The guidelines on transgender students violate state law that requires parental involvement. Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday became the latest high-ranking Republican to condemn Texas’ sixth-largest school district.
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Gov. Dan Patrick is calling for the resignation of the Fort Worth I.S.D. superintendent after that superintendent signed an ordinance to allow students to use the restroom that corresponds with their gender identities. The new rules mandate that transgender students may use the restroom of their choice.
The guidelines allow that students have access to restrooms consistent with “the gender identity that each student consistently and uniformly asserts”.
Sutherland says she is also anxious about a third component, which says school counselors may only discuss issues with a transgender student’s parent if it’s “on a need-to-know basis or as the student directs”.
No parent is going to want their child to go to a school where boys can shower with girls, where girls can go into the boys room.
Growing heated throughout a press conference just minutes before the Fort Worth ISD Board of Education meeting, Patrick renewed his call for Superintendent Kent Paredes Scribner to resign for approving the policy without the blessing of the public or the school board. Patrick traveled to Fort Worth to appear before a school board meeting scheduled Tuesday night.
“A bully like Dan Patrick can’t go unchallenged”.
“What is to stop the lieutenant governor from identifying more superintendents, more cities, more city councils and more county officials who determine that their local context calls for a particular change that may not agree with the lieutenant governor’s political agenda – what’s to prevent them from being targeted?”
He says the superintendent needs to “rescind these guidelines, rescind his policy, and I believe he needs to step down”.
But Scribner says he’s proud of the guidelines, instituted last month.
At the school board meeting, Superintendent Kent Scribner defended the guidelines.
Paxton said his constituents don’t “welcome such policies”, according to Inquisitr. “I think they provide educators with the ability to make all students more comfortable and confident in a learning environment”.
Scribner said in February that he was streamlining the district’s headquarters staff, shrinking the leadership team and moving 70 teaching specialists from central administration to school campuses where they are most needed.
“You each will have a lot of explaining to do in your districts”, he said. It added, “No medical or mental health diagnosis is required in order to have a student claim an identity and therefore, have full rights to the opposite sex locker rooms, bathrooms, etc”.
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“When parents leave their children [at] school, they expect the students’ rights and privacy to be protected as well”, he said in closing. “And in this country it’s nearly like the minorities are getting more rights than the majority”.
