A North Texas public school district's leadership voted to remove itself from the state's association for school boards. | Dreamstime
A North Texas public school district's leadership voted to remove itself from the state's association for school boards. | Dreamstime
Carroll Independent School District (CISD) trustees voted to relinquish their body's membership with the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) on Monday, Dallas-Fort Worth-based media outlets reported.
CISD, which serves much of the city of Southlake and portions of northwest Grapevine, far northern Colleyville and eastern Westlake, elected to sever ties with the TASB over its diversity and inclusion policies, per a report from Dallas-Fort Worth FOX affiliate KTVT.
KTVT reported that the CISD school board voted 5-1 to depart the organization next year.
According to the station, Texas Republican leaders urged districts in writing earlier this year to leave the TASB in response to what they assert are “woke” policies.
State Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Waxahachie), who represents Ellis County and parts of Henderson County, said that CISD is the first to leave, but it won’t be the last, Dallas-Fort Worth ABC affiliate WFAA reported.
Harrison claimed the TASB, a nonpartisan body, isn’t adhering to its mission of “promoting academic excellence,” WFAA reported.
The lawmaker, who won a special election in 2021 to replace Jake Ellzey as the officeholder for Texas House District 10 after the latter won a race to fill the congressional seat of the late Ron Wright, said the TASB has angered conservative parents.
"Their tax money is being weaponized against them, it's being weaponized against their children and it's being weaponized against their values by funding an organization that is working to push dangerous woke ideology on school children across the state of Texas," Harrison told WFAA.
Per KTVT, school board president Cameron Bryan and other trustees shared Harrison’s sentiments.
"To continue to send our community’s taxpayer dollars to an organization that pushes the very ideology that our community overwhelmingly rejected at the ballot box in May 2021, November 2021, then again in May 22 would be disingenuous at the very least to those who entrusted us to represent them," Bryan said in the report.
The end of CISD’s TASB membership will be made official at the end of the current academic year, the station reported.
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