One of the new board members believes in conspiracy theories, such as the idea that planes spread toxins. This type of extremism doesn’t belong on the school board. Moderates have always been relaxed and believed things are fine. They need to realize this is no longer the case and show up at local school board elections to remove extreme political board members. I wish we had a bill of rights to a proper education, to protect students from being wrongly educated or undereducated. If this trend continues, I want to see new legislation on children's rights to proper education. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/ne...cience-textbook-changes-politics-19509057.php The former science coordinator at Cypress-Fairbanks ISD was “appalled” as she watched the conservative stronghold on the school board vote to remove 13 chapters from science, health and education textbooks last month, scrapping in just minutes countless hours of work done by both state and local textbook review committees. “Chapters are not independent entities. They're put in an order purposefully, and they build off of prior knowledge, and they reference information in prior areas,” said Debra Hill, who has 40 years of experience in science education. “It's like saying, ‘I'm going to take off the chapter on adding and subtracting, and we'll just skip ahead to multiplication.’” “If you want to drive teachers out of education, this is what you should do to them,” she said. “I am just very afraid that students are not going to get access to accurate, TEKS-aligned content.” “Regardless of whether or not you think they're controversial, if there is a TEK tied to some of the content that you removed, now you put the school district… at risk of violating policy,” Perez-Diaz said. She also wanted to remind community members that the textbooks were approved by a majority conservative state board, and that they went through a two year process to update the TEKS to include climate change and approve accompanying textbooks. Perez-Diaz didn’t think the new TEKS went far enough into responsibility for climate change, so to see a school board further restrict those books was “heartbreaking.” “It’s not like some Democrat in a dark room was making these decisions,” she said, adding that she felt it was a “thoughtless approach to addressing culture war issues.” In Perez-Diaz’s eyes, the ultimate harm is done to the students who are going to enter a global workforce where a certain level of facts-based science education is required to succeed. “For the board to come in and second guess (the textbook recommendations) on the basis of ideological prejudice on their part and some basic misunderstandings of the science, it does not serve the educational interests of the district’s students,” said Glenn Branch, deputy director for the National Center for Science Education, which was created 40 years ago to advocate for teaching evolution as opposed to creationism, the belief that all humans were placed on earth by God. Now, the group also monitors districts trying to restrict teaching about climate change. Texas already has “subpar” standards for education on evolution and climate change, even after the TEKS were updated, Branch said. The state received an “F” in an NCSE study on teaching climate change in 2020 and another “F” in a study on teaching evolution in 2017, Behind the board's vote Monica Dean, a conservative parent in the district, sent notes and recommendations about textbook edits to Blasingame, according to a public records request filed by Hill. Dean admitted she had not been able to read all of the books as it was a “daunting task.” She also asked people in a Facebook comment in December to sign a petition to protect against “chemtrails,” a debunked conspiracy theory that claims condensation trails left by planes in the sky are actually toxins being sprayed over the earth. The petition links back to Geoengineering Watch, a group that suggests some hurricanes and blizzards may have been manufactured by the U.S. government to further an ambiguous “agenda.”
Sorry for the people of Cy-Fair. I would say at least they get to elect a school board. But, maybe that's not even helping.
What's amazing about this idea and chem-trails, etc, is that airplanes are one of the few things that do not noticeably spread toxins into our daily lives. All the plastics we use? Sure. 3M post-it notes? Apparently also giving us doses for "forever chemicals" like PFAS. etc, etc. But let's look with suspicion to the sky... as we drink from plastic water bottles. LOL. What a ****ing species we are.
Living it. Some, but limited, options to bail out (without moving). We're just going to sit tight for one year and see how it goes.
