Where are you from, atlaw? Texas Eduction Agency employees do not set any sort of policy or curriculum - good or bad. Our elected officials do. We elect the Board of Education for a reason. We certainly don’t hire employees them to use our resources for their own agenda or to criticize the people we elect.
Texas is a “right to work” state. That’s one of those political “newspeak” terms. What it really means is a right to hire and fire on the part of the employers.
If a State employee wants to keep her job, she won’t publicly say her department doesn’t have any real leadership. She won’t complain about being told to relate official BOE policy rather than giving her own interpretation. She won’t make waves just after a new BOE chair and new director are named, just after the whole of the State is getting used to the new Legislative mandate for ethics statement, and - most importantly - just before a hearing that’s going to be controversial enough.
And she will know enough to understand that last sentence.
Remember Dover?
Houston, Texas. You?
Texas Eduction Agency employees do not set any sort of policy or curriculum - good or bad. Our elected officials do. We elect the Board of Education for a reason. We certainly don’t hire employees them to use our resources for their own agenda or to criticize the people we elect.
Well, right. But that leaves the necessary conclusion that it is the current policy of our elected Board members to permit (or perhaps encourage) the teaching of religion in science classrooms. I hadn't heard that before the firing of Comer, and now I want to know every jot and tittle about that policy.
Indeed, I'd like to know precisely what the state policy is, and where I can find it. But oddly enough, the only thing our elected officials will actually say is that Comer violated a policy of "neutrality." What in the heck does that mean?
Is it also state policy to be "neutral" on the teaching of astrology, a flat earth, a geocentric solar system, and Pat Robertson's god-directed hurricanes in public school science classes?
I think the citizens of this state have the right to see the actual policy -- in detail, and in writing. After all, it's that very policy that led to the canning of the Director of Science Curriculum for the offense of advocating the teaching of science in science classrooms.
Texas is a “right to work” state. That’s one of those political “newspeak” terms. What it really means is a right to hire and fire on the part of the employers.
So? Texas' right to work laws aren't as sweeping or universal as you make them out be, but political appointees aren't even affected by them in any event. Political appointees can be, and are, regularly canned for purely political reasons. But that's not the issue. The issue is the right of the citizens of this state to know what in the living daylights our elected officials are up to.
I, like you, am a voter in this state, and when I see the Director of Science Curriculum canned by elected Board members for advocating the teaching of science in science classrooms, I have every right to question it, to complain about it, to advocate my position that it is the purest nonsense, and to adjust my vote accordingly.
You're not suggesting, are you, that citizens of this state must also be "neutral" on whether state funded public school science classes should teach a narrow and exclusive religious doctrine or teach science?
If a State employee wants to keep her job, she won’t publicly say her department doesn’t have any real leadership.
Probably right in most cases, although occasionally the "leadership" pays attention and shapes up. That said, I admire someone who puts sane policy ahead of exclusive self-interest in "keeping their job."
She won’t complain about being told to relate official BOE policy rather than giving her own interpretation.
She certainly will if the policy is hogwash and she has any integrity at all. The job be damned.
You seem to think this whole thing is just about whether the Board had a "right" to can Comer. Of course they did. But their ridiculous reason for doing so shouldn't go unreported or unnoticed by the citizenry, and Comer can't (and shouldn't) be told to just shut up about it. It was a bad decision, and the citizens of this state have every right to hear all about it and question the living daylights out of the idiocy of our elected officials in doing it and condoning it.
She won’t make waves just after a new BOE chair and new director are named, just after the whole of the State is getting used to the new Legislative mandate for ethics statement, and - most importantly - just before a hearing that’s going to be controversial enough.
And like a good horse on a lead, she will go silently along as a ridiculous policy leads the state into yet another losing litigation showdown over teaching the Bible in science classes.
To the contrary. She made waves, and I'm glad she did. I want to know what my elected officials are up to in the back room, and I now have a pretty good clue.
As an aside, do you have suggestions about that "creationism" curriculum I mentioned in my last post?