongly objected to the possibility that standards would be lowered to allow more people of diversity (i.e. people of color) become members of SOT. He did not want a "dumbing down of the society with unqualified individuals". He was alluding to affirmative action and "DEI" issues that have become hot political topics in America. It got me thinking about my life and qualifications as one of those people of diversity that SOT wants to have as some of its members.
As a first-generation Mexican American, my mother and grandparents emigrated to El Paso from Mexico; her parents wanted to create a new life for themselves by escaping the discord and troubled times in Mexico during its revolution in the early 1900s. Nana Cuca often told me stories of what it was like to live in Mexico and recounted her vivid memories of some of the revolutionaries like Pancho Villa. My paternal grandfather also came from Mexico; he later married his wife who was born in Presidio, Texas. My father was born in Valentine, Texas. He stopped going to school after the sixth grade so he could work with his father who was a hired hand on a ranch near Marfa. My parents never completed high school.
When I was very young especially before I started grade school in 1951, my mother was often asked about my heritage. I later learned that they really wanted to know if I was white and not a Mexican. Nana Cuca used to brag that our family tree had strong Portuguese ties and that the lighter skin colors of her ancestors were passed on to her daughters--my mother and her sister, Babe. Although as a young boy I looked like a chubby white kid with fat cheeks, my Mexican heritage became more apparent as I grew older. My light brown hair started to become darker and by the time I began high school my hair had turned black, and my facial features were more Mexican-like.
I refused to speak Spanish at home and at school; my parents and family spoke to me in Spanish and did not force me to respond in Spanish. Many of my teachers wanted to help me because of my eagerness to learn and my desire to become the best student in their classes. I wanted to acquire at all costs those American traits or characteristics of my white classmates who were most successful in the classroom. Because of my skin tone and hair color when I started grade school, I did not experience the discrimination and hatred that my brown-colored friends and classmates often encountered. This Americanization process corrupted my Mexican identity at a very young age, and it has taken me a lifetime to confront my mistake. As I progressed through college, the army, graduate school, and my academic career, I was no longer that smart little Mexican boy. I now faced subtle discriminations and at times overt racist remarks from highly educated individuals.
I eventually graduated as one of the top students in my high school class, and later on I graduated top of my pharmacy class at the University of Texas in 1968. I received one of the few highly competitive national fellowships awarded to graduate students to attend a school of their own choosing. I earned a doctorate in toxicology at the University of Kansas and accepted a position as an assistant professor at the University of Texas in 1974.
However, I was rudely introduced to the role of DEI and affirmative action in hiring more people of color at Texas. Pointedly, I was told several times by my supervisors that the only reason I was hired was because the college needed to hire more Hispanics and Blacks. During my 22 years at Texas, I helped develop one of the first graduate programs in toxicology in the state and mentored over 50 undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral fellows in my research program. I later became dean of pharmacy at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where I established one of the first councils on diversity at the university. In the final phase of my career, I accepted a position as Deputy Director for Research at FDA's major research center--The National Center for Toxicological Research. Although I had what many called "a successful career", I paid the price of never becoming fluent in Spanish and having to live with the shame and embarrassment of not being able to converse in Spanish with my family and many of my former classmates and friends.
I also experienced many times during my career what are now known as "microaggressions" or thinly veiled putdowns of my accomplishments and successes. For example, when I was elected president of the Society of Toxicology, some of my colleagues suggested that I won the election because I was a person of diversity. I grew up in Texas where this attitude was quite common; it did not really bother me. I just laughed it off.
In the past, it was all right to ask where you were born or what was your family ancestry. It was out of curiosity because many Americans have relatives who were not born in the US. People were interested in knowing more about you, especially if you recently moved into the neighborhood, were a new employee, or a new customer in a local store. But in today's America asking that question is fraught with anxiety and possibly danger for a person of color who is asked that question. As a Mexican American who has lived in one of those states that border Mexico, I have observed the tension when one is accused of being an undocumented immigrant and not an American citizen. And as America has become more polarized, there are many reports of violence against people of color because it is thought that they are not truly American or to be more blunt-not white enough.
