Why are Fort Worth school board members trying to shut out concerned parents?

For the first time, many parents are using their rights to hold their school board trustees and superintendents accountable.

Instead of embracing the new wave of parental involvement, trustees across the nation are going against the parents and ignoring their concerns. In Fort Worth, district parents and other community members have been attending school board meetings to raise their concerns about face masks, toxic equity policies and failing student performance.

And just like the school boards in Loudoun County, Virginia, and Dallas, several Fort Worth ISD trustees have been against parents — even though parents are the ones in charge of the school district, not the other way around.

At the Feb. 22 Fort Worth ISD school board meeting, trustee Jacinto Ramos showed his anti-parent sentiment during public comment, shouting back: “You don’t own me” and “You’re not my constituents.” Parents had asked Ramos to pay attention to their concerns rather than read a book while speakers commented.

Local news and social media would pick up the story, and Ramos faced community backlash.

Separately, a disabled Fort Worth veteran was forced to move his car off of a district parking lot and told he could not attend a meeting of the district’s racial equity committee.

The committee allowed public participation for the past seven years. But, once people started to show up and criticize its approach, committee members demanded that parents no longer record their meetings.They ultimately barred the public from attending anymore.

Why can’t the committee be transparent with its work? After all, if what they are doing is good for the community, members surely shouldn’t mind being transparent, right?

What’s worse is that many board members even pushed to have public comments at the end of the hours-long agenda to discourage the public and, especially, parents from criticizing the ISD. This ultimately made parents stay until midnight to make public comments at the Feb. 22 school board meeting.

A lack of transparency and fearing parents is not a good sign from elected officials. Trustees were elected to represent constituents, put students first and improve learning and academic achievement. Rather than silencing parents and bullying them, why not listen? Why not take your time to have a conversation and understand where they are coming from?

Parents’ concerns are valid. When you have an equity department that promotes division and spends $2.1 million of your hard-earned money, there’s a problem. When test scores are down so far that only 22% of black students, 33% of Latino students, and 58% of white students are on grade level, there’s a problem.

When you have a superintendent who spends $23,000 on conferences and Harvard University sessions, there’s a problem. And when you have a district that kicks parents out of parking lots and meetings, there’s a problem.

Trustees like Ramos are examples of what happens when the community doesn’t get involved and hold the school board accountable. It creates an echo chamber of elitism and power, disconnected from reality.

Parents are the ones in charge, not the board. Listen to their concerns and implement change — or get ready to see a change to the board.

Clarification: This column has been updated to reflect the writer’s activity leading protests against Fort Worth ISD and leading a conservative student group.

This story was originally published March 17, 2022 at 5:03 AM.