New CyFair School Board Member, Scott Henry, ran on an “anti-CRT” platform, now is spewing white supremacist propaganda from the dais, and targeting Black teachers.
The CyFair School Board had an election this last November. Living Blue in Texas warned a few of these candidates in October. Yet, the voter turnout for the CyFair ISD election was only 13.44%. As a result, in CyFair, the three most ignorant and hateful candidates won. To be clear, there were 322,790 registered voters eligible to vote in this race, yet only 43,392 ballots were cast.
The new school board members only will represent a small fraction of the community. Natalie Blasingame won with 12,682 votes, Scott Henry won with 17,032 votes, and Lucas Scanlon won 16,247 votes. Each of these candidates spoke out against their interpretation of CRT during the election, and they won the votes of the parents in CyFair ISD, who hold white supremacist ideology.
As a proud Texan who believes there is more good than evil, I find it hard to believe that white supremacy is a standard or mainstream ideology in the CyFair area. However, several members of the CyFair school board elected in November by less than 5% of the voting population indicate otherwise.
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]The School Board Meeting.
The last school board meeting held on 1/10/2022 was a session when the board got the results of the “Equity Audit.”
They also decided to revisit the “Resolution Against Racism” published in 2020.
The new anti-CRT board members proudly got to put their ignorance on display. But, unfortunately, it was a train wreck.
The entire board meeting is above, it’s four hours long, but I’ll give you the timestamps. There were a few public comments at the beginning of the video, some extremely racist. They are well worth a gander if you want to have a better idea of who voted for these so-called anti-CRT candidates.
The Equity Audit findings.
The presentation for the audit begins at 33:50. The CyFair ISD is 22% white, 19% Black, 45% Hispanic, and 9% Asian. Yet, 63% of their teachers are white.
Consistently, white students scored higher than Black and Hispanic students on ELA/Reading, Math, SAT Scores, AP Participation, and Graduation rate.
According to the audit results, Black students were disciplined at a much higher rate than any other group, which takes away learning time and impacts their academic potential. Black students makeup 19% of students but account for 40% of out-of-school suspensions.
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]The audit found unclear and inconsistent support for diverse student populations, a piecemeal approach to equity, and a lack of sustained equity capacity building.
In laymen’s terms, Black and brown students were not getting the same academic support as white students.
While the Equity Audit determined that CyFair ISD was not diverse and inclusive enough, the three new ISD candidates ran on a platform to block diversity and inclusion in CyFair ISD.
This puts CyFair ISD in an uncomfortable situation.
Scott Henry’s comments start at 49:17. Even though the entire video is above, embedded from YouTube, I’ve clipped his monologue, including what he said about Black teachers. I did this because he’s already put out a statement denying his statements, and it wouldn’t be a shocking event if the video disappeared.
Henry starts by saying he was a data guy and the data was skewed and cherry-picked. He said that the 40% suspensions, which are Black students, only represent 4% of the total Black student population, so it’s not that big of a number.
He then asked if the suspended students were interviewed or their parents were interviewed.
Why make that statement unless he was insinuating that there isn’t bias in the school and the suspended students were…what?
Bad kids? Had bad parents? What do you think he meant by that statement?
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]It was a racist assertion.
Henry then went on calling the audit a “pile of rubbish.” He said that 33% of Houston ISD left the district because of their diversity and inclusion program.
Then, Henry went on a small rant regarding data he looked up online and found from “Oregon Association of Scholars,” which talked about the high cost of diversity and inclusion.
I found the article which he was referring to here. This article was about the salaries of university employees in Oregon. Some key phrases which jumped out were:
- “a set of narrow principles”
- “undemocratic redistribution of power in society”
- “the destruction of public monuments in the name of racial justice”
To say this so-called article was biased is an understatement. The report was not only biased, but it was also bigoted and seeped in ignorant phrases such as “cultural Marxism.”
The article that Henry used to make his point (whatever that was) was written by a man named Dr. Bruce Gilley, who got famous from an essay published Third World Quarterly in 2017. The article was titled “The Case for Colonialism.” Check out the guy’s Twitter page. He’s some loony advocate for “Conservative Thought,” which is more of an oxymoron than a serious academic field. But I digress.
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]Scott Henry didn’t stop there.
Then, he shared a room full of parents and everyone watching the video at home with his new colleagues. He was very disappointed to learn that the CyFair administration put forth a speaker over the summer who mentioned “white privilege.”
Henry called for an investigation because he doesn’t think a speaker should say “white privilege” to CyFair ISD teachers. He alleges that when the teachers her the speaker say that, they walked out because they were embarrassed for their own race.
What type of altered Ku Klux reality is Scott Henry living in?
People who don’t believe white privilege exists, like Scott Henry, are usually the loudest and most obnoxious in the room. But, on the other hand, there’s never been a case on record where a person who didn’t believe in white privilege ran away in embarrassment because someone said a word that they didn’t believe in.
Then he said someone should be fired for bringing in a speaker who used the words “white privilege.”
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what white fragility looks like.
Henry went on, he wasn’t sure about the audit report, but he didn’t like it. He said verbatim, “We talk about opportunity for all, and I don’t like that.”
Scott Henry suggested that the board cuts bate and move on and doesn’t fix the problem identified in the audit.
In his conclusion, Henry said the CyFair ISD average for Black teachers was 13%, even though the statewide average was 10%. And that in Houston, they have 36%, Black teachers.
But Houston’s dropout rate was 4%, and he doesn’t want to be at 4%.
Then, he said, “I don’t want to be like HISD.” By wrapping up, he said that CyFair is a great place, and let’s not mess it up for everyone else. Who is everyone else? How would minority students mess up CyFair ISD by having equal academic rates of their white counterparts?
When a school board candidate runs on a platform of hate and racism; don’t be surprised when he takes office, if he spews hate and racism.
Out of 322,000 eligible voters, only 17,000 voted for this man. CyFair ISD is one of the most diverse school districts in Texas, and now the people making the decisions regarding these students are anti-diversity, anti-inclusion, and racist.
Not voting has consequences. And when you stay home because you don’t think a school board election is a big deal, you’re faced with the results of people with white supremacist ideology making educated decisions for your child. So, Texas, we have to do better with voter turnout, especially in local elections.
Many members of the community are now demanding Scott Henry resign. Living Blue in Texas also calls for Scott Henry to leave his position before hurting students in the district.
The CyFair community should stand up against the hate and intolerance sitting on the school board. Show up, have your voice heard. This is 2022, and Scott Henry’s ideology doesn’t represent Texas.
Remember to vote.
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