Irion County ISD Meeting September 10 2025

Agenda Analysis | Meeting Review | Meeting Documents | Commentary | Last Meeting

By September 1 there were only piles of rubble and some of the foundation remaining. Looking south.

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Agenda

A. Agenda Analysis

1. Bluebonnet Curriculum and Bible Stories, item 5: Here is a Texas Tribune article about the approval of the curriculum by the State Board of Education in November 2024. Here is TEA's info on Bluebonnet. Here is a January 2025 joint letter opposing the curriculum sent to all Texas superintendents by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Center for Inquiry, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

   I've never before seen the words "Bible Stories" on a public meeting agenda. I have no idea where this agenda item is going. In light of last month's meetings where I've pointed out that the Board narrowly avoided taking the prayer bait in a culture war promoted by the Texas Attorney General, there are a few things to consider. The ACLU's joint letter in part reads like a Plaintiff's Original Petition against a school district adopting Bluebonnet; the advocacy organizations are searching for cases. (Here's a 2008 press statement by the ACLU about their settlement with Ector ISD when they tried to teach a bible class. These legal prohibitions are not new.) Also, as I mentioned, the law has changed, effective September 1, so that now the District must audio record its board meetings. That audio will now readily be used as evidence for the launching pad of litigation against the District and board members. This kind of litigation will be extraordinarily expensive and will far outpace any kickback TEA gives ($60 per student) to the District for adopting the curriculum. (There are typically around 320 students.) That litigation will also be huge time suck for Supt. Moore and her staff. It will most certainly take time away from her management of the construction that is underway as part of the 2024 bonds. Anytime a school board is willing to join the culture wars (whether it be Ten Commandments in the classroom, prayer time at school, library book banning or the study of Christianity in textbooks), what they are also deciding is that they are willing to roll the dice with their superintendent's time management. That cannot be wise.
   

   There are many pitfalls with this agenda item. I am not looking forward to it.
   

2. 2024/25 accountability ratings, item 6: Mostly B's and 1 A was the unvarnished report given by Supt. Moore last meeting. I have criticized the Board in the past for not doing a better job of instilling a demand for academic excellence. I see this as a two pronged failure. First, the Board has long accepted these accountability ratings for face value. They are what they are. That is, the Board has failed to recognize that they are the public face of an expectation of improvement. Second, the community is not acting as a stimulus in its role to attend school board meetings and explicitly say, "I want my child to get better than a "B" education. I want an "A" for my child and this community." And, as I've said before, the reason the community has not engaged in this way is the Board has intentionally disengaged the community. The meetings held last month, and I predict this one as well, indicate that the Board is choosing to engage the community on religious and culture war issues, not with the quality of education the children are receiving. My expectation is that IC ISD should be recognized as an A school in every category on each campus. And, yes, it is appropriate for the community, even those of us who do not have children being educated there, to expect improvement. The quality of public education is vital to every community's success.
   

3. Intent to defease, item 7: Here is the definition of "defease". If I am correct, then this item is what is necessary to start the legal process of paying off the bonds early. Sounds boring, but it is critically important. The District has issued a lot of bonds (about $71 million over 5 years) to pay for new buildings, and the only prudent way to manage them is to pay them off early. You watch...this gravy train for wealthy districts is going to end one day, and it will be the debt free districts with low maintenance and operations costs that will thrive. The decision on whether to pay off bonds early is a decision of the school board, and there needs to be a community expectation that the Board will aggressively pay down debt before the next bond election. The concept of rolling bonds (a school district always stays in debt) is not sustainable with a tax base on shifting sands like in Irion County.
   

4. EFB local policy regarding SB 13 (library materials), item 9: Here is the current local policy EFB (updated in 2024) and here is SB 13. This whole library regulation effort is about as Orwellian as it comes, in my opinion. Here is what the Texas Freedom to Read Project says about what school boards ought to consider before implementing a SB 13 policy. And, the ACLU of Texas' attorney testified against SB 13 before it became law; that testimony can be found at page 25 of House Public Comments.

   So, whatever this policy change reflects (it is not available before the meeting), it is already legally suspect and almost certainly will be challenged in court. Long gone are the days of my childhood when my mother took me to the library and trusted the librarian enough to ask, "Do you think he is ready for Where the Red Fern Grows?" What in the world happened that has prevented us from trusting librarians so that now we need laws to, in effect, legitimize book banning? You can dig deeper by reading Censorship of school curricula in the United States. To read more on just how terribly divisive this issue can be search for "Granbury ISD book ban".

   Go. Read. A. Banned. Book.
   

5. Administrative reports, items 12 a-c: There's so much potential for controversy on other parts of this agenda, anything else important here might get short shrift. Advocacy tip: Always pay attention to this part of the meeting.
   

6. Closed session and action, items 15 and 17: topics are a confidential student matter and personnel.

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The other direction looking north.

