Hispanic Students Singled Out In Gainesville

This story about Gainesville High School hit home with me, because I lived in that city for several years and liked it very much. My son started his school career in Gainesville back in the 1980s and it seemed to be a good school system. If this story is true, then things have changed.

Gainesville is a small and beautiful city of about 15,000 residents. It is located about 90 miles north of Dallas and less than ten miles south of the Oklahoma border. It is the county seat of Cooke County (one of only four counties in Texas that voted to stay in the Union during the Civil War).

But the Gainesville Independent School District is currently being investigated by the Texas ACLU. The ACLU has requested all information on school assemblies this year. That's because some Hispanics are saying that Hispanics were singled out and brought to an assembly at the school, where Hispanics were accused of causing the school's unacceptable rating by scoring too low on their TAKS tests.

Hispanic parents believe that singling out Hispanic students for the assembly and accusation was racist behavior (and it certainly sounds that way). One of the parents, who's daughter is an honors student, said, "She felt like it should have been an assembly that was inclusive of the whole student body. I totally agree; I don't believe in segregated meetings. To me, it's a simple misunderstanding that they were discriminating against people."

Personally, I think it was not only racist, but stupid. The group of Hispanic freshmen they gathered in the assembly were not even in high school when the last TAKS test was given. They were in middle school, and their middle school received an acceptable rating from the Texas Education Agency (TEA).

Also, according to the TEA, Gainesville High School students did well enough on the TAKS test to be rated acceptable. The unacceptable rating was not given for low TAKS test scores, but for not maintaining a 75% graduation rate among all groups. Hispanics had a 73.3% graduation rate, but how can incoming freshmen be blamed for that?

This was simply a bone-headed move by one or more high school officials. If the school board is smart, they'll take disciplinary action against this official (or officials) and make sure it never happens again.