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Forced Out by Right-Wing Official, Tulsa Superintendent Warns of Looming School Takeover
"This is about Ryan Walters using Tulsa and me as a political football and furthering his personal and political agenda," said outgoing Tulsa Public Schools Superintendent Deborah Gist.
Aug 25, 2023
Warning that Oklahoma's top school official has shown in his seven months in office that he is willing to use the state's schools and young students to advance his personal and political priorities, Tulsa's outgoing school superintendent said the right-wing state official could stage a school takeover like the one that took place earlier this year in Houston, Texas.
Deborah Gist resigned as Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) superintendent on Tuesday in hope that the Oklahoma superintendent of public instruction, Ryan Walters, would abandon his threat to take control of the district.
The Oklahoma Board of Education on Thursday evening voted to allow TPS to keep its accreditation "with deficiencies" that it was ordered to fix and to work with a new interim school superintendent to maintain control of the district, but at the meeting, Walters warned school officials, "Do not test me."
Gist expressed concern to NBC News that the district has been offered only a temporary reprieve from Walters' ongoing attacks on the school district, where more than three-quarters of students are economically disadvantaged and a majority are Black and Latino.
"This is about Ryan Walters using Tulsa and me as a political football and furthering his personal and political agenda," Gist told the outlet.
Walters has been focused on Tulsa, where just 13% of students met grade-level standards in 2022, since he took the state's top education position earlier this year, but at Thursday's meeting of the Board of Education, which he chairs, he made clear that his priorities lie not only in helping children who are struggling in school.
The superintendent railed against "gender fluidity" and called on schools to report their policies related to LGBTQ+ issues to the state to ensure they are not "indoctrinating" students.
He also accused the district of "funding some programs through the Chinese Communist government"—an allegation that stemmed, journalist David Heath said, from one Chinese-language teacher's attendance at an off-site program that was partially funded by China.
Walters has also previously called to restrict students' access to books with "sexual references" and to display the Ten Commandments in public schools.
Ryan Daly, the father of Tulsa Public School students, said at Thursday's meeting that Gist had been forced out "to save our district from what would surely be a bungled and disastrous takeover by someone who shows zero interest in our kids other than as a pawn for his political career."
Gist told NBC, "Unlike Ryan Walters, I'm not willing to put my own interest above the needs of the children of Tulsa."
By retaining its accreditation "with deficiencies," TPS was ordered to implement a professional development plan and a corrective plan for schools that have been graded "F" by the state, and to provide the board with monthly updates for the next four months.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said Walters' threatened takeover was part of an "anti-public school" agenda similar to the "extremist attack on local control" that took place in Houston earlier this year.
As Common Dreams reported in March, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's administration took over Houston's school district despite recent improvements in schools' performances. State-appointed managers can now control the district budget, curriculum and library book policies, collaborations with charter school networks, and other decisions.
Ahead of the school board meeting in Oklahoma on Thursday, Tulsa students staged a walkout to stand with the district and with Gist, who during her tenure has aligned with teachers' unions and called for more school funding and higher pay.
The Oklahoma Education Association (OEA), which represents teachers across the state, called the meeting "unnecessarily chaotic" and expressed solidarity with the district's teachers and students.
"Rhetoric and demands will not change the lives of students," said the OEA. "Those who do not spend time inside our schools may have a superficial understanding of what it actually means to educate and support a community."
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Texas GOP Passes Bills Allowing Abbott Appointee to Take Over Democratic County's Elections
"These bills are not about election reform," said one Harris County official. "They are entirely about suppressing voters' voices."
May 29, 2023
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo on Sunday warned that Republican state legislators had made a "shameless power grab" by passing a pair of bills aimed at allowing the state government to take control of elections in the Democratic stronghold, which includes Houston.
Senate Bill 1933 passed on Sunday as the state's legislative session came to a close, with lawmakers sending to GOP Gov. Greg Abbott's desk a bill that could give Secretary of State Jane Nelson—who was nominated by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate—the authority to run elections under circumstances in any county with more than 3.5 million residents.
The legislation was passed two days after Senate Bill 1750, which also applies to counties above that population threshold and would abolish the nonpartisan county elections administrator position.
Harris County, which President Joe Biden won by 13 points in 2020, is the only county is Texas with a population above 3.5 million, making both bills apply only to its elections.
Hidalgo denounced the legislation as two "election subversion bills" and warned that they will set a "dangerous precedent" for Republican governors who wish to take control of voting in heavily Democratic counties.
\u201cThe two Texas election subversion bills have now passed. They remove Harris County\u2019s nonpartisan Election Administrator and empower a Republican state official to micromanage elections in Texas\u2019 largest (Democratic) County. This is a shameless power grab and dangerous precedent.\u201d— Lina Hidalgo (@Lina Hidalgo) 1685331039
"These bills are not about election reform," said Hidalgo at a press conference last week, as the legislation was advancing. "They're not about improving voters' experience. They are entirely about suppressing voters' voices. The reasoning behind these bills is nothing but a cynical charade."
Hidalgo and other officials said at that event that they plan to file a lawsuit against Abbott's administration if the governor signs the bills into law. The Texas Constitution bars state lawmakers from passing laws that apply only to specific jurisdictions, but Republicans' use of a population threshold instead of naming Harris County itself in the legislation may be used at their defense if the lawsuit moves forward.
