Board of arts magnet charter school requires ‘unaltered’ birth certificates for students auditioning for choirs
TAMMYE NASH | Managing Editor
nash@dallasvoice.com
The board of an arts magnet charter school in Fort Worth last week voted to change the school’s handbook to define “boy” and “girl” based on the gender markers on a child’s original birth certificate and to require students auditioning for the school’s two well-known choirs, The Texas Boys Choir and The Singing Girls of Texas, to show their birth certificates as proof of their “biological sex.”
The vote comes after a gender nonconforming student auditioned for Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts’ Singing Girls of Texas Choir and despite the fact that the majority of parents of the school’s students opposed the change. (The child’s mother, referred to here as T, asked that neither her nor her child’s name be used to protect their safety. The child will be referred to as M.)
T said that the board had circulated a survey asking for input from staff and parents, but that the survey had been created to deliberately cater to “right-wing” sentiment. She said the board had initially asked administrators to create the survey but were unhappy with the results. They then commissioned an outside source to create a survey but were again unhappy with the results, so they created their own.
“It was a witch hunt,” she said of the survey. “They did not ask questions in a neutral way. And they asked about all kinds of other things that weren’t relevant — critical race theory, pornography in books allowed at the school. Every talking point of the extreme right was represented in that survey.”
T said that at last week’s board meeting, there were “about 60-ish people” who spoke on the issue and they were “pretty well divided 50-50” between those who opposed the change and those who supported it. But, she added, “there were only about six people actually affiliated with the school who supported the changes. When we arrived for the meeting, there were all these protesters outside from Texas Values Action. It was a publicity stunt, and some of the things these people were saying were just awful — talking about parents mutilating children. One dude even threatened the parents with trans children seeking gender therapy that they would have their kids taken away.
“Not until that night was I really afraid for our safety,” T continued. “The disgusting things they said and their preoccupation with what’s in my child’s pants — it was surreal. To hear it on TV or read it on the internet is one thing. But to have someone say it with my child standing right there — as a queer woman myself, I’ve been spit on and yelled out, all kinds of stuff. But never have I seen that directed at my kid. It’s so different when it’s aimed at your kid.”
T said that attorneys with the ACLU of Texas are representing the student and will likely be a complaint with the Civil Rights Office of the Texas Department of Health and Human Services on behalf of the student.
FWAFA grew out of the Texas Boys Choir, which was founded in 1946. Texas Boys Choir has since founded both FWAFA for grades 6-10 and Texas School of the Arts for grades K-5, and has been rebranded Texas Center for Arts + Academics, overseeing both schools, Texas Boys Choir, Singing Girls of Texas, Texas Arts Conservatory, Texas Music Conservatory, Texas Dance Conservatory and a number of summer arts programs.
Last October, M began the 2022-23 school year at FWAFA after applying and being accepted for choir and musical theater.
T explained that students at FWAFA are required to take elective classes “in the areas you were accepted for,” and for M, that meant having to take a class in choir or be in one of the school’s two famous choirs. To be in the choir, she added, students have to audition.
“M’s paperwork at the time said ‘boy’ because they had not started the gender therapy process. But they had never identified as a boy, and they had never looked like a boy,” T said. She said the director of the Texas Boys Choir “offered a position in the Texas Boys Choir touring choir on the spot, but they declined because they weren’t comfortable with it.”
Instead, M was placed in “a catch-all chorale class.” But later, M didn’t want to continue with the chorale class and so asked to be allowed to audition for Singing Girls of Texas for the next semester. The director of that choir, who had worked with M in a summer program last year, seemed enthusiastic about the prospect, T said, but explained that they would need the approval of the school’s counselor and administration. “The counselor told us it probably wouldn’t happen this year, because the board had to make changes to the handbook first.”
That is when the problems started.
“It’s a fine arts school,” T said. “We didn’t expect a problem. We were naïve, maybe a little dim, thinking, ‘Oh they just have to change the handbooks.’”
She said they heard nothing more until March when choir auditions for the 2023-24 school year rolled around. M signed up to audition for The Singing Girls of Texas and “got one of the very first time slots. They auditioned that night, and the very next morning, there was a school-wide email sent out saying they were pausing auditions ‘for scheduling reasons.’”
T said she got a call from the top administrator at Texas Center for Arts + Academics who explained that the board was pushing to change language in the handbooks “to define a boy and a girl based on their unaltered original birth certificate.”
The board then canceled the first scheduled meeting at which the issue would have been discussed, but at the May 9 meeting, a number of parents showed up to speak against the board’s plans, urging them to let the choir directors make their own decisions.
Board members, however, said they didn’t “feel like there were enough families represented here and not everyone got to share their feelings,” T said. “What they meant was they didn’t have their cronies there with them. So they said they needed to do some more research.”
She said that one board member, Charles Reid, very obviously sided with those in support of M. But he was out-numbered by the other five board members — board chair Daniel Bates, Leslie Scott, Melissa Goodroe, Mary Z. Zimmerman and Cheryl Prince Bean — none of whom have children at FWAFA and who, T said, have ties to right-wing conservative politicians and organizations.
TCA+A’s website does not explain how board members are chosen, and Dallas Voice emails seeking information and comments were not answered by press time.
