Last night’s State Board of Education elections marked another big step toward an end to the culture wars in Texas public school classrooms. With the defeat of incumbent Charlie Garza, R-El Paso, the state board’s faction of far-right ideologues should be smaller next year than at any time since before the 2006 elections.
Zooming out a bit, here’s the big picture that emerged from this year’s elections:
- Garza lost to challenger Martha Dominguez, D-El Paso, after just two years on the state board.
- Educator Sue Melton of Waco defeated longtime incumbent Gail Lowe — a leading member of the board’s far-right faction and a former board chair — in the Republican primary this past spring.
- Longtime religious-right firebrand Terri Leo chose not to seek re-election after it became clear that she would face a very tough challenge in the GOP primary.
Add that to dramatic shifts on the board after the last election cycle in 2010:
- Thomas Ratliff of Mount Pleasant knocked off former board chairman and arch-creationist Don McLeroy in the Republican primary.
- Cynthia Dunbar, one of the far right’s most divisive voices on the board, chose not to seek re-election that same year.
Consider that after the 2006 elections, the board’s faction of rigidly right-wing ideologues had swelled to seven. To win on any given vote, they merely needed to win over one wavering board member — and, too often, they succeeded. As readers of this blog know well, from 2008 to 2010 the state board lurched from one “culture war” battle to another. The board passed new science curriculum standards intended to undermine instruction on evolution and climate change. Board members rammed through passage of heavily politicized social studies standards that promoted right-wing heroes like Joseph McCarthy and called into question whether separation of church and state is a key constitutional principle. They made it more likely that school districts will develop slipshod, blatantly sectarian Bible classes in public schools. And they deliberately promoted divisions between Christians, Muslims and other people of faith in our diverse state.
Since then, however, we’ve seen five religious-righters go down to defeat or choose not to seek re-election. This represents important and hard-fought progress.
But make no mistake: the board’s religious-righters will still be strong enough to keep the culture wars simmering and draw embarrassing national attention to Texas. Last night’s elections added a likely member to the board’s far-right faction — Marty Rowley, R-Amarillo, has made numerous public comments indicating that he stands with that faction. With his election to the board, the creationist bloc will have at least four members, including incumbents David Bradley, R-Beaumont Buna, Ken Mercer, R-San Antonio; and Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands, who also serves as board chair. It’s possible that one or two other newly elected board members could also join that bloc. We’ll find out for sure next year, when the board is scheduled to adopt new science textbooks. And the debate over new social studies textbooks follows in 2014. So there are high-stakes battles on the horizon.
The Texas Freedom Network will continue to lead the charge against far-right extremism on the State Board of Education. But for now, we should all take a moment to celebrate another important step in our long march to get politics out of Texas classrooms.
TFN President Kathy Miller released this statement to the news media today:
“We can be cautiously optimistic that a board with so many new faces will learn from the self-inflicted embarrassments of recent years and focus on giving students an education that truly prepares them to succeed in college and the workforce. An early test will be the adoption of new science textbooks next year, when the board will have to choose between listening to the recommendations of teachers and scholars or to ideologues who are more interested in fighting the culture wars.”
New board members:
District 1: Martha Dominguez, D-El Paso
District 2: Ruben Cortez, D-Brownsville
District 3: Marisa Perez, D-San Antonio
District 6: Donna Bahorich, R-Houston
District 10: Tom Maynard, R-Florence
District 12: Geraldine “Tincy” Miller, R-Dallas (Returning after having lost re-election in 2010)
District 14: Sue Melton, R-Waco
District 15: Marty Rowley, R-Amarillo
Returning board members:
District 4: Lawrence Allen, D-Fresno
District 5: Ken Mercer, R-San Antonio
District 7: David Bradley, R-Beaumont
District 8: Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands
District 9: Thomas Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant
District 11: Pat Hardy, R-Fort Worth
District 13: Mavis Knight, D-Dallas
We have a great deal of work to do.
I’ll be paying attention to Dist. 10, Tom Maynard as to which side he’s on.
