Max Hightower

With lawmakers in Austin hellbent on targeting the LGBTQ community with harmful bills during the Texas Legislature’s 2023 regular session, school administrators at all levels around the state were doing their part, as well, to advance the conservative agenda. But the community and its allies refused to take the attacks sitting down.

FRISCO ISD
Reports about a complaint filed against Frisco ISD board of trustees member Marvin Lowe didn’t hit the headlines until February this year, even though the incident actually happened in September 2022, and the complaint was filed by a student from Brownsville in October 2022.

According to reports, at the Texas Association of School Boards and Texas Association of School Administrators Convention, following a session titled “Transgender Students in Texas Schools: What You Need to Know,” Lowe approached a transgender teenager who had spoken during the session, and described his own “differing views” about transgender teens. Lowe began talking to the teen, who was at the time just 16 years old, about the “locker room environment” and how “Men like to walk around naked with their junk hanging around,” according to information obtained by the Dallas Morning News through freedom of information requests. The student wrote in his complaint that Lowe “said that having a person with differing external genitalia walking around naked wouldn’t be OK because ‘that’s the type of thing that turns people on.’” The student said Lowe’s “discussion about a minor’s genitals and the arousal of an adult man” made him “very uncomfortable and bewildered.”

Even after the student’s mother told Lowe that the conversation was “inappropriate” and that he needed to stop, Lowe refused, telling her and the student that they needed to listen to him. He continued talking about the topic until one of the convention organizers stepped in between him and the student and finally forced Lowe to leave the room.

Lowe initially refused to comment on the complaint but later at a Frisco school board meeting where a large crowd showed up to talk about the incident, Lowe claimed the allegations were “false, untrue and unfounded.”

WTAMU
In late March, West Texas A&M University made headlines when the school’s president, Walter V. Wendler, stepped in and cancelled a drag show that had been planned by students as a fundraiser for The Trevor Project. In doing so, he compared drag to performing in blackface, said it makes fun of women and called it “derisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny.”

Wendler’s actions infuriated students and faculty alike, prompting a student group to file suit against him for violating their First Amendment rights to free speech, and prompting faculty to call for — and pass — a vote of no confidence against him. In the no confidence vote, taken in April, faculty members accused Wendler of poor leadership and of trying to run the school according to his personal religious beliefs and opinions even though his beliefs and opinions go against the school’s mission and violate state and federal law, while also damaging the school’s reputation and hindering its fundraising efforts.

The lawsuit, filed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the Spectrum student group and two Spectrum student leaders, was heard by federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was appointed by Trump in 2019 and has a history as a right-wing activist. Kacsmaryk ruled against the plaintiffs in September, claiming drag shows are “sexualized content” and school administrators can restrict “vulgar and lewd content.” FIRE and the students have said they plan to appeal his ruling.

Max Hightower at Sherman HS
In mid-October, Sherman High School senior Max Hightower, a transgender male, was cast as Aly Hakim in the school’s planned production of Oklahoma! — until the Sherman ISD superintendent, Tyson Bennett found out and decided to change the school’s policy. Bennett instructed the high school’s principal to notify students and their parents that only students designated male at birth could play male roles, and only students designated female at birth could play female roles (two cisgender female students had been cast in male roles, as well), and that the play, scheduled for December, was being cancelled until it could be recast. Bennett also wanted to have the students produce a version of the classic musical intended for elementary school students because the original was “full of profanity and sexual content.”

After Max’s parents went to the media, Bennett issued a ridiculously self-contradictory statement there was no such policy, except for in this instance. Then the Sherman ISD board of trustees stepped in, holding a marathon meeting in which members of the public lined up to condemn Bennett’s discriminatory efforts and to support Max. The board eventually voted to have the original version of play go on as originally cast, although it remained delayed until sometime in January, to bring in an outside investigator to look into the situation and to remove Bennett’s oversight of the school’s fine arts programs.

FWAFA & Keller ISD
As the 2022-23 school year was coming to a close, administrators at the Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts stepped in to prevent a transgender student from auditioning for the school’s Singing Girls of Texas choir even though the student had been encouraged by the choir’s director to audition. (The school’s other choir is the Texas Boys Choir.) The board then voted at a June meeting 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 choirs to show their birth certificates as proof of their “biological sex.”

That vote came after a meeting at which some 60 people spoke, with about half supporting the student and half urging the board to change the policy. However, the student’s mother noted, only a small handful of those advocating for the anti-trans policy had any connection with FWAFA. The mother also noted that most of the school board members have no children or grandchildren attending the school and are affiliated with right-wing groups.

On Aug. 10, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas filed complaints calling on the U.S Department of Education to open an investigation into FWAFA for alleged violations of Title IV.

That same day, ACLU of Texas filed a complaint with the Department of Education against Keller ISD in response to a Facility Standards policy prohibiting transgender and nonbinary students from using the restrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity that was enacted by the school board on June 28.

— Tammye Nash