Tag Archives: Fort Worth ISD

legal news, national news, State news

Transgender issue taking strange turn

Transgender-Bathroom-600x321

I am trying to understand this issue, but it’s escaping me … so far.

The Obama administration is going to send out a “directive” to public school systems throughout the country advising them against discriminating against “transgender” students.

It won’t have the “force of law,” according to federal officials. It will warn districts that they face being denied federal funds if they fail to comply with the directive.

Check this out:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/obama-administration-to-issue-decree-on-transgender-access-to-school-restrooms/ar-BBsZoch?li=BBnb7Kz

What is giving me so much grief?

It’s the “transgender” issue all by itself.

People who identify  with the opposite sex should be granted access to facilities set aside for the opposite sex, say proponents of transgender rights.

So, if I hear them correctly, a man with all the requisite male body parts can use a woman’s public restroom. Same for a woman who wants to use the men’s restroom.

Simply identifying with the other gender doesn’t require them to dress appropriately, as I understand it. Am I wrong about that?

How do we know who’s truly transgender, therefore, and who, um, isn’t?

Here in Texas, the lieutenant governor weighed in on this matter by ordering the Fort Worth Independent School District superintendent, Kent Scribner, to resign because of guidelines he wrote governing the issue — in that school district.

I’ve stated already that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick overstepped his bounds by meddling in a local issue. Scribner’s employment status should be determined exclusively by the school board that appointed him.

The federal “directive” seems to line up the same way. Have the federal courts ruled on the constitutionality of this matter? If so, then it got past me.

I’m trying to understand which rights are involved here, particularly as it pertains to individuals who haven’t yet been surgically altered to comply with their stated gender identity.

I have no issue, moreover, with those who’ve had the “gender reassignment” surgery and have been re-created into the appropriate gender. The medical procedure, by my way of thinking, removes the transgender confusion.

I’ve stated many times over many years that I don’t understand a lot of things.

This, most assuredly, is one of them.

My head hurts.

State news

Lt. Gov. Patrick renews inappropriate intervention

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Patrick-Scribner

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick hasn’t yet given up his interventionist strategy.

He’s continuing to insist that a local Texas school district superintendent step down because he’s doing something with which the lieutenant governor disagrees.

Patrick is off base.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/05/10/superintendent-wont-resign-over-transgender-bathro/

The issue is Fort Worth school superintendent Kent Scribner’s decision to allow transgender boys to use girls’ restrooms.

I am going to continue to insist that Patrick’s intervention flouts the traditional Republican philosophy that calls for greater local control  and fewer mandates handed down by the state.

Scribner today refused to quit, as Patrick has demanded. There’s no word yet from the elected school board that selected Scribner to run the school system on what it intends to do.

I’ll take a leap here and presume that Scribner is acting with the blessing of those who hired him.

Does that constitute a reason for the man who presides over the Texas Senate to weigh in on how a local school district should handle an internal administrative matter?

Not by a long shot.

Patrick went to Fort Worth today to say that Scribner broke state law by enacting the transgender policy. OK, so what if he did?

The school board should act independently of whatever the second-ranking state official thinks.

This issue is none of Lt. Gov. Patrick’s business.

 

political news, State news

Local control? Who needs it in Fort Worth?

dan patrick

What am I missing here?

Don’t statewide elected officials in Texas — all of whom are Republicans — tell us they prefer to let locals control their affairs? Get a load of this tidbit.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick wants Fort Worth Independent School District Superintendent Kent Scribner to resign. He’s demanding it, by golly.

Why? Scribner has drafted guidelines regarding transgender students in the district.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/05/09/patrick-wants-fort-worth-superintendent-resign/

According to Patrick, Scribner has gone off the rails with this transgender matter.

I believe I’ll set aside the correctness or wrongness of Scribner’s view on dealing with transgender students. My issue here is whether the state’s lieutenant governor should pressure a local school superintendent chosen by a duly elected local school board to quit his job.

Lt. Gov. Patrick should butt out. How a major Texas school district decides to run its affairs is solely the province of its elected trustees.

The Texas Tribune reports: “‘After less than a year as superintendent, Dr. Scribner has lost his focus and thereby his ability to lead the Fort Worth ISD,’ Patrick said in a statement. ‘He has placed his own personal political agenda ahead of the more than 86,000 students attending 146 schools in the district by unilaterally adopting ‘Transgender Student Guidelines.'”

Interesting, don’t you think?

Patrick said the superintendent has “placed his own personal political agenda ahead” of the needs of students. Isn’t that what Patrick is doing now, by demanding that a local school superintendent step down?

This issue should be decided by the constituents in Fort Worth who elect the school board, which in turn appoints the district’s chief executive officer.

Lt. Gov. Patrick’s primary job is to preside over the Texas Senate and to guide legislation through the Legislature’s upper chamber. It should not include telling local officials how to conduct their own business.