It is very unfortunate that Donna Bahorich defeated Traci Jensen in District 6. Bahorich was endorsed by far-right SBOE member Barbara Cargill and has worked closely with Dan Patrick. I predict she will lean towards the far-right faction. Like several of them, she home-schools her kids! (this should disqualify them from serving on the SBOE in my opinion). Traci, by contrast, had vowed to fight the extremists on the board and her son is in public school. Her defeat was a real disappointment.
I agree with Nancy completely. All “donna4america” needed was an “R” next to her name. A sad day for public education in Texas.
Posted on MustReadTexas.com
Still a lot of work, but picked a few off.
I think you’re overstating the gains. As I read it, in this cycle we replaced one crazy Republican (Gail Lowe) with a sane Republican (Sue Melton), a sane Republican (Bob Craig) with a crazy (Marty Rowley), a crazy (Charlie Garza) with a sane Democrat (Martha Dominguez), and a sane Republican (George Clayton) with an iffy Republican (Tincy Miller), plus some sane Dems replacing sane Dems and sane R’s replacing sane R’s.
In the last SBOE, the split was 9 sane (4D, 5R) and 6 crazy (all R). In the new one, it’s 9 sane (5D, 4R) 5 crazy (R), and one iffy (R). That’s a net shift of one vote from crazy to iffy. That’s an improvement, but not a very big one.
At the same time, three effective voices for sanity (Berlanga, Sato and Farney) have been replaced by inexperienced people. Cortez, Perez and Maynard will probably be OK, but you can’t be sure until they actually start their work.
I didn’t count Bahorich replacing Leo, because I figured that was replacing one crazy with another. Is that right?
My current best Pythonesque guess:
Very Silly Party – Bahorich*, Rowley*, Mercer
Silly Party – Bradley, Cargill
Slightly Silly Party – Maynard*, Miller, Melton*, Hardy
Slightly Sensible Party – Ratliff
Sensible Party – Dominguez, Cortez, Perez, Allen, Knight
I’ve marked with an asterisk those where I expect to have my assessment shift, based on actual performance.
Marty Rowley in District 15 is a setback for the good guys. He’s going to be a problem.
Praise “Bob”
Hopeful…………..
Unfortunately Ken Mercer won.
I count six Tea Party (TP) Radical Religious-Right Reactionary Regressive Republicans on the new SBOE: Cargill, Mercer, Bradley, Bahorich, Maynard, and Rowley. These six are Creationists, climate change deniers, Christian nationalists and American Exceptionalists, oppose teaching about contraception, evolution, and accurate American history. I believe Tincy Miller and Pat Hardy would vote with these six on keeping the distorted history standards, the abstinence-only health education standards, and adopting instructional materials that conform to these corrupt standards, because they have in the past and have stated their intention of doing so in the future, so our hope for accurate and reliable health education and history, government, and economics instruction will be sorely tested.
But both Miller and Hardy have historically supported good science standards and instructional materials; they are both traditional Christian Creationists, but unlike the TP folk, Tincy and Pat quite correctly don’t feel they have the right to force their religious beliefs on Texas biology students using the power of their elected office. Both also are informed about the necessity for accurate science instruction for the success of the Texas economy, which necessarily relies on STEM subjects, and wish to keep our economy strong. The other six will not be so scrupulous.
So on science instructional materials adoption, I hope that Miller and Hardy join Ratliff, Melton, and the five Democrats to form a nine-vote majority to protect science instruction in Texas next year. I have no such sanguine hopes for the adoption of social studies materials in 2014: I fear that an eight-vote TP majority will force the publishers to make changes in history books if they don’t already strictly conform to the corrupt social studies standards passed in 2010.
I expect an enormous amount of pre-censorship (or self-censorship) about evolution from publishers next year in their submitted science instructional materials. The text they will use will qualify, equivocate about, misrepresent, and thus weaken modern biology instruction in ways that will confuse and mislead students, but not in ways that are obviously unconstitutional and therefore illegal. These textual modifications are a cynical attempt by publishers to avoid controversy and make their materials easier to adopt. Of course, the opposite will occur, but that doesn’t mean things will come out for the best. If there is pre-censorship, it will be very difficult to reverse and I am not optimistic.
It is exactly 10 to 5, as always. Nothing will change. This is Texas, love or leave!
Division and revenge is from Obama
Thank god Cynthia Dunbar quit. She’s outdated and retardedly scary.