Bills now before the Texas Senate K-12 education committee would end Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies and eliminate employees in public schools, from kindergarten through 12th grade.
Education Committee chair Republican Sen. Brandon Creighton authored Senate Bill 12.
“When did we decide that taxpayer funded classrooms should be places for political activism instead of education?” he said during a hearing Thursday. “Research from Harvard, MIT, many different universities across the country… have clearly shown that DEI initiatives do not achieve their intended goals. Instead, they backfire, furthering division.”
Creighton also authored SB17, passed in the 2023 legislative session, that ended DEI programs and personnel in public colleges and universities. Schools were required to cut staff and end initiatives that addressed historical inequities in the workplace and academia.
Creighton, Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican lawmakers said such policies were illegal and harmful to students.
Pflugerville ISD high school junior, Kyra Newton, a witness before the committee, disagreed.
“I have seen firsthand how crucial equitable access and care are for Americans who are struggling,” Kyra said. “It affects my first-generation friends who rely on specialized support just to understand what they are being taught in Texas schools.”
An analysis of SB17 by the Race and Equity Center at the University of Southern California found the ban “eliminates critical tools for addressing disparities in campus racial climate.”
Another bill before the committee, SB1565, would add procedures for parents to file grievances against districts that don’t comply with the DEI ban. The bill — which Creighton authored — requires trustees to ensure prompt responses to grievances received by the board and allows parents to file grievances multiple times, with rights to appeal.
As senators were debating these issues in Austin, the federal Department of Education announced its own anti-DEI portal.
The department under the Trump administration launched the “End DEI” website for parents, students, teachers and others to “submit reports of discrimination based on race or sex in publicly funded K-12 schools.”
President Donald Trump last month gave schools and colleges two weeks to get rid of DEI programs or lose federal funding.
‘Parental rights’
Creighton’s SB12 was dubbed a “Parental Bill of Rights.” It went before the committee Thursday as part of a slate of similar bills, including one to reinstate Texas’ opt-in policy for sex education in schools, which expired in August.
Lawmakers on the education committee also heard testimony on Senate Bill 13, authored by Republican Sen. Angela Paxton. The bill creates appointed, parental library advisory councils for library books.
The library council would exist in addition to a district’s librarians, who typically evaluate and choose books for libraries.
SB13 says a district “must consider the recommendations of the local advisory council” before adding or removing any library book.
Laney Hawes, co-founder of the Texas Freedom to Read Project, fears SB13 could put too much power in the hands of a few parents instead of professionals, like librarians.
“It is making a librarian’s job obsolete and putting it in the hands of political appointees” with their own political ideologies, Hawes told KERA. “And that is what is the most concerning. This handful of parents that are handpicked get to then have the final say on the books that can be in school libraries. It is going to be devastating for a lot of districts.”
The bills are still pending in committee.
Bill Zeeble is KERA’s education reporter. Got a tip? Email Bill at bzeeble@kera.org. You can follow him on X @bzeeble.
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