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December 27th, 2022:

Department of Education investigating removal of LGBTQ books from Texas school library

Good.

The U.S. Education Department’s civil rights enforcement arm has launched an investigation into a North Texas school district whose superintendent was secretly recorded ordering librarians to remove LGBTQ-themed library books.

Education and legal experts say the federal probe of the Granbury Independent School District — which stemmed from a complaint by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and reporting by NBC NewsProPublica and The Texas Tribune — appears to be the first such investigation explicitly tied to the nationwide movement to ban school library books dealing with sexuality and gender.

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights notified Granbury school officials on Dec. 6 that it had opened the investigation following a July complaint by the ACLU, which accused the district of violating a federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender. The ACLU complaint was based largely on an investigation published in March by NBC News, ProPublica and the Tribune that revealed that Granbury’s superintendent, Jeremy Glenn, instructed librarians to remove books dealing with sexual orientation and people who are transgender.

“I acknowledge that there are men that think they’re women and there are women that think they’re men,” Glenn told librarians in January, according to a leaked recording of the meeting obtained, verified and published exclusively by the news outlets. “I don’t have any issues with what people want to believe, but there’s no place for it in our libraries.”

Later in the meeting, Glenn clarified that he was specifically focused on removing books geared toward queer students: “It’s the transgender, LGBTQ and the sex — sexuality — in books,” he said, according to the recording.

The comments, combined with the district’s subsequent decision to remove dozens of library books pending a review, fostered a “pervasively hostile” environment for LGBTQ students, the ACLU wrote in its complaint. Chloe Kempf, an ACLU attorney, said the Education Department’s decision to open the investigation into Granbury ISD signals that the agency is concerned about what she described as “a wave” of anti-LGBTQ policies and book removals nationally.

“In this case it was made very clear, because the superintendent kind of said the quiet part out loud,” Kempf said in an interview. “It’s pretty clear that that kind of motivation is animating a lot of these policies nationwide.”

An Education Department spokesperson confirmed the investigation and said it was related to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits schools from discriminating on the basis of sex, gender and sexual orientation. The Office for Civil Rights doesn’t comment on pending investigations, the spokesperson said.

If the investigation confirms violations of students’ rights in Granbury schools, the agency can require the district to make policy changes and submit to federal monitoring.

[…]

Education and legal experts said the Education Department’s decision to open an investigation in Granbury is significant because it sets up a test of a somewhat novel legal argument by the ACLU: the idea that book removals themselves can create a hostile environment for certain classes of students.

“It’s certainly the first investigation I’ve seen by the agency testing that argument in this way,” said W. Scott Lewis, a managing partner at TNG, a consulting firm that advises school districts on complying with federal civil rights laws.

The ACLU of Texas made similar legal arguments in another civil rights complaint filed last month against the Keller Independent School District in North Texas in response to a policy banning any books that mention “gender fluidity.” The Education Department has yet to decide whether to open an investigation in Keller, Kempf said.

Jonathan Friedman, the director of free expression and education at the nonprofit PEN America, which has tracked thousands of school book bans since last year, said the same legal argument could be made in districts across the country where parents, school board members and administrators have expressed anti-LGBTQ motivations.

“It’s not uncommon to see people explicitly saying that they want to remove LGBTQ books because they believe they are indoctrinating students,” said Friedman, who cited a case in Florida in which a teacher called for the removal of a children’s picture book about two male penguins because, she said, it promoted the “LGBTQ agenda.”

Granbury isn’t the only North Texas school district facing federal scrutiny.

The Office for Civil Rights over the past year has opened five investigations into allegations of discrimination at the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, a wealthy Fort Worth suburb that has been at the center of the national political fight over the ways schools address racism, gender and sexuality. If the Education Department finds Carroll students’ rights have been violated, experts said, the federal agency could require the district to implement the same types of diversity and inclusion training programs that conservative activists have fought to block in Southlake.

Part of the problem here is that Granbury ISD just elected a couple of self-righteous censors to its Board of Trustees, which makes this a bigger political issue. Maybe the voters there will get tired of this fight, or at least of the expense of fighting it, and start to fix their mistakes in the next election. That’s far from a guarantee, of course – it could easily get worse instead. Ultimately, changing hearts and minds is the best long-term solution, but in the meantime doing whatever it takes to protect the rights of the marginalized kids is paramount.