We no longer have an education system we have an indoctrination system When Money and Power is the motivator . . . . education is the victim Control the input Control the output A group of people that want to control how other people view each other through the manipulation of interpretation of society and history Who wants people to remember that at age 20 grandma was cursing and berating a 6 yr old child for simply going to school? That grandpa was front and center at a lynching? That Japanese interment camps were a thing? That Slavery was actually a bad thing? That Native American genocide was one of the most thorough in history? And that all of it was done IN THIS COUNTRY!!1 Why would we want kids that can fix their own flats, cook their own food and do "jobs" that would remove those or significant amount of them from the job market? Capitalism must be fed and we feed it our children, their labor and their futures. It is a Capitalistic Imperative to make a dependent population with an unquenchable thirst to consume We want the population to work and consume. . .nothing else . . they are there to feed and cater to their Oligarchy overlords It is more important to Districts/Principle and even some teachers to "GET THE NUMBERS" to some stupid test or "metric" than it is to legitimately TEACH and integrate the kids in to the society They will slice though a mountain of children to get those numbers Secure their bag and hopefully increase it later It's like watching AAU Coaches drive the kids to win . . . . but at the end of a championship season They kids *REALLY* don't know *how* to play ball Rocket River
This goes to a point I've brought up recently in a couple of other threads that while some here criticize the Left as wanting to ban all sorts of things it is the Right that is pushing bans on many things including the teaching of scientific concepts that don't fit Judeo Christian worldview. This and several issues are why voting matters from every level from schoolboard to the presidency. How Republicans have come to play such an outsize role at state levels is because they understood this and since the 1980's have been contesting local elections including things like School board and county supervisor.
I like that you're attempting a b-ball analogy and think we should always award bonus points for that on CF.net, but I think the better analogy would be this: People in entrenched power and money are more like disinterested YMCA or "little dribblers" type coaches who platoon the players in, spend more time looking at their cell phones, and don't care if the players learn much of anything. It just feels like babysitting, and they'll get fewer complaints or more compliant kids on their team if they just make it easy for them and give everyone an ice cream after the game.
They understand the state's role and the federal judiciary system's role. They have been putting in their federal judges since GWB. You can legislate something only to be struck down by the increasingly far right court system.
Many have been warning for years that election decisions on President and Senator aren't just about those offices but what happens in the courts. I remember in debates with people support Gore versus Nader this very issue. I think the Dobbs decision was a big wakeup call for many who downplayed that.
This is why I heard nothing about it until it was done. Usually, I get emails on these types of decisions asking for input, and we get to provide feedback for weeks, if not months. The board has declined proposed changes before because enough people opposed them. This time, nothing. No input from the CyFair public and parents. https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/...sd-trustees-vote-to-remove-textbook-chapters/ Transparency questioned after Cy-Fair ISD trustees vote to remove textbook chapters Board members for the Houston-area school district voted 6-1 last week to remove content containing subject matter pertaining to vaccines, epidemics and climate change, among other topics covered in classes such as biology, environmental science and Earth systems. Former Spring Branch ISD superintendent Duncan Klussmann, who now works as an assistant clinical professor in the University of Houston’s College of Education, said during a recent appearance on Houston Matters that, after watching the board meeting video, he said the apparent lack of transparency is concerning. "The public did not know that this amendment was coming. They did not know what was on it. There was little transparency on that these chapters would be proposed to be removed,” Klussmann said. “There was one board member who was really questioning it and saying, ‘Why aren't we trusting our staff, a staff that we have trusted for years and the process we have had for so many years.' Six members are going to remove these items and those six members seem to know what those items were even though they were not presented in the board packet and were not presented publicly, so the public really did not know what was there." The district appointed a committee to review 25 textbooks to be used for the 2024-25 school year. The trustees subsequently decided to pull a total of 13 chapters from five of those books. "So, you clearly can skip chapters in textbooks, but they are still going to be in the textbook that the student has,” Klussmann said. “So, we will wait to see what this really means in Cy-Fair. There is a lot of concern by the one board member who voted against it, that they had just talked about cutting substantial numbers of teaching and learning curriculum staff and so now how are they going to have to go back and now readjust everything." Klussmann explained the board has some discretion over instructional material, but the district will have to certify that the material meets the statewide standards associated with the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). During the board meeting, district officials said they will lean on the campus staff to make the necessary modifications to the curriculum.
Chemtrails is crazy talk but the toxins spread by commercial airplanes are real. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...5-planes-pollution-deaths-science-environment
Fair. Wouldn't rate it in the top 15 of our daily lives, unless you live and work near an airport though.