S.B. 1750 requires Harris County to change how its elections are overseen starting September 1, when Houston will be two months away from voting for its next mayor. Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth and County Assessor Ann Harris Bennett will oversee elections in the county starting in September.
If, after Hudspeth and Bennett take over, Nelson finds "good cause to believe that a recurring pattern of problems with election administration or voter registration exists in the county," the secretary of state would be permitted to take legal action to remove the two women from office and to install members of her staff in the county's election offices.
Republicans have said Harris County didn't have enough poll workers in the March 2022 primary and that polling locations opened late and ran out of ballots during the November 2022 general election.
"The fact of the matter is, there has not been a single successful lawsuit that proves that there were any kind of problems," said Hidalgo on Sunday. "And I hope that anybody talking about this understands that you are amplifying exaggerations and rumors when you repeat the excuses that these folks are using."
\u201cAs intriguing as an impeachment of the Texas Attorney General is, we can\u2019t lose sight of the fact that legislators in Texas are still trying to disenfranchise 4.7 million of their own constituents by taking over elections in Harris County. This fight is far from over.\u201d— Lina Hidalgo (@Lina Hidalgo) 1685308988
The legislation was passed two-and-a-half months after Abbott's administration announced its takeover of the Houston Independent School District, which has made recent improvements in academic performance that were achieved despite chronic underfunding.
"Houstonians," Emily Eby French, a staff voting rights attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, said last week, "will soon live in a different Texas than the rest of us."
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'Shameful Power Play': Texas Officials Move to Take Over Houston Schools
"This hostile takeover threatens to close schools, drive out teachers, and take away the power of local communities to elect their own leaders," said the ACLU of Texas.
Mar 16, 2023
Public education advocates on Wednesday were outraged as Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott's administration announced the state would take over the Houston Independent School District despite recent improvements in school performance that were achieved as the district remains chronically underfunded.
State education commissioner Mike Morath announced the takeover by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) in a letter to district officials, saying the decision had been made largely due to several years of low "accountability ratings" for a single high school—one of 50 high schools and 276 public schools in the city.
Phillis Wheatley High School, where 96% of students financially qualify for a free lunch program and the student body is made up almost entirely of people of color, was cited as a primary reason for the TEA's original attempt to take control of the district in 2019.
In 2015, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed a law mandating a state takeover of any school district where at least one campus was given a failing grade for student performance by the TEA for five consecutive years—a threshold Wheatley met in 2019.
HISD sued the state to block the 2019 takeover attempt, and has made strides in improving test scores since then. Wheatley earned a C grade from TEA in 2022, and the school district reduced the number of schools that earned a D or F—50 in 2019 compared to just 10 last year. According to the Texas Tribune, 94% of schools in the state's largest school district were given an A, B, or C grade last year, while HISD earned a B.
"The test scores have risen, but they're still trying to take over after we have worked so hard to accomplish that," Nyla McCullum, who is set to graduate from Wheatley this spring, told the Tribune.
The improvements have been achieved even as the state of Texas has spent more than $3,000 less per pupil on public school funding, according to the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University. HISD teachers earn nearly $1,000 less on average than other educators in Texas, teaching in a district where more than 78% of students are economically disadvantaged. More than 61% of HISD students are Latino and 22% are Black.
Despite the improvements in academic performance, the Republican-led state legislature passed education laws in recent years clearing the way for the takeover to move forward.
"The state takeover of HISD is not about public education—it's about political control of a 90% Black and brown student body in one of the country's most diverse cities," said the ACLU of Texas. "And it's not what our students and teachers need."
Under the takeover, which will officially take effect in June, the TEA will replace Superintendent Millard House II, who joined the district in 2021, and will appoint a "board of managers" in place of the district's elected board of trustees. The board will be in control of the district for at least two years, according to the Associated Press.
"The state-appointed managers will hold immense power," reportedHouston Public Media. "They can control the budget, school closures, collaborations with charter networks, policies around curriculum and library books, as well as hiring or firing the superintendent, among other important decisions."
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten called the takeover "a shameful power play" with the ultimate aim of weakening public schools.
The takeover comes as Republicans in Missouri are pushing a proposal to place St. Louis police under the control of the governor and right-wing lawmakers in Mississippi are advocating for state control of the police, courts, and the water system in Jackson, which has a higher percentage of Black residents than any other major U.S. city.
The Houston-based advocacy group Community Voice for Public Education called the takeover "an irresponsible experiment that will disenfranchise Houston voters, lead to skyrocketing teacher turnover, school closures, and endless [standardized testing] prep."
A national study in 2021 found that state takeovers of schools—which have also happened in cities including Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Detroit—did not improve academic performance. The 35 school districts the researchers examined "generally saw dips in English test scores," reportedChalkbeat, while "in math, there were no clear effects at all."
Schools in New Orleans and Camden, New Jersey also saw the number of teachers of color decline after state takeovers.
"This hostile takeover threatens to close schools, drive out teachers, and take away the power of local communities to elect their own leaders," said the ACLU of Texas.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said in a statement that the TEA and Abbott's government "deserves an F on how they have handled this process up to this point."
"No community engagement, no engagement with the parents, no information being provided to the students, dropping this in the middle of spring break," Turner said.
"What other resources are you bringing to the school district that's going to have a different outcome?" he added. "What the state is saying [is], 'We are going to commit to you that there will be no failing schools in HISD.' What additional resources will you be bringing to HISD?"
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