Today, affirmative action and DEI policies that were supposedly lauded and supported by institutions of higher education, corporate America, and local, state, and federal agencies and departments have come under attack by many white Americans who believe that they are the ones who have suffered from discrimination. State legislators, especially in red states like Texas, Florida, and several others, have passed laws to abolish or limit the use of offices that help students and employees of diversity navigate organizational obstacles. White students and employees are not denied assistance as some of them like to suggest.
Where are those colleges that thought that it was right to limit the admission of students of color to keep their classes filled with mostly white students? Where are those corporations and institutions that thought it was right to employ mostly white men and restrict the hiring of women and people of color in the workplace? The answer is that they never left and are ready to go back to the pre-affirmative action era.
When I left the UT College of Pharmacy in 1996, there were two Mexican American Ph.D. professors on the faculty. When I returned to Austin for my retirement years, there was only one full-time professor; no progress has been made in the 50 years since I joined the faculty as one of those two Mexican American professors in 1974. There has been some improvement for people of color and women in the classroom and workplace, but the Supreme Court has now declared that it has seen enough of this intrusion into the lives of white men. American universities must turn a blind eye to matters of race and gender in student admissions. It will happen very soon in the workplace, but that does not mean that we should stop trying to admit more students of color and to hire more faculty of diversity. My biggest regret was that I did not speak up sooner about what I faced as a student and professor during my career in Texas and elsewhere.
It took me a lifetime to realize that my generation has failed in maintaining America's faith in our inalienable rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. I write this story to reach out to the young people of the country with the hope that they will restore and secure those rights for all. If they don't, who will?
***
Dan Acosta is a first-generation Mexican American, whose mother and grandparents emigrated from Mexico. He is a former professor, research scientist, and administrator, who retired in 2019 at age 74. He writes about his experiences as a Mexican boy trying to succeed in white America. His stories have appeared in The Acentos Review, Sky Island Journal, Somos en Escrito, The Rush, Toasted Cheese, Latin@Literatures, Midway Journal, and The Manifest Station.
I like this piece by Umair Haque as it works well with my earlier post on the Allure of Fascism. Of course fascists never think they are what they actually are. Haque is an economist and not a psychologist, but he takes a good stab at at least some of the dynamics that undergird fascism.
To this, I would add the work of T. W. Adorno (2019) of the Frankfurt School. He wrote a widely-read book in the wake of Nazi Germany titled, The Authoritarian Personality. In that text, he writes of individuals who are uniquely predisposed toward fascist ideologies in that they are rule-governed, conformist, and aggressive. Gordon Allport's classic book on The Nature of Prejudice, also comes to mind.
The short of it is that they have authoritarian personalities that make them vulnerable to leaders that are themselves authoritarian. While still touching the surface here, my friends, I think we all know people like this, right? Plus, the alignment across these two posts caught my attention.
-Angela Valenzuela
References
Adorno, T. (2019). The authoritarian personality. Verso Books.
Allport, G. (1954). The nature of prejudice. New York: Addison-Wesley.
“I’m not a fascist! They’re the real fascists!! The students, the leftists, the woke mob, the anti-fascists, the teachers, the LGBTQ! They’re putting me in danger! They’re taking away my rights! My rights matter most of all! I’m being persecuted, violently and viciously!! I have a right to be heard — and what I have to say is that I’m superior, and they’re inferior! And if you don’t allow me this view — then you’re the real fascist!!”
LOL — do you see how funny and warped all this is the moment you think about it?
Needless to say, what makes a person a “fascist,” at least in terms of beliefs, is pretty straightforward. That some people are biologically inferior, inherently less valuable, hence need to be dehumanized, and cleansed away from society, their personhood, livelihoods, socio-cultural existences, and possibly even lives, removed. Nobody on the left is saying any of that to the kind of person I’m describing — and so quite obviously, the “real fascist” is the one who believes these crackpot theories of inherent supremacy, and then desires political “solutions” to the “problems” of people who are not human. The question we are answering today is: why would anyone believe in such obviously false notions, to begin with? Why would they need so desperately to?
Let’s start at the beginning — I’ll try to really explain the psychology of the new wave of fascism. You can judge for yourself whether it carries any water — I’ll only say this much: if you see these traits in yourself, you should stop and yourself: “Wait, am I what he’s describing?”
