Texas Lt. Gov. Targets Fort Worth Schools Chief Over Transgender Guidelines

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick went to Fort Worth Tuesday to call for the resignation of school district Superintendent Kent Scribner. As a transgender himself, who transitioned from female to male, spoke of the struggles she faced and said she contemplated suicide.

The document opens with a series of definitions about gender identity and expression and being transgender.

“This policy says that if a transgender student wants to use the girl’s room or the girl’s locker room, if there’s another student that feels uncomfortable, that that student, that student, should be allowed to be pulled out, taken to a separate bathroom”. “I call upon the parents within the Fort Worth [school district] to take immediate steps to repeal this stealthy scheme and remove Dr. Scribner from his post”.

“Campus safety should be of paramount concern for anyone in his position”, Patrick wrote.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Governor Greg Abbott, Attorney General Ken Paxton, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick hold a joint press conference February 18, 2015 in Austin, Texas.

On Tuesday, the first scorching day of a Texas spring, hundreds stood in line in the late afternoon sun, waiting to enter the meeting hall of the Fort Worth School Board. Check back with abc13 for continued coverage. “They’re not that”, Lopez said.

Patrick released a statement saying Scribner has lost his focus and his ability to lead Fort Worth ISD through placing his personal political agenda before the needs of the district’s students.

“The job of the Superintendent is not to be a social engineer”.

“If you are coming to the FWISD board meeting today we (LGBTQA community leaders) are asking people to please wear red, and we urge people to avoid letting agitators press our buttons”.

“It makes it a lot worse when the lieutenant governor of Texas is traveling around, talking about how this is ridiculous and outrageous and how we have to put cities, counties and schools on a [fiscal] diet”, board member Charles Stafford said when discussing a decrease in state funding for Denton ISD next year.

Patrick said he still asks for the resignation of the Fort Worth Independent School District Superintendent.

I’ll be live-tweeting from Tuesday’s Fort Worth school board meeting, which begins at 5:30 p.m. Central time.

The Fort Worth school district appears to be a pioneer among the state’s bigger, urban school districts in adopting a transgender bathroom policy.

“I don’t understand why these rules were implemented behind closed doors without a vote from the board”, said Nicole Hudgens, a policy analyst with the conservative group Texas Values.

“Last I checked our children are stuck in overcrowded classrooms, the school finance system is broken, the STAAR test is a mess, pre-k needs to be expanded statewide, and our teachers need a raise, but Tea Party Lt. Gov. Patrick has nothing better to do than police the potties”, Hinojosa said in a statement. The new guidelines fit appropriately with this role, Hicks says. “So we want a 15-year old boy full of…vigor that every 15-year-old boy has walking into the girls’ bathroom?”

Another speaker, Paula Ellis, a transgender woman, said, “I knew I was a girl and I knew I didn’t belong in there”, referring to the boy’s bathroom.

“We got this”, Ramos said.

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“These folks aren’t transgender that this is targeting”, said Rockwall Mayor Jim Pruitt, who failed last week in his effort to push through a local ordinance requiring people to use public restrooms matching their biological birth gender.