Connect with us

News

Fort Worth ISD Drops Sex Ed Despite $2.6 Million Purchase of Materials in April

Published

on

Fort Worth ISD students will not take sex education this school year after the superintendent told parents she is scrapping plans to adopt a controversial curriculum that the district appears to have purchased last year for nearly $2.6 million.

Superintendent Angélica Ramsey made the announcement at the end of her weekly newsletter sent Jan. 27. She told parents the district is restarting its curriculum adoption process. For nearly a year, administrators planned to re-adopt instructional materials from California-based HealthSmart.

In April, the Fort Worth ISD school board approved a nearly $2.6 million purchase of new digital-only instructional materials from HealthSmart. Trustees did not discuss the purchase. The purchase was part of the consent agenda, a list of items considered routine that can be approved in one motion.

District spokesperson Claudia Garibay did not respond to a dozen questions from the Fort Worth Report by publication time.

Angélica Ramsey, the new Fort Worth ISD superintendent, talks to reporters after the school board hired her during a special meeting on Sept. 20, 2022. (Jacob Sanchez | Fort Worth Report)

“There is not an approved, adopted or recommended Human Sexuality Curriculum for the 2022-23 school year. The delay will suspend the instructional delivery of the sexual education unit for the 2022-23 school year,” Ramsey wrote to parents.

Students whose parents opt them into sex education were expected to take the course later in spring semester, according to the district. Consent forms had a due date of Feb. 28.

The School Health Advisory Council — the school board-appointed, 26-member committee reviewing sex education — is expected to examine different options for Fort Worth ISD’s next curriculum, Ramsey said.

Ramsey’s announcement comes after a Jan. 24 school board meeting that saw dozens of residents and parents speak out against the HealthSmart curriculum, which the district has used since 2014. The Report filed an open records request for the proposed curriculum.

Fort Worth ISD bought HealthSmart’s instructional materials for all grade levels. Sex education is included in lessons for middle school and high school, according to HealthSmart.

State law requires school board members to make decisions on sex education curriculum, the Texas Education Agency told the Report.

‘Superintendent inherited a situation’

State Board of Education member Pat Hardy wants to see Fort Worth ISD succeed. However, as she watched the district attempt to adopt HealthSmart, she did not see administrators being transparent nor working with parents enough to make an informed decision, she told the Report.

Pat Hardy is a member of the State Board of Education. (Cristian ArguetaSoto | Fort Worth Report)

Hardy, a Republican who represents west Tarrant County, criticized Fort Worth ISD’s sex education curriculum adoption in a recent opinion article. All Fort Worth ISD needed to do was follow the process outlined in state law, Hardy said.

Hardy blamed Fort Worth ISD’s previous leadership for its sex education issues. Ramsey has been superintendent since late September; she replaced Kent Scribner.

“The superintendent inherited a situation that was going on before she got here,” Hardy said.

Hardy praised Ramsey for telling parents her plans to get Fort Worth ISD’s next sex education curriculum right and to follow state law.

“My hat’s off to her,” Hardy said.

What has happened, so far

New sex education curriculum standards were introduced in 2020. Without state-aligned materials, Fort Worth ISD cannot teach sex education.

What is the process for adopting a sex education curriculum?

Texas law and Fort Worth ISD school board policy detail the process for adopting new instructional materials for sex education. Here’s what the district’s policy, which aligns with state law, says:

The following process shall apply regarding the adoption of curriculum materials for the district’s human sexuality instruction:

  1. The school board shall adopt a resolution convening the district’s school health advisory council to recommend curriculum materials for the instruction.
  2. The advisory council shall hold at least two public meetings on the curriculum materials before adopting recommendations to present to the board.
  3. The advisory council recommendations must comply with the instructional content requirements in law, be suitable for the subject and grade level for which the materials are intended, and be reviewed by academic experts in the subject and grade level for which the materials are intended.
  4. The advisory council shall present its recommendations to the Board at a public meeting.
  5. After the school board ensures the recommendations from the advisory council meet the standards in law, the board shall take action on the recommendations by a record vote at a public meeting.