Fascists never think they are fascists. A fascist never thinks of himself or herself as a “fascist”, anything at all carrying a negative or malicious connotation. They think of themselves, first, as victims. Victims of great and grand conspiracies — the Great Replacement, the LGBTQ+ destroying them, women murdering babies as birth control, woke teachers indoctrinating their kids, immigrants out to destroy their culture, the liberals want to drink the blood of kids, the Jews are doing this, the Muslims are doing that, blah blah, and on and on the insanity goes.
To the fascist, those behind these conspiracies are not regular people — they are especially cunning and vicious especially greedy and unscrupulous, especially seditious and slothful, especially bad. They are especially powerful, in other words. They have the power to completely destroy the way of the life, the whole existence, of the person being victimized.
This statement by Arnold Schwarzenegger is so incredibly powerful and moving. I encourage all to see it. It speaks directly to those that have chosen, or are choosing, the path of hate. He speaks personally, drawing on his own father's experience as a Nazi during the time of Nazi Germany, and how his father was himself hurt by getting deceived by a false, anti-Semitic and white supremacist ideology. However, he implores, change and personal transformation are within reach.
His sage advice aligns to research which shows that racially hostile environments where people live and work, is bad for not just blacks and other minorities, but for whites, as well. For a recent example of this from research, look at this study out of UC Berkeley by Jordan Leitner and colleagues whose study is published in the 2016 online edition of Psychological Science.
Schwarzenegger's eloquent words align with research which shows that prejudice reduction means addressing extreme ethnocentrism
through deep introspection together with educating oneself on histories like the Holocaust, instead of believing, or getting mis-led, as it were, to conspiracy theories. To this, we should add the importance of increasing
levels of meaningful contact with people different from yourselves—be it racial, religious, sexual orientation—or simply folks whose perspectives vary from your own.
At our best, and drawing on Gordon Allport's treatise, The Nature of Prejudice, all of humanity is spiritually interconnected, and manifests healthy psychological functioning, as a consequence. We are not born pre-judging people different from ourselves; rather, this is learned from family, media, social media, television, and the like. We can therefore un-learn this.
Change is never easy and it takes time. And a good education like the kind that I believe we all teach at the university is precisely about providing us with not just one lens, but a multiplicity of lenses through which to understand our complex world.
Truly, there is redemption to be had and abundant lives to be lived for us all if we work to increase our consciousness in the ways that Schwarzenegger suggests.
Leitner, J. B., Hehman, E., Ayduk, O., & Mendoza-Denton, R. (2016). Blacks’ Death Rate Due to Circulatory Diseases Is Positively Related to Whites’ Explicit Racial Bias: A Nationwide Investigation Using Project Implicit. Psychological Science, 27(10), 1299–1311. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616658450
This piece provides evidence on how racism and anti-semitism are on the rise in Texas schools. It's interesting, if not predictable, to note that this is happening at the same time that books and materials, including those designed to challenge racial, sexist, and homophobic hatred are limiting what can get taught in the schools. This creates a vacuum in knowledge and information that risks getting filled by other readily accessible online communities that promote hatred and violence.
This vitriol then manifests at school board meetings where parents refer to race and gender justice texts as "porn," when what is really obscene is the racial hatred that plays out in school environments as youth take cues from adults, including from government leaders and members of the legislature who are happy to perpetuate fallacies, most especially, an ethnically-cleansed curriculum that's non-inclusive and thusly, narrow and harmful.
I think that most Texas students, their parents, and Texans, generally, find this to be both reprehensible and unacceptable, but those perpetrating these harms are often the loudest voices. I'm glad to see the federal government stepping in on behalf of these aggrieved students. Read for yourselves the IDRA statement here that expresses the following:
"The complaints list a number of demands for resolution, including revised district anti-harassment, anti-discrimination and anti-bullying policies; training of school and district staff on Title VI and appropriate school discipline practices; effective and age-appropriate prevention programs for students; systems for student and family input; alternatives to exclusionary discipline placement, such as restorative practices; an external evaluator to regularly assess the educational climate and effectiveness of policies; and annual reports posted online summarizing the reports of racial bullying and harassment."
These corrosive and toxic dynamics have to change if we are to prevent racial, religious, and other forms of harassment and violence in our schools. Anti-racist curriculum and pedagogy together with policies like Ethnic Studies that support their teaching, are also steps in the right direction. There is a bill this session, House Bill 45, an Ethnic Studies bill authored by Rep. Christina Morales, is what merits specific support. And now is the time to rally for it as a way to move positively forward.
