Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, once again focusing on “the most important issues” facing our schools, announced today (Thursday, May 7), that he is launching a statewide investigation into Independent School Districts across Texas “to ensure that schools are displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms in compliance with Texas law.”
Paxton also wants to make sure that “school boards have taken necessary measures regarding the implementation of prayer time in compliance with the law.”
I guess since Republicans can’t be bothered to do anything to stop mass shootings in our public schools, posting the 10 Commandments and allowing prayer in schools is the next best thing?
Anyway ….
Paxton, who continues to misuse the office of Texas Attorney General to campaign against incumbent John Cornyn for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate through ridiculous “investigations” such as this, declared in a press release, “I will always fight for students’ fundamental right to pray in our schools and work to ensure that Texas kids are able to learn from the Ten Commandments daily.
“Texas schools districts must comply with Texas law by displaying the Ten Commandments and taking a school board vote regarding the implementation of prayer time in schools. I will never stop defending our students’ religious freedom and the moral foundation of our nation,” he said.
SB 10, requiring public schools to display donated copies of the Ten Commandments that meet certain specifications was passed by the Legislature during the 89th session and took effect Sept. 1 last year. Also passed and put into effect was SB 11which requires school boards across the state to vote on whether to implement a designated time for prayer and reading of the Bible or other religious texts.
Meanwhile, 28 schoolchildren and four teachers have died in mass shootings IN THEIR FREAKING CLASSROOMS in the last eight years in Texas. That includes the eight high school students and two teachers gunned down at Santa Fe High School (Santa Fe, Texas) on May 18, 2018, and the 20 elementary school babies and two teachers massacred at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on May 24, 2022 as law enforcement officers stood in the school’s hallways listening to the gunfire as children died.
According to the Sandy Hook Promise — an organization founded to address gun violence in the wake of the Dec. 14, 2012, shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newton, Conn., in which 20 first-grade students and six educators were murdered — in the most recent years in which such data is available, Texas had the 24th-highest firearm death rate in the U.S., and gunfire was the leading cause of death in this state for school children, with 276 children shot to death.
Sandy Hook Promise also notes that there have been 31 mass shootings recorded here in the Lone Star State.
But yeah, sure, let’s be absolutely positive that schools are unconstitutionally displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms and unconstitutionally allowing and promoting prayer in schools. Thanks Ken Paxton for wasting time and taxpayer dollars on the things that REALLY count.
— Tammye Nash