North Texas school boards at ground zero for COVID and critical race theory. Why would anyone serve?

It's interesting to observe how COVID and CRT are coming together in Texas politics. Presumably, this is playing out similarly throughout the country. Core to the Republican playbook, no less. 

The idea is to polarize school boards and society. How is that for republican "leadership." Theirs is a politics of fear, fear-mongering, and promoting dissension and disunity in society. And they do so by passing laws that suggest incorrectly that this is what we, as educators—through our critical and liberatory pedagogies—are doing. 

That is, they accuse us of a politics of division through the curriculum in our schools not because this is actually happening, but rather because they seek to pre-empt our very teaching of the precious knowledge that we know empowers all of our youth and communities. Yes, white children, too. Never mind that it also prepares them for college!

Regarding CRT, my view is that it's one thing if those on the right don't want their children to grow in a multi-racial society with a full menu of skills needed to negotiate it. It's quite another for them to deny everybody else's  growth and full human potential. 

Why even have the concept of "life-long learning" is there's a point at which it is set to expire? Why even have intellectual gifts and talents if they're not to be cultivated and used? And how is shutting down growth, learning, and conversation a recipe for solving everyday problems, much less for thriving? Since where there is fear, there is no growth, we must as a polity reject such backward and harmful ideologies. 

For these reasons, more than ever, we need bold and courageous board members willing to take a stand for student growth, without which our prosperity as a nation is impossible.

-Angela Valenzuela

North Texas school boards at ground zero for COVID and critical race theory. Why would anyone serve?

What’s best for students gets kicked to the curb when adults obsess over who wins and who loses.


 Assistant principal Catherine Bennett, left, and principal Kristin Strickland squirted sanitizer onto students' hands as they arrived for the first day of school at Arapaho Classical Magnet in the Richardson school district in August. Richardson ISD has seen some of the ugliest fights in North Texas over its mask mandate.(Elias Valverde II / Staff Photographer)

By Sharon Grigsby

9:54 AM on Oct 12, 2021

The result of this hostile state of affairs is that kids’ best interests get kicked to the curb as a loud minority of adults obsess over who is in control, who wins and who loses.

I fear even the latest hopeful headlines — that vaccines may soon be authorized for children age 5 and up — will serve only to again stir the controversy pot.