One reason Austin Independent School District is being questioned by authorities, including Attorney General Ken Paxton, is the logical suspicion the liberal school district helped organize a walkout that sent thousands of students from 14 school campuses to demonstrate at the State Capitol.
In a statement, Paxton (pictured at left) said AISD officials imposed their “radical political agenda on the next generation,” referring to the impressionable students who participated.
Paxton made that comment in light of anti-ICE demonstrations breaking out all over the nation, some of them including even preschool-aged children at a day school in Harlem and at Portland Montessori School.
“Parents expect our public schools to educate and keep their kids safe during the school day,” Paxton stated, “not encourage them to attend a protest field trip designed to villainize brave law enforcement officials protecting our country.”
One eyewitness to the massive Austin demonstration, and the parade of marching students, is communications strategist Brian Phillips of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He told American Family News the students were accompanied by Austin police officers for safety, an obvious sign the walkout was well-planned and not organic in nature.
Phillips also told AFN the school district’s superintendent, Matias Segura, couldn’t get his story straight in a statement about the protest. In the statement, the superintendent said students are the school’s responsibility during schooltime.
“And then, in the next paragraph, he says that if the student decides for any reason that he's going to walk out and not come back, there's nothing they can do about it,” Phillips points out.
As the parent of a child, Phillips told AFN, he appears to have a different definition of “responsibility” than the AISD superintendent.
“And so that's totally unacceptable,” Phillips argued.
In a related article he wrote for The Daily Cannon, Phillips said the parent of a Lively Middle School student said his child did not choose to participate. Classes were cancelled, Lively teachers held open the school doors, and the students walked five miles to the Capitol, the parent alleged.
That complaint mirrors other parents, too, such as a Washington state mother named Erika Franklin. She filmed herself walking through a hostile crowd to pick up her daughter at Washington Middle School, located in Auburn, during an anti-ICE demonstration.
Unlike liberal communities that are celebrating the demonstrations, Phillips said the Texas Education Agency is not ignoring what happened in Austin.
"The TEA put out some very clear guidance yesterday targeting the administrations of the schools,” Phillips said. “Saying that if they find out that teachers or faculty, or any school officials, were involved in planning or promoting or encouraging these walkouts, that there will be repercussions. They could lose funding. Teachers could lose their teaching certificates."
