As reported by Jaden Edison and Ayden Runnels, writing for The Texas Tribune, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott doesn’t like the idea of school students protesting ICE’s tactics, as hundreds did last week in Tarrant County, Texas.
The Texas Education Agency on Tuesday warned school districts that they could be taken over by the state if they help facilitate students walking out of class to attend protests.
The agency released guidance after Gov. Greg Abbott directed Education Commissioner Mike Morath to investigate a social media post showing Austin Independent School District students participating in nationwide walkouts against the recent killings of several people by federal immigration officers. Austin school district police officers drove near some of the students during the Jan. 30 protest in downtown Austin.
The “guidance” warns that districts where students engage in what the state describes as “inappropriate” protests could face the loss of state funding; that teachers who encourage or facilitate such protests could lose their teaching licenses; and elected school boards could be replaced by state-appointed boards for “oversight.”
The TEA released the following rather Orwellian statement:
“Today, in classrooms across Texas, tomorrow’s leaders are learning the foundational, critical thinking skills and knowledge necessary for lifelong learning, serving as the bedrock for the future success of our state and nation,” the TEA’s press release said. “It is in this spirit that school systems have been reminded of their duty and obligation to ensure that their students are both safe and that they attend school, with consequences for students for unexcused absences.”
Evidently those highly coveted “critical thinking skills” don’t include thoughts that may conflict with the Trump administration’s priorities.
As pointed out by Matthew Sgroi, writing for the Fort Worth Report, students do not lose their First Amendment rights when they walk into a classroom.
That line comes from a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that remains the cornerstone of student-speech law. Under that case, schools can restrict student expression that causes a “material and substantial disruption” to operations — a standard that can include walking out of class, Stewart said.
That case involved students who wore black armbands in class to protest the Vietnam War. A principal had warned them they could be suspended for doing so, and the students were in fact suspended by the school. The Supreme Court held that merely “suspecting” that the armbands would cause disruption was insufficient to overcome the students’ First Amendment rights. As noted above, the standard as applied to the school was whether “material and substantial disruption” would result from the student’s conduct.
But what the state of Texas is doing here is more than simply threatening the students. They’re threatening the schools themselves, along with the educators who work in them. They’re threatening the school boards that their own citizens elected.
As Sgroi notes:
Texas officials are not simply telling administrators to mark students absent, they said. They are placing the threat — the loss of accreditation, funding and oversight — on the schools.
Sgroi interviewed Chip Stewart, a professor of journalism at Texas Christian University, for his article:
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“The state of Texas should not have the power to use what seems, on their face, to be legal means for the purpose of silencing students and lawful dissent,” Stewart said. “Threatening the funding of districts so the districts do it for them has real First Amendment issues as well.”
As Sgroi reports, students who walked out of the Tarrant county schools were aware they could be marked absent or otherwise disciplined. But they felt it was their duty to protest this administration’s unlawful actions insofar as they are ”affecting families in their communities.” As one student participant put it, “We shouldn’t have to face repercussions for speaking up about something that shouldn’t even be taking place in today’s world.”
Aren’t those exactly the kind of “foundational, critical thinking skills” that the state of Texas claims to want for “tomorrow’s leaders?”
Apparently not.
