By James Rincon

Pflag Reporter

The republican primary runoff election for Dist. 10 of the State Board of Education, which encompasses Pflugerville, is slated for April 13.

Controversy has shadowed the SBOE races since national media outlets turned their focus to the block of ultra-conservative members of the board who have driven a push for changes in curriculum standards.

“Some of what we’re hearing in the media appears to be a little bit sensationalism,” PISD Curriculum and Instruction Director Barbara Gideon said in reference to media claims that the board removed Thomas Jefferson from the curriculum when actually he was only removed from the 10th- grade world history list of Enlightenment thinkers.

If the board does leave various points of education out of the curriculum, PISD has the ability to add to the state standard if directors in the department of curriculum and instruction deem it necessary.

“Once [the state board has] duked it out, then we get that product,” Gideon said “We can, at a local level, add to the state standards, but we are required to teach the state standards. So if we think that there’s something critical to the success of students in Pflugerville that is not there, we can add it. We just can’t subtract from the state standard.”

District 10’s current board member Cynthia Dunbar, R-Richmond, is a member of the block of board members that has received harsh words from not only media like the Houston Chronicle, which called the board’s mindset “downright un-American” in a March 20 editorial, but also from state lawmakers such as Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, who called for a review of the board, and Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, who released a statement saying “In framing curriculum guidelines, the SBOE appears to be shaping an extreme, if not myopic, view of social studies material to be used in Texas schools.”

Dunbar, who has opted out of running for re-election, drew scrutiny as the Dist. 10 member when she published a book in which she wrote, “The establishment of public schools is unconstitutional and even ‘tyrannical’,” calling public education a “subtly deceptive tool of perversion.”

Though Dunbar will not seek re-election, she encouraged April 13 runoff candidate Brian Russell to vie for the Dist. 10 seat.

“I was honored to have her expression of confidence, of course, she endorsed me,” Russell said, though he said he was amused by local media going “out of their way in a harangue against me,” calling him an “acolyte” of Dunbar’s.

Russell is an Austin patent attorney who backs the state’s “four-by-four” curriculum standards that require four years of high school credit in each of the four core areas of study: English, math, science and social studies.

“If you look at each of those subject areas, you can see what a conservative philosophy means in those areas,” Russell said, “In the science debates there are basically two threads of argument. One is that basically kids are not interested in science, don’t need science and therefore there’s a thread of thought that basically we just need to diminish what the legislature has done in terms of requiring four years of science to graduate high school.”

Russell said an example of the attempt to water down the science requirements comes in the form of combining classes.

“You see one that’s called IPC – intergraded physics/chemistry – for which there’s no end of course exam that’s being designed. The whole idea of intergrading physics and chemistry which are – if you think about it, not terribly related – is that it’s kind of glossing over the subjects of physics and chemistry instead of diving down into the details,” he said.

Russell has five children, ages 9, 8, 5, 3 and 1, whom he and his wife home school. Russell bid for the SBOE while opting out of public school for his own children has drawn contention from critics, including runoff opponent Marsha Farney.

“You have the choice of an educator who knows the public schools and actually is very intimate with Pflugerville ISD, or someone who has chosen to have no affiliation with the public schools at all, and yet wants to be involved as a State Board of Education member,” Farney said. “It’s one thing to stand on the sideline and say how you think education should be when you’ve never been involved in it. It’d be like me going and trying to tell the high school football coach how to coach the team simply because I’ve watched football and my son has played football.”

Russell said his choice to home school his children is a moot point.

“It’s really a non sequitur, but to the extent that there is any relevance to where the children are going to school, what this tells me is I’ve taken the time to think through to evaluate, to select curriculum to actually teach my children,” He said. “So I think that there’s a certain amount of creditability that comes from the fact that I’ve actually taught kids to read.”

Russell said teaching his children at home has been a blessing for him and his wife that he understands many families don’t have the luxury of.

“It’s really my great love of education, me and my wife, we have been just very thrilled with not only the incredible success our children have had in terms of their studies, but just the fun of doing this as a family has been a great adventure,” Russell said. “I’m doing what most parents do not do and are not taking the time to do, which is really investigate an educational philosophy for their kids. I’ve got a lot of friends, their children go to the local neighborhood school here or at one of the other schools around the city and if you ask them ‘what is your educational philosophy? What is going to help you child learn – name the subject,’ most of the time they’re not confronted with that question – they’re doing something else.”

Farney said her familiarity with the state’s public schools, including working as a counselor at PISD’s Westview Middle School, are a part of what would make her a good member of the SBOE.

“We have lots of reasons to look and see that we have good educational experiences in Pflugerville,” Farney said referring also to the years her son attended Connally High School and her husband who is a Pflugerville High School alumnus.

Farney has a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from the University of Texas and she works as an educational consultant.

“I want to make sure that the state is not any more intrusive into the public schools as to the way our teachers teach. I prefer very much to have as much local control as to how they teach as possible,” she said describing her educational philosophy as conservative. “History to me must be historically accurate… One thing that would be considered conservative – there’s been a big discussion about whether to include the faiths of our founding fathers in the textbooks. In numerous historical documents, numerous founding fathers were seeking god’s blessing on our country. So whether you are republican or not, conservative or not, history stands alone, and I think we need to include that because it’s in historical documents.”

The Pflag asked if that philosophy applied to historical personalities like civil rights leader and outspoken Nation of Islam member Malcolm X.

“I don’t think he’s critical,” Farney said, “I would think of Martin Luther King as a better example. Martin Luther King was nonviolent and proposed more of a healthy change. He’s the example I would use because it’s more clear – he spent more time talking about faith than Malcolm X did. Faith was clearly very important to Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Farney said she has a mixed opinion of the current board. She said she applauds them for upholding the teaching of the theory of evolution, but she dislikes the board’s contentiousness.

“I don’t think we need to be demeaning to teachers and refer to them as ‘education establishment,’ ‘educrats,’ and ‘edustocracy,’ and all kinds of demeaning terms they’ve used toward educators. Educators are critical key components. They are the foundation of the education system,” she said. “The children must be the priority, not someone’s personal agenda… I am a Christian but I think even within the realm of Christian, within the realm of republican, within the realm of being conservative there are different viewpoints.

“One of my greatest concerns in this particular race is that the incumbent Cynthia Dunbar states in her book that she considers public schools to be unconstitutional and that she considers public schools as ‘subtly deception tools of perversion,’ and that my opponent has been hand picked to be her successor. I don’t think that’s in the best interest of the children in our public schools… Our point of view – the way we view the public schools – is very different.”

jrincon@pflugervillepflag.com