Texas school districts are not required to teach sex education. Districts that choose to do so are required to have parents opt their students into the course.

The State Board of Education recommended school districts use sex education curriculum for middle school students from publisher Goodheart-Wilcox. However, the state board did not make it mandatory.

In early January, the school board stopped the School Health Advisory Council’s review of sex education curriculum.

At that same meeting, trustees also rescinded a December resolution directing the council to officially convene and hold two public meetings before offering a curriculum recommendation. When trustees OK’d the resolution in December, its agenda item had the wrong title. It was “approve resolution concerning implementation and enforcement of school safety measures.” District officials blamed the mistake on a clerical error.

The School Health Advisory Council worked on recommending HealthSmart to the school board since September. Garibay described that work as “informational,” according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Two public meetings were held Sept. 6 and 7. Agendas for those meetings were not publicly available Jan. 26, and no minutes were posted. On Oct. 12, the School Health Advisory Council voted to recommend the proposed sex education curriculum to the school board, according to minutes of the meeting.

However, school board records show trustees did not consider a resolution convening the School Health Advisory Council to begin the sex education review process. The resolution is the first step toward adopting a new curriculum, according to board policy.

Another meeting was held Nov. 5 when 15 new council members, who were appointed in October, participated for the first time. The council again voted to recommend the curriculum; minutes of the meeting were not available on the district’s site.

No complaints about Fort Worth ISD’s sex education curriculum have been filed with TEA, according to agency officials.

For the past few months, Hardy has heard from her constituents about Fort Worth ISD. Most of the comments, she said, focus on one thing the district should be doing: Be transparent.

“They’re tired of things not coming to the forefront,” Hardy said. “They just want Fort Worth ISD to be honest.”

Jacob Sanchez is an enterprise journalist for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at jacob.sanchez@fortworthreport.org or via Twitter. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.

This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

 

Top image via Shutterstock

Continue Reading
Click to comment
 
 

Enjoy this piece?

… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.

NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.

Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.

News

Trump Sues Murdoch Over WSJ’s Epstein Birthday Letter Story

Published

on

President Donald Trump is reportedly suing Rupert Murdoch and Dow Jones, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, over the publication of a story alleging he sent a “bawdy” birthday letter in 2003 to Jeffrey Epstein, the now-notorious convicted sex offender who died in 2019.

“Court records show that Trump filed a lawsuit alleging libel against Murdoch, the Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones, and the reporters who wrote the article in federal court for the Southern District of Florida,” CNBC reported late Friday afternoon.

Trump vehemently denied the Journal’s report and publicly threatened to sue after it was published. The Journal had reported in its story that Trump had warned he would take legal action if the story ran.

“The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Thursday night. “These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures. I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I’m going to sue his a– off, and that of his third rate newspaper. Thank you for your attention to this matter! DJT”

READ MORE: FBI Told to Flag Mentions of Trump in Epstein Files, Dem Says in Scathing Letter to Bondi

Image via Reuters

Continue Reading

News

FBI Told to Flag Mentions of Trump in Epstein Files, Dem Says in Scathing Letter to Bondi

Published

on

One thousand employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation sifting through thousands of pages of the Epstein files were instructed to flag any mentions of President Donald Trump, according to Democratic U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, the Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee.

“According to information my office received,” Senator Durbin wrote in a letter (below) to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday, “you…pressured the FBI to put approximately 1,000 personnel…on 24-hour shifts to review approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in order to produce more documents that could then be released on an arbitrarily short deadline.”

“My office was told that these personnel were instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned,” Durbin charged.

The files are from the criminal investigation into the notorious Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted of child sex offenses.