I’m glad to see this, and I absolutely hope these investigations will happen in the other named districts and more, but I fear that the penalties that the DOE is able to impose will be inadequate. Part of that problem is that often the biggest stick that the feds can wield is the threat of withholding funding, but doing that ultimately just hurts the people who most need the help, and doesn’t really affect the politicians in question. There are already plenty of local and state officials who are happy to defy the feds on all kinds of civil rights matters, which they can do because they have voter support and no fear of the potential consequences. The days when officials could be shamed into compliance, or at least into reverting to normative behavior, are over. We need to have a conversation about better and more effective ways to get the modern day segregationists to comply with federal law.

Ike Dike authorization officially passed

Took a roundabout route to get there, but here we are.

With the stroke of a pen, President Joe Biden authorized a $34 billion proposal to build a massive storm surge protection system on the Texas coast and around Galveston Bay.

Biden on Friday signed the National Defense Authorization Act, a $858 billion spending package that includes raises for troops and aid to Ukraine.

Buried deep in the bill was a single line that opens the door for one of the largest public infrastructure projects in U.S. history to be built in Texas. The defense act authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Texas Coastal Protection and Restoration project, which has locally become better known as the Ike Dike.

The $34 billion plan is a proposal to build a system of seagate, levees and dunes in an around Galveston Bay to block storm surge from rushing in from the Gulf of Mexico and into the bay and Houston Ship Channel.

[…]

Once fully constructed, the Army Corps estimates the project will save $2.2 billion in storm damages every year, though how useful the gates will be when they are complete — or over the half-century or more that the structure is expected to operate — remains to be seen. Like any other levees or dams, the barrier could fall short or fail to hold back the biggest storm surges. The project doesn’t address the kind of the rain-caused flooding that happened during Hurricane Harvey.

The defense bill doesn’t authorize funding of the project. Congress will need to separately authorize $21.4 billion for the project sometime in the future, while a new state-created taxing entity, the Gulf Coast Protection District, will have to contribute about $13 billion to the project, according to estimates published in the defense act.

“Federal authorization of the Coastal Texas Program represents a momentous step forward for this critical effort, over a decade in the making, to protect the communities, economy, and vital ecosystems of the Texas coast from the devastating effects of coastal storm surge,” said Michel Bechtel, president of the protection district’s board of directors.

As noted in an earlier story, a standalone version of the Ike Dike bill had passed both the House and the Senate earlier in the year, but there were differences between the two that were not reconciled in time for that bill to pass. So this is what we get, basically the same thing just done in a weird way. I feel confident that funding will follow – the state has already created one funding mechanism, but federal dollars will be needed – and from there it’s just a matter of how long it takes to actually build something. Which, to be clear, is probably on a 20-year timeline even if everything goes more or less as planned. So while one door is finally closed, there’s still a long way to go.

It’s time to recycle your Christmas tree

If you’re in the city of Houston and you want your tree to get mulched, here’s how to do it.

Houston’s Solid Waste Management Department (SWMD) encourages residents to recycle live Christmas trees after the holidays. The holiday season is filled with the purchase of live Christmas trees by families which can be repurposed for mulch or other landscape materials.

On Tuesday, December 27, 2022, SWMD will open 24 residential Christmas tree drop-off recycling locations throughout Houston through Tuesday, January 31, 2023. Please find the locations listed below.

To recycle a live Christmas tree, residents must remove all lights, wire, tinsel, ornaments, nails, stands, and other non-organic decorative materials. Trees that are flocked, artificial, or painted will NOT be recycled. Your scheduled junk waste collection day can be used to dispose of any artificial trees.

Additionally, recycling is also available for live Christmas trees through the city’s yard waste curbside collection program.

Recycling trees will result in rich mulch that will be available in bags or bulk directly from Living Earth and other local area retailers.

Save the Date: Friday, January 6, 2023, and join Mayor Sylvester Turner, Council Members, SWMD, along with representatives from Reliant Energy, Living Earth, and the Houston Parks & Recreation Department for the 32nd Annual Christmas Tree Mulching event, at City Hall Reflection Pool, 11:30 a.m.

Locations and times are listed at the link. There’s almost certainly one not far from you. The regular neighborhood depositories and the Westpark consumer recycling center are included. Don’t throw your tree out, take it in to be mulched instead.