B. Meeting Review

1. Advocacy tip: If you are monitoring a public meeting, regardless of whether you have spoken during the open forum, the Open Meetings Act doesn't provide you an avenue to have input with board members or staff during their discussion of agenda items. Put simply, the public's opportunity to speak is at the open forum, and even then there is no dialogue. No matter how informal the board and staff get during the meeting, the public shouldn't be joining in their conversation. Exception: If you've signed up to speak on a specific agenda item, then depending on the circumstances there may be an opportunity for dialogue.
   

2. Bluebonnet curriculum, Bible item 5: Without discussion, the Board voted unanimously to leave in the Bible parts of the curriculum. (Rey and Carlile absent.) No member of the public was present during open forum. I disagree with this decision. Teaching only about the Bible, to the exclusion of all other religions, is constitutionally defective. End of discussion. That said, to the extent the Board wanted to stay below the ACLU radar on the issue, they handled the matter well. There was no drama, just a quick vote. They knew they were handling something potentially controversial. Their plight was made easier, however, by there not being any member of the community speak up for or against the curriculum in open forum. (I do not speak at IC ISD board meetings because of previously being called out of order by former Supt DeSpain, thus this blog.) In my years of attending Board meetings, the public has never engaged the Board on a curriculum issue.

   Finally, one reason culture war issues like this one are bubbling up now is that legislators and elected officials are thinking they can get the issue up to the Supreme Court and get a more favorable ruling with its current conservative supermajority. That's not a sure bet, in my opinion. Judges are a fickle group of lawyers.

3. Accountability rating, item 6. Principal Parker gave a very informative presentation, but it was complex enough I can't easily summarize it here. I understand from Supt. Moore that she will be posting the audio of the entire meeting next week, and I especially recommend that you listen to this part of the meeting. Again, no one from the community spoke in open forum about this issue, so it was an opportunity lost to demand improvement. Also keep in mind the law is changing after this summer's special session, so the Governor, the Legislature and TEA are changing the goal posts.
   

4. Intent to defease, item 7: My coverage above was correct. This is necessary to have the legal authority to pay down bonds. A good thing. The Board approved a motion supporting their intent to defease.
   

5. Local policy regarding library materials, SB 13, item 9: I'm not sure what the exact wording of the policy adopted at this point, but what is clear is that the Board wisely voted to not include the optional school library advisory council found at 33.025 of SB 13. The stated reason by Supt. Moore was that in such a small community it is hard to find enough folks to serve. That makes sense. Also, my experience is that "advisory councils" end up amplifying the wrong things and feelings get hurt when their advice is disregarded. And, there's no hiding the intent here. SB's 13's larger purpose is about approving a process for book banning. The advisory council's purpose was just that. The better approach is to get to know your child's librarian. Go into the library with your child and give them an opportunity to see you lift up a book to read. That's where good feelings toward books can be engendered. Once the ideas in books are outlawed, we miss the point of a public education. One point, I hope, is that we can promote minds that can evaluate divergent ways of thinking about important ideas.
   

6. Administrative reports, item 12: Supt. Moore stated that the District had a lot of bids turned in this week for construction of the new elementary. This is significant, bond wise, because this means there is competition among the bidders. Speaking of bids, before the meeting I had occasion to notice that Chad Hines, Gallagher Construction's Superintendent, appeared to be evaluating the interior of City Gym, the location of this meeting. I mentioned to him that that the District had spent over $500,000 for excavation of the gym. Folks need to know just how impenetrable these limestone hills are. I gathered from his reply that he was learning this. I learned it as a kid on the ranch digging post holes for my father. A large expense for the new elementary is going to be for excavation.
   

7. Closed session and action, items 15 and 17: I did not attend thru these portions (so I could get in a bike ride before sunset), but will listen in when the audio of the meeting is posted sometime next week. If necessary I will update this item, but my understanding from Supt. Moore that no matter was voted on.

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C. Commentary

1. Don't be distracted by the culture wars. There's no time for that. Study up on MacKenzie Price in Austin instead. The Board could better spend its time by developing a rural school system for the future that integrates AI but that does not yield to its profit makers and the elected officials beholden to those profit makers.
   

2. God is not war, and so I do not hold the values of the character the "Judge" in the book I am currently reading, The Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. The book is banned in places because of its depiction of extreme violence and its statement about the human condition. If you have read the book perhaps you will understand. It is a very difficult read. I raise this because only hours before this school board meeting Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University. I condemn that violence. We all need to condemn that violence. We are a better country than this. Reading a banned book helped me better understand this.
   

My uncle, Walter Noelke, passed in 2024, and he left his considerable personal library, over 8,000 volumes, to be housed in a restored barrack at Fort Concho in San Angelo. The library is still in development and currently available to the public by appointment.

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Copyright 2025 G. Noelke