Absurd Truth: Texas Seizes Houston Schools

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That's fastgrowingtrees.com slash Dana. Dana Lashes absurd truth podcast sponsored by Kel-Tec. Big news out of Texas. Today we got the Houston School District big ol' whopper 187,000 student big Houston School District being taken over by the state of Texas, Texas Education Agency announcing that today's the day and and They might be getting rid of their chief, their superintendent, removing the Board of Trustees replacing superintendent. Pushback.

Let's say in the news copy, the standard news copy that's being sent out for, you know, all the, as I lovingly refer to them, all the meat puppets they're ripping readers of folks grabbing, reading whatever's out there. Copy says local leaders oppose the proposal. Can you please provide us some names because the things are so desperate and it's woefully underperforming Houston ISD. You got, you got a high school every single year failing, not meeting the grade, underperforming schools all over the place.

There's Texas like all different states. You guys have your own grading system for schools. HISD, you know, it's an embarrassment.

It's been an embarrassment for years. Now, I've been doing this radio thing for about 30 years now. The accidental radio journalist, all these years of being, reading the news and writing the news and editing and all that, 30 years of that. Before that, when I lived in Houston, I volunteered with a group of local leaders. I was, I was real, real young, very green behind the ears, but with our specific, our denomination and multiple churches, we were part of a bigger movement to try to save. Not exactly save for Jesus, you know, eternal salvation. Save from gang violence.

Save them from graffiti and gang violence and on-campus violence and Houston ISD has been a mess for more than a generation. I was part of that group up in Houston, literally a generation ago, before I came to work, accidentally work in radio, make this a career of mine. I got to see it firsthand. The campuses that looked like, what was the name of that show on Fox? It was it was Johnny Depp. I think it was Johnny Depp.

What was it? Some other dude kind of looked like Johnny Depp. 21 Jump Street, 21 Jump Street. There was a Fox show at the fledgling Fox network where high school campuses and it was a, you know, full of graffiti. All the, it seemed like most of the locker doors were wide open and destroyed. There's trash all over the halls. It's like, it's embarrassing in first world America for high schools and through Hollywood, almost like a celebration of this dilapidated dark pits of hell that is public education. Way back then, a generation, 40 years ago, I was volunteering with these folks that are trying to get in there and try to get to the bottom, provide some counseling, maybe look for alternatives when it comes to all these campuses that we're failing across.

And I got to see it for myself. It reminded me of that 21 Jump Street show where there's crime on campus. I guess they had like an undercover cop.

It's embarrassing. And you got the Texas Education Agency, that is the agency of last resort, come in there, the Commissioner Mike Morath coming in there and say, okay, we're taking control. Superintendent, bye.

You've had your, you've had plenty of time to fix things. School board, trustees, bye. And see the trustees, the argument by some local leadership is that the trustees, well, they have been replaced by other trustees as the few folks, and may I say again, so sad, very, very few folks, relatively speaking to other elections, very few folks participate. They vote in school district elections. I know it's not sexy. It's not like a presidential election.

It's not even close to being sexy like a race for governor and some of the high-profile. It's school board. Who are these people? What do they want?

What's their connection? And since you don't know, it's good. Since you don't know, you don't vote. But you need to know.

That's what was my argument. You need to know who these people are that are running for your local school board because they're the ones who make the ultimate decision on expenditures and help influence curriculum and provide the vision for the school district. And they're the ones who are supposed to be upset enough to say this campus ain't working. Where's the school principal? Bring that principal in here. You're fired.

You got to do something. We're going to get our top chiefs to look at what's being taught. After-school programs, the tutorial programs, weekend programs, all those things. It's the leadership. The Board of Governors, the Board of Trustees, they're not supposed to provide management. That's the thing that I learned as a volunteer for one of the top charter schools many years ago. They're not supposed to provide management, but they're supposed to provide that direction, especially on the financials. But they can hold to account the managers, aka the principals, the academic managers. Hold them accountable for a failed campus. Obviously, they haven't done that in Houston. So at what point, how much failure are you willing to accept? Because you still got a way to go in Houston, by the way.

You can go all the way down to Baltimore, Maryland standards. Where you had, what is it, like about two dozen or so campuses? That meant zero. Zero on math proficiency.

Zero on other academic proficiencies in Baltimore, Maryland. These kids learning absolutely nothing. We are losing our youth, our greatest resource, our students. We're losing them.

Because of apathy by the voters, ignorance by the voters, special interests, people who want to vote their people in to get the high school picture contract, the food services contract, whatever other gravy they can get from these multi-million dollar contracts for the school district. In the meantime, the children languish. Academically, they're dying. They're perishing. They don't have any marketable skills. They enter the workforce not knowing anything. Worthless to the market.

