We are in the midst of a transformation at Grapevine-Colleyville ISD (GCISD). In the last several years, parents and taxpayers have begun to take back our local schools by sending champions for change like myself to serve on the school board.
And we have hit the ground running.
The old guard, which has lost its monopoly of control on our tax dollars and children, has been reduced to the politics of personal destruction against the new board members and outright lies about our achievements and intentions.
I am here to set the record straight on our proud record of accomplishment thus far. Our overall objective from the start has always been simple: return to a primary focus on education (not indoctrination), put parents back in charge of their schools, and restore fiscal sanity to the district.
Radical, I know. Or at least to some.
The first major fight we had, and won, for this agenda of change was to significantly raise the salaries of our teachers. If education is our primary focus, then there is truly nothing more important to meeting this goal than world-class, well-compensated classroom teachers.
You would think this would have been easy, but it was not. The old guard trustees fought our efforts to dramatically raise teacher pay across multiple board meetings, dragging it out and using every tactic available to them to derail the plan.
And why? With teacher pay languishing behind for years under their control, giving the new board members “the win” was clearly more important to them than doing what was right by our teachers.
Now GCISD pays our teachers at market rate, and surrounding districts are scrambling to compete with us. That’s a win for our teachers, our children, and GCISD as a whole.
What about indoctrination in our schools? Everyone has heard about Critical Race Theory, but how does something like that enter our classrooms? The answer we quickly discovered was that these ideas and schemes enter our schools through third-party vendors, specifically curriculum and instructional materials vendors.
You see, across each different class, of each different grade, of each different campus at GCISD, materials from almost countless third-party vendors were being utilized for lessons or to support the teaching of a lesson. And each and every one of these outside materials was effectively an entry point for political, social, or cultural propaganda.
More than that, a number of these private vendors were pushing surveys on parents and students to collect data that was then resold for profit. Some of these surveys pushed the same propaganda as the instructional materials and sexualized our children.
I am proud to say that we have thus far rooted out and eliminated over 18,500 different vendors from our schools, some of which poisoned the minds of our children. You read that right; the number is truly unbelievable, and our work is far from done.
The board should not have to engage in this type of housecleaning, but for too long the old guard sat back and encouraged the use of these types of materials. Not anymore.
The new board has also instituted a uniform district-wide curriculum. We were dismayed to find, for example, that first grade on one campus looked wildly different on another. There was no cross pollination of ideas and effectively no GCISD standard that ensured high quality education across the district.
Since we view parents as the primary educators in a child’s life, we have published this curriculum online for scrutiny and review, and we are in the process of improving that process as we speak.
The results of all this? Our state testing numbers have gone up significantly in the last year. And while those tests are just one indicator of success, it is clear that returning our focus to a well structured education delivered by respected, highly trained professional educators works.
We have also taken the extremely valid concerns from parents surrounding the books our children are required to read, and have access to through school libraries, very seriously. The board has led by creating committees of teachers and parents who together review books and form a consensus around the appropriateness of a book’s content and its academic value.
This is not a revolutionary concept to most, but for years parents have been demeaned, dismissed, or treated as a threat by the old guard of GCISD. Again, I say, not anymore.
Just as crucially as what happens inside our schools is how we fund them. Led by Board President Casey Ford, we have aggressively pursued a policy of fiscal restraint and sanity. Casey has literally found tens of millions of unexpended dollars, and we have used them to pay down debts early and establish emergency funds for the district.
We also balanced the budget for the upcoming school year—a conversation that began around an $13 million shortfall. GCISD families operate on what they have and the new board insisted that our district should be no different.
Further, we ushered in roughly a 5.5 cent (per $100 valuation) reduction in property taxes last year and are currently considering another 10 cents. Schools are the number one driver of local property taxes, and our taxpayers deserve significant relief. It is beyond clear that for years those in control of GCISD overtaxed this community. Again, I will say it: not anymore!
The new board is just getting started at GCISD. The recent elections have sent more champions for change to serve, and I am excited to continue our work on behalf of our children, parents, and taxpayers.
We are taking back our schools and we will settle for nothing less than the absolute best for this community. Thank you for your continued support and trust. We are in this together.