LUBBOCK — Parents, full of anger and disbelief, have confronted school leaders in the Lubbock area over a series of racist and antisemitic incidents in several schools.
In total, four separate incidents have come to light in recent weeks.
Two episodes — both involving Black students targeted in constant bullying by their peers and inaction by school officials, parents say — have led to separate federal civil rights lawsuits.
At the heart of the two lawsuits is the pain parents say their children have endured as a result of months of constant and violent bullying — including an Instagram account that posted photos of Black students from a Lubbock middle school with racist captions, and racial discrimination by school officials against students at the high school in Slaton, about 17 miles south of Lubbock.
A third South Plains school district — Roosevelt ISD — had a parent file a federal complaint against them for racial discrimination by school officials. There, a mother took her daughter out of school after she claims school officials targeted her child for undue disciplinary actions.
Meanwhile, a threatening antisemitic petition was passed around by a student at another Lubbock middle school. Parents say they are disappointed the school hasn’t had a strong response.
On their own, these might seem like isolated incidents of school-age angst. However, racially driven and antisemitic incidents are on the rise in Texas. And now four different school districts in the South Plains are facing tensions emblematic of the widespread problem. Instead of addressing it directly, parents say school officials try to sweep the issues under the rug.
Lubbock-Cooper ISD — which includes Laura Bush Middle School, where the Instagram account was based — declined to comment on the federal lawsuit.
“Racism has no place at any school within Lubbock-Cooper ISD,” the district added in a statement. “It is not a reflection of our beliefs as a school and it completely contradicts the virtues we wish to instill in our students.”
Black students at the Laura Bush Middle School in Lubbock-Cooper ISD were allegedly bullied over months, including with an Instagram account that posted photos of them with racist captions. Credit: Mark Rogers for The Texas Tribune
Just came across this earlier piece from Oct. 14, 2021 as I was trying to get updated on the latest news out of the Carroll Independent School District (CISD) located in Southlake, Texas. Know that this is an affluent district undergoing a lot of demographic change.
Book banning. Closing class libraries. Vetting books. "Both-sidism" about the Holocaust and slavery. This all sounds so Medieval and backwards.
There are so many layers here. For one, if you listen to the Southlake podcast, you can hear for yourselves the expressed racial animus that is raw and unhinged. Geez, anti-blackness manifests recklessly with students using the "N-word" gratuitously—like this is exactly how many of their families talk at home. This kind of language is diametrically opposite that of what should be happening in a multiracial democracy.
Another layer is a real misinterpretation of the law. Folks in CISD are interpreting and trying to implement SB 3979 when it's SB 3 that's the actual law they need to be following as expressed in the article below. Plus, "Critical Race Theory" doesn't even appear in the actual bill. Nor is it taught in K-12 education, period. And not even that much in higher education. I should know about this. I've taught CRT for many years now.
The irony of all of this is that it is these very families and this very community could really benefit from considering alternative perspectives and viewpoints in history.
I read somewhere that districts like CISD, Eanes, and other places that are having these difficulties are the same ones that are undergoing the most demographic change which means a de-centering of whiteness. N.B. Will have to track down the exact source. Another irony is that SB 3, if you actually read the law, could be far worse. It does accord teachers a great deal of latitude in their teaching. How this all gets interpreted at the local level is what Southlake and Eanes are about, demonstrating how "policy implementation," isn't as straightforward a matter as one might expect from the passage of policy.
A deeper concern is a normalizing of extremism through the marshaling of cliches like "fairness" and "balance" as a defense.
I'm glad to see that the NAACP has filed a lawsuit there. Wishing civil rights attorney, Gary Bledsoe, and the NAACP Defense team great success in challenging the discrimination, and ultimately, the gratuitous prejudice, that is sadly, in full display.
SOUTHLAKE, Texas — A top administrator with the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake advised teachers last week that if they have a book about the Holocaust in their classroom, they should also offer students access to a book from an “opposing” perspective, according to an audio recording obtained by NBC News.
