As Fort Worth-area schools battle on race and gender, they risk driving teachers away

Step One when you find yourself in a hole: Stop digging.

Some Fort Worth-area school districts need a reminder of this when it comes to teachers. Their trustees seem determined to put landmines and tripwires all around educators on politics, sexuality and race, making an already difficult job even more fraught.

Grapevine-Colleyville trustees did just that this week, adopting a lengthy policy that governs classroom materials and permissible statements on any number of topics and dives into the touchy area of pronouns and gender identity.

More teachers are throwing up their hands at the impossible demands of the work. This is just one more incentive to leave the industry.

And it’s a distraction from what should be the main focus in a thriving suburban district: excellence in education. We’re not naive enough to suggest that schools can merely remain silent on these charged topics in our snarling political environment. But any policy that’s this taxing and demanding fails to contribute to the main mission.

Politics is, inevitably, a factor. Northeast Tarrant County conservatives successfully targeted school board seats in the Carroll, Keller and Grapevine-Colleyville districts to build upon a larger effort to maintain a GOP majority in a purple-trending county. We’ve said before: All credit goes to those who want to engage in their communities and shape education policy. The pandemic revealed to many parents things about their schools that they did not like, and they are using the remedies available in our systems of government.

But in diverse areas, that policy can be difficult to craft and even harder to enforce. Once they win, trustees must remember that they serve all of a community — especially if they’re elected at-large rather than in single-member districts. They must honor obligations to nondiscrimination laws.

The nation and our area are sharply divided on issues surrounding race, sexuality and gender identity. That’s why much of it is best left at home, particularly for younger children. Even the best schools sometimes struggle to get kids to excel at reading, writing and math. Let teachers focus.

Grapevine-Colleyville’s sweeping policy touches on everything from Tocqueville (encouraged) to The New York Times’ “1619 Project” (a no-no). And district trustees and officials have a point that the Legislature has instructed schools to address these issues, with vague guidance and little clarity on the right methods and possible penalties.

Much attention has gone to the issue of requiring use of preferred pronouns for trans individuals or those questioning their gender identity. GCISD at least didn’t go so far as to prohibit use of a student’s desired pronouns. But the policy makes a show of preventing anyone from being forced to adopt such language — even if a parent requests different pronouns for their child than the ones corresponding to their birth identity.

We urge school leaders everywhere — and everyone, really — to remember the Golden Rule. Not every interaction must be about politics. We can argue broadly about the use of language, and we do. But on an individual level, kindness and politeness are much better principles than trying to win the argument.

Districts in well-off suburbs like Colleyville, Grapevine, Keller and Southlake have excelled because they offer quality public education for people willing to make sacrifices such as long commutes and high property taxes. The last thing anyone charged with the stewardship of those schools should do is water down their success.

Overburdening teachers will be a surefire way to do just that.