“We won’t stop fighting”: Community supports reassigned Western Hills principal
Community leaders gathered on Tuesday afternoon to provide an update on a lawsuit and continued calls of reinstatement on behalf of a Fort Worth principal who was reassigned after backlash over old social media posts about the Black Lives Matter movement and Sharia law.
A press conference was held at The Welman Project, located south of downtown. Community organizations such as Faith Power Alliance and FWISD4All spoke about Shayma Alzubi, who was reassigned last month after online backlash over her old social media posts.
The press conference concluded with organizers asking the public to join them at tonight’s school board meeting to make public comments in support of this lawsuit and to uplift the community’s demand for Alzubi’s reinstatement.
Last week, the Council on American-Islamic Relations filed a lawsuit on behalf of Alzubi, alleging that the Fort Worth ISD violated her First Amendment and equal protection rights under the U.S. Constitution, according to the complaint.
CAIR attorney Gadeir Abbas, who participated in the press conference through Zoom, said in a press release last week that this was the “clearest violation of the First Amendment our organization has seen all year.”
During the press conference, Abbas said the issue is not whether people agree with Alzubi, but whether she should be punished because people online don’t like her or her views.
“If a school administrator like Shayma can lose her hard-earned promotion because she has something to say about her faith or politics, then these school officials are sending a troubling message to every teacher, administrator, and public employee,” Abbas said. “That, despite what the Constitution says, would no longer, in this school district, be able to safely participate in public discourse.”
The lawsuit claims that Alzubi met with the school district officials on June 17 and was questioned about several photos. These included a selfie taken at a Texas Christian University football game and overlaid with the Palestinian flag. Another photo was overlaid with a Black Lives Matter filter in remembrance of Atatiana Jefferson, the Black woman who was fatally shot by a Fort Worth police officer in 2019. Another was photo showed Alzubi smiling at the Fort Worth Stock Yards during a visit from her family.
Abbas said what makes this a clear Constitutional violation is that the district gave in to the anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian hysteria of online hecklers who saw the announcement of Alzubi as the principal of Western Hills High School, and her being a visibly Arab Muslim woman and in charge of a high school.
Abbas said there is no timeline for when the investigation will conclude.
Ernie Moran, a Western Hills High School teacher who is also being investigated by the district for his social media posts, expressed his support for Alzubi as the kind of person he and others want leading their high school.
“I’m sure a lot of people were hoping that would be the end of it, that we would forget, that we would give up,” Moran said. “But we haven’t forgotten, we won’t stop fighting, we won’t give up, because the right thing to do is to reinstate her, and as Dr. (Martin Luther) King said, ‘The time is always right to do right.’”
Alexander Montalvo, a Fort Worth ISD parent and a local community organizer as part of FWISD4All, said he and his organization support the lawsuit and say Texas Education Agency’s takeover of Fort Worth ISD is a hostile takeover to dismantle public education in Fort Worth and throughout the state of Texas, and people must stand up against it.
“What this district is doing right now, at this moment, is eliminating our best talent to serve our kids,” Montalvo said.
“This is by design. This is intentional, and we must stop this.”
