SOUTHLAKE, Texas — After more than two hours of heart-wrenching testimony from students sharing stories of racism, bullying, and discrimination in the Southlake Carroll Independent School District, the seven-member board of trustees quibbled for another hour over the semantics of even acknowledging they received a plan to address and combat racism and discrimination in the district.

What You Need To Know

  • The Board of Trustees for the Southlake Carroll Independent School District heard a plan to combat racism and bigotry in its schools in a virtual meeting Monday

  • More than 100 people attended, and an overwhelming majority spoke in favor of the plan

  • The board ultimately voted to simply acknowledge that it received the plan with the purpose of improving it with more meetings

At issue at Monday’s virtual CISD Board of Trustees meeting was the cultural competency action plan, or CCAP, a 34-page proposal of goals and strategies developed by the district diversity council. The CCAP has a number of overarching goals, but, at its core, it is meant to address and combat bigotry and bullying in a district that has become infamous in recent years for very public, racist incidents.

The plan also provided a system where students would be disciplined for committing acts of racism or discrimination. The system could also track the number of incidents within a given time frame.

In the end, the board voted only to acknowledge that it “received” the plan, with the expectation that they would improve it through a series of community meetings. 

The diversity council spent two years developing CCAP, after the first of two videos of Carroll High School students chanting the N-word went viral in November 2018. A draft of the 34-page action plan was made public in mid July. 

The 63-member District Diversity Committee recommended that the board of trustees receive and begin implementing the plan under the oversight of the district diversity council, but several members of the board of trustees were reticent to start implementation. Trustee Todd Carlton said he thought the work was important, but he was “disappointed in the process.”

“There’s so much that I don’t understand as a trustee,” he said. “Anything I turn over for implementation, I want to be able to understand. (Racism) is a huge conversation point in our district, it’s a huge conversation point in our state, and it’s a huge conversation point in our nation, and it’s something we have to get right.”

Carlton voted in favor of “receiving” the plan, along with Board President Michelle Moore, Sheri Mills, Danny Gilpin, and Dave Almand. Matt Bryant and Eric Lannen voted against.

Overwhelming public comment

Ahead of the presentation, there were two hours of public comment in which 101 people came forward to speak, most of whom wanted to address CCAP. Of that number, 66 people spoke in favor and urged the board to accept and adopt the plan; 24 people spoke in opposition.

Many of those who spoke in favor of CCAP were current or former students of Carroll ISD, and they spoke of incidents of racism they faced or witnessed at the school. Many said it was long past time for the district to do something about it.

Martha Blue, a parent whose children attended school in the district, urged the board to approve the plan.

“We’ve got to pay attention to these minorities,” she said. “All they’re trying to do is make this world better. This is not about hate. This is about including people. I fear for Carroll Independent School District and our reputation.”

The running theme among those who opposed CCAP was the word “microaggression,” which was defined in the plan as “everyday verbal or nonverbal snubs or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized or underrepresented group membership.”

Opponents said the definition was too vague and threatened free speech and religious freedom without giving concrete examples of the threats.

A disappointing outcome

For members of the community who supported the plan, the result was a disappointing one.

Anya Kushawha is a graduate of Carroll High School, class of 2016. She’s also a member of the Southlake Anti Racism Coalition and listened in on the virtual meeting. She was proud to see the outpouring of loud and enthusiastic support for CCAP. What happened after public comment, however, evoked the opposite emotion.

“I think that dialogue that occurred after, the way in which a lot of the men (on the board) were obviously so resistant to anything that could be seen as an endorsement to this plan, it was really, really disheartening,” she said.

Earlier this summer, current and former students of Carroll ISD founded the Southlake Anti Racism Coalition to share incidents of racism in the schools and within the broader community. SARC formally approved of CCAP while also writing its own letter that included more aggressive actions against racism. 

 
 
 
 
 
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The CCAP has come under a lot of unnecessary scrutiny from people who seem to both a) misunderstand its goals and/or b) refuse to acknowledge the inherent need for this in our community, feeling that since it will not “serve” their child, it is unnecessary. This plan is being voted on by the Carroll School Board tomorrow during their 4 pm board meeting. We need your voice to overpower the people who are in opposition to policy that would positively impact all marginalized students. An entire website has been dedicated to spreading false information about the plan and throwing up straw men in hopes that people will cling to fallacious, fear-mongering statements and, subsequently, will sign the petition to postpone this vote. The argument is that people need more time to review it and that we should not be voting on this during a pandemic. However, we know that this change is long overdue in CISD and cannot wait. Protecting the safety and experience of minority students in our district is equally as important, especially as the country grapples with its vicious history of systemic racism. We must all band together to support the CCAP. Please reach out to the school board - an auto-populated email template can be found in our bio. Additionally, please sign up to speak at the board meeting tomorrow at 4 pm. The form is due by 8am and can be found in our bio.

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In the lead up to Monday’s board meeting, however, a vocal group of dissenters started pushing back against SARC and CCAP. A group called Southlake Families started a petition to urge the board to vote against CCAP and cited several false claims about the plan in an effort to incite outrage. 

Kushawha said the dissenters had clearly gotten to the board, even though more members of the community supported the plan rather than opposed it.

“One thing that I really felt was conveyed … is that they don’t think they’re hearing the voices they want to hear, which is more opposition,” she said. “The community showed up. They showed up today. They showed up in the last meeting and the meeting before that. (The trustees) have heard so much input, it’s just not the input they want to hear.”

Kushawha said this really shows the lack of urgency the board feels toward the issue – not only did the district diversity committee take two years to come up with the CCAP, the board wants to take even more time to review it, and it ultimately refused to even approve the plan without the caveat of making changes.

“They do not understand the urgency of this issue,” she said. “Even by delaying this into 2021, you have a whole semester of students who are going to suffer this – just for the palatability of the very loud, white, wealthy opposition. It was just so shameful to witness.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly misidentified the board of trustees as "all-white." The error has been corrected. (August 5, 2020)