Houston ISD’s state-appointed board of managers voted unanimously Thursday to adopt the state-developed Bluebonnet curriculum, which has drawn controversy for its inclusion of Bible teachings but could bring the district millions in new state funding.
The move to adopt the state’s curriculum comes after the district invested heavily in developing its own instructional materials through its 120-person curriculum department.
Bluebonnet is a suite of state-owned free instructional materials and comes with extra financial incentives. HISD expects to receive $3.3 million from the state by adopting the curriculum for kindergarten through fifth grades.
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Experts say the Bluebonnet reading curriculum places an outsized emphasis on Christianity and puts teachers in a difficult situation of being asked questions about religion that they may not know how to answer. Some districts have avoided adopting Bluebonnet because of the printing requirement or because, they said, the materials were not rigorous enough.
Members of Houston’s Jewish community are “incensed at what’s about to happen,” said Joshua Fixler, a rabbi and public school parent.
“I’ve been on the phone and on text message all day with parents from the Jewish community who are furious,” Fixler said. “Furious that HISD is considering this, furious that they did it in a way that doesn’t give us opportunity for public comment. Who are writing emails to the members of the Board of Managers, and who are planning to show up at tonight’s meeting in protest, even if it’s too late to sign up to testify.”
Fixler said there’s a difference between teaching about religion and teaching religion.
“It is appropriate to talk about religion in age-appropriate ways, mostly with older students, high school students, in the context of teaching about world religions,” Fixler said, adding that he does not believe the solution is to supplement the Christian text with other texts. “Because I don’t believe that it’s possible to create a curriculum, from this curriculum, that would truly be reflective of the diversity of religious perspectives that are in our public schools.”
He said he has heard discussions in other districts about removing some of “the problematic passages.”
“But there are overtly problematic passages, and there are subtly problematic passages. And I think it would be impossible for HISD to take this curriculum and turn it into something that isn’t a violation of students’ religious liberties,” Fixler said.
Priscilla Midani, a parent of a rising first grader at Travis Elementary, said parents at the school are concerned about the adoption of Bluebonnet materials on the grounds of separation of church and state.
“We just stand for all children, and we want their right to a fair and neutral education to be granted,” Midani said.
Midani also pointed to errors throughout the curriculum. Texas will pay up to $8.4 million to fix thousands of errors in Bluebonnet, and the state signed a contract in May to cover the replacement and disposal of materials including books, worksheets and teacher guides after identifying more than 4,200 errors, ranging from missing commas to incorrect answer keys and factual errors.
“The lack of transparency and bad timing” of the vote also sparked concern, Midani said. Many families are away for the summer. The district will also consider approving a $2 billion budget five days before the end of the fiscal year and five contracts that would outsource day-to-day operations at several district schools.
See here for a bit of background on the Bluebonnet curriculum; Ginger mentioned it a few times as well. The gall of these unelected non-representatives carrying this out, with no notice and no opportunity for public discussion, I’m trying not to sputter.
I’m just going to say this, to Fort Worth and Lake Worth and Connally and Beaumont and hopefully not Austin and Spring ISDs: The Mike Miles minion who gets appointed to run your school district without your consent will probably do a decent job of raising the test scores in the schools they were brought in to improve. How long that lasts, and whether it ever amounts to more than just higher STAAR scores are a different matter, but those scores will improve. Make the best you can of that, because in the end you are not getting your district back. You’ll be getting whatever the unaccountable tyrant who can do anything they want to your district back. Speaking as someone whose kids thankfully had minimal overlap with this bullshit, it will make you very angry. I hope you will have a better idea of what to do with and about that anger than I have had.
It’s even more infuriating when you recall that the state deliberately causes all this by depriving the urban school districts of needed funding in the first place.