Where are the grown-ups in Fort Worth school district fight over race, mask lawsuit?

If children are watching adults fighting over race, face masks and other controversies plaguing the Fort Worth school district, what they’re seeing contradicts the lessons they learned in kindergarten.

You remember: Don’t call others by mean names. Play fair. Treat strangers with respect, even if you’re wary of them.

Instead, what we’ve seen are nasty exchanges, charges of racism, vulgar insults, and unleashing armies of online trolls to make life unpleasant for someone over disagreements in public policy.

The fight, or at least this version of it, drew to a close Wednesday with Norma Garcia-Lopez resigning from the Fort Worth ISD’s Racial Equity Committee, which she co-chaired. A district spokeswoman confirmed that Garcia-Lopez had left the post, which is a volunteer position.

The series of escalating ugliness began in August, when four Fort Worth ISD parents sued the district over its face mask requirements. Garcia-Lopezidentified the parents online and invited supporters to “do your thing.”

She shared contact information about at least two of them and left one a voicemail containing insults, profanities and accusations of racism. One of the parents, Kerri Rehmeyer, said she got harassing calls at work.

Soon enough, Garcia-Lopez was targeted in return, she said, with callers making racist and fat-shaming comments. Before she resigned, several fellow members urged the district to publicly support Garcia-Lopez and denounce the insults aimed her way.

Both sides have charged the other with “doxxing,” or releasing personal information on the internet, often to facilitate harassment. But Rehmeyer put herself in the public eye with her lawsuit, and Garcia-Lopez was a public figure via her service on the FWISD committee.

And in the end, it doesn’t matter what you call it. It’s wrong, especially in a matter of debate in the public square. Encouraging people to bombard someone with phone calls, negative reviews unrelated to the issue and, especially, threats is beyond the pale for anyone.

We’re well past expecting grace or goodwill in such disputes, but is it too much to ask that our education debates be conducted with a basic level of civility? How can we resolve these difficult issues without a higher level of discourse?

The parents’ lawsuit was regrettable, especially at the time. The coronavirus delta variant was raging, and schools needed flexibility to impose mask mandates if necessary. Opponents had the right to sue, but they had to expect to fall into the public spotlight and face criticism.

There was no need, though, to escalate the battle by immediately declaring it racism. Yes, the vast majority of FWISD students are Black or Hispanic, communities that faced disproportionate challenges from the pandemic. But there’s no reason to think the parents who sued were motivated by racism, and casually throwing the label around injects further poison and mistrust into the debate.

Of course, in our pathetic political games of “can you top this,” it was even worse to target Garcia-Lopez because of her ethnicity, or any other personal characteristics. It’s hard enough to get good people to extend themselves into public service. They don’t deserve this kind of treatment when they do.

If you can’t express an opinion without resorting to racism, just be quiet.

Garcia-Lopez’s resignation, first reported by Fox News, will pause the conflict but probably not end it. Ideally, all sides would learn a lesson about going too far with personal attacks. And it should be clear that more is expected of someone in a position that must interact with the public.

All of this is drama that the Fort Worth school district doesn’t need. We’ve said before that schools struggling with fundamental academic achievement, especially with the setbacks of the pandemic, must focus on reading, math and other basic learning.

Debates over what is taught on race and how resources are distributed are inevitable, but when they overwhelm the glaring needs of students, no one wins.

The one lesson schoolchildren can take from all this is that not all adults are grown ups. Some need to go back to the early grades and learn better behavior.

This story was originally published December 9, 2021 at 5:02 AM.