Republicans embraced a solution to school violence. Now some are denouncing it as 'woke.'
In October, after a student opened fire at Timberview High School in North Texas, wounding two classmates and a teacher, parents in the Mansfield Independent School District initially rallied together, praying publicly for the victims and praising officials for reacting quickly to prevent a worse tragedy.
But six months later, a different narrative began to spread through this suburban Dallas school district, one that put the blame for the shooting on a new district approach to disciplining students. It started with political mailers sent to thousands of homes.
“MISD put ‘woke’ politics over the safety of our children,” the flyers read in all caps, above a news clipping about the Timberview shooting, which reportedly resulted from a fight between two Black students. The flyers, paid for by a conservative political action committee, warned that the Mansfield school district had “stopped disciplining students” based on “Critical Race Theory principles.” As a result, it said, “kids were nearly killed.”
But the Mansfield mailer omitted a key detail: Some of the local school policies that it was attacking were initially implemented three years ago, not as part of a liberal takeover of the suburban school system, but at the urging of Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the Trump administration.
The mailers reflected a growing belief among some conservative parents, both in Mansfield and nationally, that school programs meant to address students’ emotional well-being have become vehicles for indoctrinating children with progressive ideas about race, gender and sexuality. The flyers, sent in mid-April ahead of a school board election, also previewed how some prominent Republicans would respond one month later after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas — making a visceral connection between anti-racism initiatives in schools and parental fears about the physical safety of their children.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-school-shooting-republicans-social-emotional-learning-rcna35540
Yup. Kick your own shit.
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