Gina Peddy, the Carroll school district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, made the comment Friday afternoon during a training session on which books teachers can have in classroom libraries. The training came four days after the Carroll school board, responding to a parent’s complaint, voted to reprimand a fourth grade teacher who had kept an anti-racism book in her classroom.
A Carroll staff member secretly recorded the Friday training and shared the audio with NBC News.
“Just try to remember the concepts of [House Bill] 3979,” Peddy said in the recording, referring to a new Texas law that requires teachers to present multiple perspectives when discussing “widely debated and currently controversial” issues. “And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust,” Peddy continued, “that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.”
“How do you oppose the Holocaust?” one teacher said in response.
Another teacher wondered aloud if she would have to pull down “Number the Stars” by Lois Lowry, or other historical novels that tell the story of the Holocaust from the perspective of victims. It’s not clear if Peddy heard the question in the commotion or if she answered.
Peddy did not respond to messages requesting comment. In a written response to a question about Peddy’s remarks, Carroll spokeswoman Karen Fitzgerald said the district is trying to help teachers comply with the new state law and an updated version that will go into effect in December, Texas Senate Bill 3.
“Our district recognizes that all Texas teachers are in a precarious position with the latest legal requirements,” Fitzgerald wrote, noting that the district’s interpretation of the new Texas law requires teachers to provide balanced perspectives not just during classroom instruction, but in the books that are available to students in class during free time. “Our purpose is to support our teachers in ensuring they have all of the professional development, resources and materials needed. Our district has not and will not mandate books be removed nor will we mandate that classroom libraries be unavailable.”
Fitzgerald said that teachers who are unsure about a specific book “should visit with their campus principal, campus team and curriculum coordinators about appropriate next steps.”
Clay Robison, a spokesman for the Texas State Teachers Association, a union representing educators, said there’s nothing in the new Texas law explicitly dealing with classroom libraries. Robison said the book guidelines at Carroll, a suburban school district near Fort Worth, are an “overreaction” and a “misinterpretation” of the law. Three other Texas education policy experts agreed.
“We find it reprehensible for an educator to require a Holocaust denier to get equal treatment with the facts of history,” Robison said. “That’s absurd. It’s worse than absurd. And this law does not require it.”
State Sen. Bryan Hughes, an East Texas Republican who wrote Senate Bill 3, denied that the law requires teachers to provide opposing views on what he called matters of “good and evil” or to get rid of books that offer only one perspective on the Holocaust.
“That’s not what the bill says,” Hughes said in an interview Wednesday when asked about the Carroll book guidelines. “I’m glad we can have this discussion to help elucidate what the bill says, because that’s not what the bill says.”
Six Carroll teachers — including four who were in the room to hear Peddy’s remarks — spoke to NBC News on the condition of anonymity, worried that they would be punished for discussing their concerns publicly. They said district leaders have sent mixed messages about which books are appropriate in classrooms and what actions they should be taking.
“Teachers are literally afraid that we’re going to be punished for having books in our classes,” an elementary school teacher said. “There are no children’s books that show the ‘opposing perspective’ of the Holocaust or the ‘opposing perspective’ of slavery. Are we supposed to get rid of all of the books on those subjects?”
A Carroll ISD teacher hung caution tape in front of the books in a classroom after the new guidelines were circulated.Obtained by NBC News
After this article was published, Carroll ISD posted a statement on Facebook from Superintendent Lane Ledbetter saying that Peddy’s advice to teachers was “in no way to convey that the Holocaust was anything less than a terrible event in history.”
“Additionally, we recognize there are not two sides of the Holocaust,” he wrote in the post. “As we continue to work through implementation of HB [House Bill] 3979, we also understand this bill does not require an opposing viewpoint on historical facts,” he added, referring to the new Texas law.
Ledbetter said that the district would work to add clarity to its expectations for teachers.
The debate in Southlake over which books should be allowed in schools is part of a broader national movement led by parents opposed to lessons on racism, history and LGBTQ issues that some conservatives have falsely branded as critical race theory. A group of Southlake parents has been fighting for more than a year to block new diversity and inclusion programs at Carroll, one of the top-ranked school districts in Texas.
Late last year, one of those parents complained when her daughter brought home a copy of “This Book Is Anti-Racist” by Tiffany Jewell from her fourth grade teacher’s class library. The mother also complained about how the teacher responded to her concerns.
