What's Happening
GCISD has seven school board trustees. These trustees have the power to hire and fire the Superintendent as well as approve vendors, approve district goals, vote to increase teacher and staff pay, and vote on school finance and budget issues.
For years the extremists have been trying to gain a majority on the board, and as of May 2022 they have succeeded. Outside PACs spent over 100K to get two candidates elected. Why do people outside of GCISD care about our school board? Who will our school board be beholden to?
Since they got two people elected in 2021, chaos has ensued and our district has made national headlines for all the wrong reasons. A failed former school board candidate called for the firing of a beloved principal over false claims of CRT, and now we are without that principal despite the many protests and pleas from students. Another resident without children in the district sued the district over not being able to publicly criticize district employees at school board meetings. The same resident has publicly threatened a black member of our community and posted pictures of GCISD elementary student work on social media. He ran for state-level office but lost his primary.
The strategy of the outside interests appears to be fighting a culture war without regard for our teachers and our students. They claim they want to help teachers, but at the same time they make it known which teachers they don't like and file information requests with the district to try to find something they can publicly criticize the teachers for. The district had to hire an employee simply to deal with all of the public information requests. As a result of this attack on our teachers, some of our extremely qualified teachers fear for their jobs, and quite a few are leaving because of these attacks. Calls to ban books are growing, with parents who don't approve of a particular book for their child wanting to remove access for all children. Per the 1982 Supreme Court ruling Island Trees School District v. Pico, removing books from libraries can violate students' First Amendment rights.
The new school board majority successfully pushed out GCISD's Superintendent. The ultimate goal of the extremists appears to be to bring down the school district and then have justification to bring in vouchers and a religious-based charter school. The innovative programs that GCISD offers are at risk. The extremists are opposed to an inclusive, equitable education that fosters critical thinking skills. As you can see from the student testimony below, there is room for improvement in this area. We need to move forward, not backward.
For years the extremists have been trying to gain a majority on the board, and as of May 2022 they have succeeded. Outside PACs spent over 100K to get two candidates elected. Why do people outside of GCISD care about our school board? Who will our school board be beholden to?
Since they got two people elected in 2021, chaos has ensued and our district has made national headlines for all the wrong reasons. A failed former school board candidate called for the firing of a beloved principal over false claims of CRT, and now we are without that principal despite the many protests and pleas from students. Another resident without children in the district sued the district over not being able to publicly criticize district employees at school board meetings. The same resident has publicly threatened a black member of our community and posted pictures of GCISD elementary student work on social media. He ran for state-level office but lost his primary.
The strategy of the outside interests appears to be fighting a culture war without regard for our teachers and our students. They claim they want to help teachers, but at the same time they make it known which teachers they don't like and file information requests with the district to try to find something they can publicly criticize the teachers for. The district had to hire an employee simply to deal with all of the public information requests. As a result of this attack on our teachers, some of our extremely qualified teachers fear for their jobs, and quite a few are leaving because of these attacks. Calls to ban books are growing, with parents who don't approve of a particular book for their child wanting to remove access for all children. Per the 1982 Supreme Court ruling Island Trees School District v. Pico, removing books from libraries can violate students' First Amendment rights.
The new school board majority successfully pushed out GCISD's Superintendent. The ultimate goal of the extremists appears to be to bring down the school district and then have justification to bring in vouchers and a religious-based charter school. The innovative programs that GCISD offers are at risk. The extremists are opposed to an inclusive, equitable education that fosters critical thinking skills. As you can see from the student testimony below, there is room for improvement in this area. We need to move forward, not backward.