There's nothing that they can sell, except maybe drugs and their bodies. It's pathetic. At what point is America going to get angry at the local level?

Multiple markets that are failing to stand up and say, it's time to save our kids. Houston IND is the other. I'm so sad. I call this man a friend. His name is Gilbert Gilberto Hinojosa. He's a Democrat Party chairman here in Texas.

Judge, he used to be the county judge down here. He's now the leader of the Democrats in Texas. Just positioning himself politically. Gilbert, I wish you would position yourself on behalf of children and say, we can do better.

Houston can do and should do better. They got too many failing schools, underperforming schools, mismanagement. He goes off on the Republicans. For a party that claims to exemplify small government, these Republican politicians sure have a strange way of respecting local control. Yeah, I guess you don't assert local control until it's convenient to your political cause. Why to favor the unions, the powerful pocket full of money unions that pay for many of these political campaigns, all these Democrats being voted in to protect them. It's pathetic what's taking place.

This is not about politics, Gilbert. This is about saving our kids. And the day that we realize, by the thousands and all these thousands school districts nationwide, the day we realize something is pathetically wrong and that we're allowing unions to control everything, whether it's worker unions like in L.A. right now.

L.A. is in the news. The workers, janitors, all the other support services, they're threatening a three-day walkout. They're going to shut down the schools because they can't get the salary. They can't hold taxpayers hostage enough.

They can't get enough from taxpayers and they're going to hold them hostage to get what they want. We need choice. Parents need choice. It is time for school choice across the country, but it has to, it needs to happen at the local level. You parents, you taxpayers, you need to rise up.

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It's time for Dana's quick 5 brought to you by Caltech. Bye-bye Facebook police Karen. 10,000 people getting a pink slip over at Metta aka Facebook Instagram. Yeah, what is that standard email that goes out? Yeah, we wish you well in your future endeavors.

No, I don't. Metta laying off 10,000 more employees. A few days back they announced they needed to let go about five or six thousand employees. I think because of other headlines as I was mentioning earlier Facebook said they were no longer gonna be policing and kicking you out putting you in jail anymore. And in essence they're saying I'm sorry, right? They stopped doing the enforcement of the so-called truth police or fact-checking police.

They stopped all that. That's bad customer service, but now they want you to buy. Facebook is like the Ike Turner of social media if you think about it.

It's like, I'm sorry, baby. Oh, let me make it up to you. I want you to buy a $11.99 package of Facebook and Instagram for your computer $14.99 for iOS. Hell no! I'm spending dollar one on you whatsoever. 10,000 people gonna be laid off over at Facebook. Yeah, good.

You'll learn your lesson someday. Good customer service. Got some lawmakers up in DC trying to create new law mandating tracking a new tracking system for high altitude balloons. All this of course with a Chinese spy balloon a few days back. I don't think we really need new law for this, don't you? Look, all I want is a jet.

Go up there. Like, don't these new jets have like heavy guns on them? I want one bullet per one balloon. I don't want them shooting a $400,000 missile at balloons, popping balloons anymore. That's how China's gonna get it.

It's gonna run as a bankrupt shooting down balloons. And this note from Arkansas. A big hug and a kiss to my family up in Arkansas.

A visitor to their creator of Diamonds State Park found himself a three carat diamond at the park. From South Texas, this is The Dana Show. Over this pandemic, which is people say it's totally over but there are like a thousand people dying from it still every day. I'm a little nervous because teens are in a lot of trouble. There's a mental health crisis. I've seen it in my children.

They're in trouble now because they don't know how to speak to each other and they were, you know, out of school and they were home. Seriously from absolutely the the dumbest show on television, The Voo. Thanks a lot Barbara. Barbara with us.

Thanks for The Voo. Thank you Steve for giving me a heads up on the name of this person. I don't watch that crud. Sunny Hostin is her name. A thousand people dying from COVID.

All the people die every single day from all sorts of diseases. And you know what, Miss Hostin? Why don't you pick up the phone, call the the red communist phone back to China. I'm sure they love you up in China, all these communists. You might want to tell them to shut the country down again. You know, China's open up again, right? Did you hear that?

I'll tell you more about that here in a second. This is the Dana show. And yes, I'm not Dana.

She's my friend and I'm so blessed to get a call every now and then to fill in for her. We're broadcasting today's Dana show from her southern command in the RGV of Texas. Where, as I mentioned at the beginning of this hour, we got a hearing taking place. Mostly just all Republican lawmakers talking with border security people about the unsecure border thanks to, you know, Joe Biden.

So, by the way, if you want to say hi online, it's Sergio at K-U-R-V dot com, Sergio at K-U-R-V dot com, or at Sergio talk on Twitter. I'll go back and check that. So, yeah, the Voo commenting on COVID still being deadly. And she made reference to her family, just anecdotal difference against her kids and the mental health crisis that we had. We have a mental health crisis, and we do, because I've spoken plenty, had plenty of interviews with local mental health pros here in Deep South Texas. We have a mental health crisis in our country with kids because many leaders in states and counties across the nation, they blindly took the advice of Dr. Fauci.