Carroll administrators investigated and decided against disciplining the teacher. But last week, on Oct. 4, the Carroll school board voted 3-2 to overturn the district’s decision and formally reprimanded the teacher, setting off unease among Carroll teachers who said they fear the board won’t protect them if a parent complains about a book in their class.
Teachers grew more concerned last Thursday, Oct. 7, when Carroll administrators sent an email directing them to close their classroom libraries “until they can be vetted by the teacher.” Another email sent to teachers that day included a rubric that asked them to grade books based on whether they provide multiple perspectives and to set aside any that present singular, dominant narratives “in such a way that it ... may be considered offensive.”
In a statement, Fitzgerald, the district spokeswoman, said the training session was planned weeks ago in response to the new Texas law and was not related to the school board’s vote to reprimand a teacher. Fitzgerald acknowledged that the timing of the board’s disciplinary vote and the release of new class library guidelines caused “confusion and worry” among teachers. But the district’s inconsistent messaging to staff members and parents since then has also caused confusion, teachers said.
Carroll ISD circulated new guidelines about classroom libraries to teachers last week.Obtained by NBC News
Last Friday, after NBC News published an article detailing the district’s book instructions and plans for staff training that afternoon, Carroll Superintendent Ledbetter sent an email to parents denying that the district was asking teachers to remove books — even though the district had instructed teachers a day earlier to close their classroom libraries until every book could be vetted.
“I would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight,” Ledbetter wrote in the Friday note to parents. “The district has not mandated that any book be removed from teachers’ classroom libraries. Additionally, the district has not provided any training on removing books.”
About an hour before Ledbetter’s note went out on Friday afternoon, Carroll teachers were receiving a different message, according to the audio of the training session recorded by a staff member and shared with NBC News.
“The information we have right now is that classroom libraries cannot be used until they have been vetted,” an assistant principal can be heard telling a group of elementary school teachers, instructing them to use the rubric sent by the district to determine which books are appropriate. “So you do need to go back to school and separate the books that have been vetted, and those books need to be available to students. The other ones do not need to be available to students until they have been vetted.”
A teacher can be heard arguing that the guidelines shared by the district for determining the appropriateness of classroom books are too subjective. Another said she didn’t feel safe keeping any books in her classroom following the school board’s vote to reprimand one of her colleagues.
After 30 minutes, Peddy, the district’s director of curriculum and instruction, arrived at the training and tried to reassure the teachers. She told them not to worry and that district leaders supported them.
“We are in the middle of a political mess,” Peddy said in the recording, acknowledging that teachers are afraid. “And you are in the middle of a political mess. And so we just have to do the best that we can.”
Peddy then told the teachers to hold off on closing their class libraries, according to the recording. She said she was expecting Fitzgerald, the district spokeswoman, to send out a statement in response to the NBC News article from that morning.
“There’s a general statement coming out from the district,” Peddy said in the recording. “I have no idea what it’s going to say. And so I think we need to wait and see what that says, and then we come back and determine how and what your library classrooms are going to look like.”
After several teachers complained in the recording about the changing messages, Peddy told them she was going to step aside to call another district leader, Deputy Superintendent Courtney Carpenter, to ask for clarification.
Peddy returned a few minutes later, according to teachers who were there. In the audio, Peddy explained that teachers should be working to ensure that the books in their classes present opposing viewpoints — and offered the Holocaust as an example. Based on her call with Carpenter, Peddy said, teachers should disregard the earlier instructions to close their class libraries as they worked to read through all of the books, which she acknowledged could take weeks.
Carpenter did not respond to a message requesting comment. Fitzgerald said the Holocaust example given by Peddy did not come from Carpenter.
“I do know that you feel like it’s putting you at risk,” Peddy told teachers on the recording. “I do know that. But I also know that we’re going to do what’s best for our kids. And we’re going to stand behind you on this.”
The recorder was still running a few minutes later, after the session had ended, as a group of teachers gathered in a hallway and discussed what they had just heard.
“I am offended as hell by somebody who says I should have an opposing view to the Holocaust in my library,” a teacher said, her voice quavering.
Another replied: “They don’t understand what they have done. And they are going to lose incredible teachers, myself potentially being with them.”