RELATED: ‘He’s So Frustrated’: Johnson Defends Trump Over Explosive Epstein Birthday Letter

In his letter, Senator Durbin also posed a series of more than a dozen questions to Bondi. Among them:

“Have you personally reviewed all files in DOJ’s possession related to Jeffrey Epstein?”

“The records DOJ released on February 27 did not include a client list. Why did you
publicly claim on February 21 that the client list was ‘sitting on my desk right now to review’?”

“Why were personnel told to flag records in which President Trump was mentioned?”

“Please list all political appointees and senior DOJ officials involved in the decision to flag records in which President Trump was mentioned.”

“What happened to the records mentioning President Trump once they were flagged?”

CNBC reported that “Durbin asked the Justice Department and FBI to explain what his office called ‘apparent discrepancies’ regarding handling of the Epstein files and findings from a Justice Department memo.”

In his four-page letter, Durbin also wrote, “in 2002, Mr. Trump said of Mr. Epstein, ‘I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy, He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.’ Just yesterday, it was reported that the Department previously reviewed a ‘leather-bound album’ comprised of dozens of letters from Mr. Epstein’s friends in celebration of his 50th birthday in 2003.”

READ MORE: ‘War Is Peace’: White House’s Navarro Mocked Over Claim Tariffs Are ‘Tax Cuts’

“The letters were collected by Mr. Epstein’s partner Ghislaine Maxwell and included one from President Trump that allegedly ‘contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker … and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist.'”

“Despite tens of thousands of personnel hours reviewing and re-reviewing these Epstein- related records over the course of two weeks in March, it took DOJ more than three additional months to officially find there is ‘no incriminating ‘client list,’ and the memorandum with this finding includes no mention of the whistleblower or additional documents, the existence of which you publicly claimed on February 27.”

Read a copy of Senator Durbin’s letter below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Trust in Trump’: White House Touts ‘Incredible’ Economy as Inflation Jumps

Image via Reuters

 

Continue Reading

News

‘Would the President Say This?’: Rubio Demands Diplomats Echo Trump

Published

on

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, after cutting 1,300 employees last week, is now ordering diplomats to not comment on foreign elections and internal affairs—limiting official communications to congratulating the declared winner.

“Rubio has instructed U.S. diplomats not to comment on the legitimacy or fairness of foreign elections, breaking with decades of American diplomatic practice,” The Daily Beast reports. In a memo, the Secretary stated that U.S. missions will no longer issue election-related statements unless there is a “clear and compelling” foreign policy reason for doing so.

“Diplomatic personnel writing official messages are instead instructed to ask themselves: ‘Would the President say this?'”

The memo, seen by Reuters, says the messages “should be brief, focused on congratulating the winning candidate and, when appropriate, noting shared foreign policy interests.”

READ MORE: ‘He’s So Frustrated’: Johnson Defends Trump Over Explosive Epstein Birthday Letter

The memo makes clear, based on President Trump’s remarks, that the U.S. will “pursue partnerships with countries wherever our strategic interests align,” regardless of democratic values.

U.S. promotion of human rights, democracy, and press freedoms has traditionally been a “core foreign policy objective,” Reuters reported.

“Under Trump, the administration has increasingly moved away from the promotion of democracy and human rights, largely seeing it as interference in another country’s affairs.”

The Washington Post adds that for “decades, the United States has offered judgments on whether elections were conducted in a free or fair matter [sic], a judgment that can have significant impact in countries.”

“Scholars have accused the United States of democratic backsliding since Trump, who refused to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, returned to office this year.

President Trump and Vice President JD Vance have defended right-wing and far-right political groups, including Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which reportedly has ties to right-wing extremists.

Secretary Rubio in May ignited a “spat” with Germany’s foreign ministry when it “hit back…after he criticized the decision to classify the Alternative for Germany party as a ‘right-wing extremist’ organization,” the Associated Press reported at the time.

READ MORE: ‘War Is Peace’: White House’s Navarro Mocked Over Claim Tariffs Are ‘Tax Cuts’

Image via Reuters

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2020 AlterNet Media.