He didn't. Yeah, he didn't necessarily order a shutdown, everything, but all these strong recommendations. And let's shut down things for a couple of weeks to stop the spread.

Let's shut down things for a couple. Shut down schools for almost two years. Some of y'all shut down schools even longer than that. That's why we have a mental health crisis. It is so sad, so pathetic.

Looking back at the 2020 graduation, the graduating class of 2020, it's heartbreaking. Look, here in Texas, and you know how everything rolled out. We got all these headlines coming at us, fast injuries in January, then in February, and cruise ships that were shutting down and people on cruise ships getting sick.

Some of these people brought to Texas, for example, they were brought up to San Antonio. They were quarantined for the rest of the population. We had this virus coming in from China and, you know, we got to lock things down.

And President Trump sitting down with his health advisor, including Dr. Fauci, and recommending, well, we need to stop the spread, stop the spread. My kids went on. It was three years ago. It was spring break right now. It's spring break here in Texas. It was spring break back in 2020. My kids came home and we had already been talking about the potential shutdown here in Texas.

In various counties across Texas, like you guys were, whatever part of the country you're in. Some of you guys that are under the heavy iron-fisted hand of Democrat politician rule, they were just salivating at the opportunity to shut things down and take the wheel, take control of things. You know, spring break, my kids never went back. All our kids did not go back after spring break.

They stayed home. And everybody trying to improvise how to do homeschooling and online connection and try to finish out the school year. And the class of 2020, I remember those comically sad graduating class T-shirts. Every high school, your high school, too, when you guys graduate, you had your own senior class. You guys had your own your own T-shirts with all the names of the senior class. Remember those years ago?

I wonder if they still do that. Well, they did it around here in 2020. The zeros in 2020 were toilet paper, two toilet paper, two toilet paper. Kids never went back to school and stayed away from school for about two years. And it is that lack of learning for some kids, lack of daycare. Mom and dad still needed to go work, make some money. Whoever still was able to go work in essential jobs couldn't see their friends, didn't go to prom, didn't go to graduation, didn't have their basketball games or football games or man practice, etc. The lack of socialization, this disconnect, that's what led to the mental health crisis. Unlike Florida that kept schools open, the overreaction by the rest of the country.

And you guys remember the headlines and the commentary by all these meat puppets on the cable channels. Aranda Santis is a murderer. He's spreading COVID among his people. So tell me how the villages did out in Florida. The villages, all those retirees, all those old people, they did just fine because they knew they were they were the ones who are most in danger of getting the COVID and spreading it to everybody else. There was not, they weren't falling like flies out there. And if they were, I missed that headline.

Excuse me, I'm trying to pay attention to the news every single day. They didn't. Florida stayed open. The population that was least threatened by COVID, kids, children, the infection and death rate, infinitesimally small among them. And no one listened.

No one pushed back. They just accepted the government edict, the county judge edict, the governor's edict. You guys ruled by Democrats and kept things shut down. And that's why we have a mental health crisis.

It's his life mission to make bad decisions. It's time for Florida Man. Man got a couple of opposite end of the spectrum examples of Florida Man in the news today. One example from New York, a couple accused of dousing their one year old baby with with lighter fluid and gasoline. They were truckers at a truck stop up in New York. In fact, that truck stop, they had reported some fires near that plaza, that truck stop plaza.

Authorities responded and found this couple from Florida, these truckers. They had doused their one year old, likely to, they were trying to murder, trying to light the baby on fire. They went to the tractor trailer rig that was parked nearby and they found a four year old that had suffered several head injuries as well. OK, let's end on a happy note, because this note from Florida, a man out for an evening walk with with his little kid, his daughter, who had a little puppy with her, there was a bobcat nearby that pounced on that on that dog. Dad stepped in, grabbed the animal, and that animal was pouncing on dad, scratching, clawing. But it took one strong punch right on the snout, right on the mouth of that big cat. And there it goes, running away. So that's a better example of parenting from Florida. This note just in, Ron Holloway, if you hear his song, What You Won't Do for Love, that's a beautiful, beautiful earworm.

You'll love that song. I'm sorry. He's passed away. He's Bobby Caldwell. I'm sorry, Bobby Caldwell. I was looking at the wrong note. Bobby Caldwell passed away at eight seventy one. And as I often described him, one of the blackest sounding white dudes in the music industry. There's a beautiful, soulful, bluesy type of voice. Thanks for tuning in to today's edition of Dana Lash's Absurd Truth podcast. If you haven't already, make sure to hit that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.