The Dumb Zone FREE - Whats Going on With These Schools w/Lynn Davenport | Business Wednesday 4-14-26

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

Education policy analyst Lynn Davenport examines the challenges facing public education in Texas, highlighting the influence of money, political agendas, and the trend toward privatization. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Hello, I'm here with Lynn Davenport. Lynn, thanks for joining me. How do you describe yourself when people ask what you're up to? I consider myself an education policy analyst, and I do research on all things education. I'm a parent of former public school children. They're now adults, and I have a grandbaby, and my daughter-in-law was a public school teacher, so I'm deeply engaged in all things education. I've come across people before that like self-labeled themselves an analyst and it's just it's really

it's a tough thing and you deliver that's the problem is uh you're everyone that I ask who should I talk to is like you need to talk to her um so it's clear you know and in going through the stuff that I've seen from you that you're you're seeing the field clearly here um so I wanted to sit down with you and now there's going to be some stuff obviously where we disagree probably pretty heavily, but I think that we're kind of arriving at almost like a horseshoe type thing here where somebody who typically would vote conservative and somebody who typically would vote liberal if you want to put it in those two boxes have a lot of common ground. Absolutely.

So I guess the first thing is I'll just tell you how I got into this. I was made aware, I guess, of what was happening at South Lake in Grapevine, Collieville. I grew up adjacent to there, and I lived there. now. And we moved to G-CISD. For me, like, I went to Richland High School. And for me, I thought, you know, if you could move your family to Grapevine, I thought the rich kids went there. And so now, like, the back I was able, my wife and I build something where we lived and I, like, I love it. I love, I love grapevine. I really, uh, I really love it there. And I love the schools. And so then the schools are in the news and you're like, what's happening there. And it's almost in some

ways like a microcosm of what was happening at the state level. So then I, you know, wanted to dive into that a little bit. And then, you know, just as something as simple as I looked at last year in 2025 in the elections in Koppel, neighboring Koppel. I think they had four candidates who spent under $1,000 and maybe three of them were under $500. And in GCISD, we had a candidate. Tammy Nakamura spent 50 grand and her opponent who defeated her spent 25K in response to that. So to me as a parent, there's just an obvious what the fuck moment if you're in a school district where people are spending half a million dollars to something's going on. So my instinct is just like, all right, well, what are we doing here? So that's where I get into. And for people, I don't know

how caught up everyone is on all of this. The voucher thing is obviously. passed, but I do still think it, talking about it contextualizes like what's going to happen next. Like how we got here will inform where we go next. So to me, the last thing I'll say on the local level is then you find out, okay, we're one of these districts. The money's coming from outside groups. What is the aim, goal in game of these outside groups? And you look into that. And obviously, somewhere in their profile of policy is privatizing public schools. And so it to me becomes a very basic thing. And correct me if I'm wrong about this.

Because like, for example, in GCISD, there are three spots open right now. I don't really know, I don't know shit about these other three people. I really don't know that much about them. But I know that the people they're running against are raising money from organizations who, as part of their stated goal, want to end public schools. So how can I vote for someone to represent the public school? So that's just like my first question to them. And I don't really know that I ever get an answer on that.

Like a conflict of disinterest. It seemed to be a pretty basic. Yeah, conflict of disinterest. Because they have no interest in advancing the public schools. Right. And being paid to sit on your hands, sort of. And so that's how I got into it is just, I don't know how all this is supposed to work. I don't know what the right number per kid is.

I don't know what the right test is. I just look at like I do with health care. I'm like, I'm an idiot. I just don't think you should get sick and die if you're poor. In this case, I don't think you should, you know, you should be trusted to advance the good of public education if you're being funded by private education. It seems basic to me. It is. It's as simple as that.

Where it gets complicated is that it's not just the right. And so I actually ran for school board in 2017. And I raised more money just from grassroots neighbors, friends, Democrats were voting for me. They didn't care. They knew me. They knew I would vote in favor of whatever was good for teachers and students. So I had their confidence. I lost that race. 46% is what I got. And she was an incumbent. She was working for a public-private partnership. The Gates Foundation funds it. The TEA funds that it's called Educate Texas. And that's why I chose to run against her. I could have won in the open seat. I went after her. I went after her.

because I wanted to pluck her out of her seat. Well, one of her donors was Todd Williams, a Democrat. So the teachers candidates are, if those are ones, those are, that makes sense, that their union, like, left coded? No, she wasn't even that in the unions really didn't, they don't get involved in a lot of these local races. Maybe in Dallas, ISD, they will, but my kids went, even though I'm Dallas, they went to Richardson ISD. So it was a little bit more suburb type district. But the majority of the district is in Dallas. So a Dallas real estate guy worked for Goldman Sachs.

He was the one funding. He donated to my opponent. And I was like, what's going on here? Well, I had already been researching who he was, the commit partnership. So he is on the left trying to privatize through charter schools and other means, education technology to replace the teachers, that kind of thing. Data harvesting, because you can make a lot of money. That's what I was going to say, does he have like a financial interest in? Because that's what I'm my assumption is on the.

He's already rich. I don't know. What is there? And when you're already rich, what do you want? More money, more power. I know that, I don't know. I know that people say that some of the people that are affiliated with, for example, like, groups affiliated with, with Monty Bennett are in some ways financially benefiting, like,

they sit on the board of a private school or a charter. You know what I mean? That driving demand towards those actually lines their pockets. Well, everybody gets a piece of it. I mean, you'll see different players in education. So it all depends on the angle. They're coming, but there's so much money to be made in education. And it just depends if they're more real estate,

then there's the real estate interest because they can then capitalize on the charter school real estate loopholes and things where those are profitable. So you'll see people coming out with a charter school investment and they'll get a baller, you know, like some player to be their face. Remember the Dion's. You might be too young, but the Dionne Sanders. Prime Prep. I hope I look. I'm very. I don't know.

Everybody's. Brett Schiff showing up at the practice field. Oh, yeah. Oh, Brett Schip? Yeah, okay. Yeah, he's a good friend. That doesn't surprise me at all, for us. Right.

Well, and you know, that's an example. He's on the left. I'm on the right, but we both see the corruption on both sides. So we can see it very clearly and we agree on that. So we can come together and work against certain agendas. And we don't care. care about the party. There's a justice complex that I think that I'm picking up on on you that I also yeah. What is that? Can you explain that? It's it. You know, you see when you see something

that's that's when you see injustices, then you have to say something and do something. You don't really care. That's so much better than I thought you were going to say. No, it's a good. Okay. I don't apologize for mine. You and I had a, a phone call. Um, the other day. And I mean, And it's just, you know, it's weird to say to somebody who's not that much older than me. But, I mean, I was raised largely by my mom. My dad, my stepdad, awesome. But like, this is just how my mom was, right? Like, it's just, it wasn't just her.

It was like our whole family. So, you know, now I just don't have a boss, really. So I'm just like, all right, what's what's going on over here? Let's see. And if people can answer it, then they can answer it. But I do think what that's interesting because I, what I thought you meant when you said justice complex was some was like a political type. Because I do.

have, like, an assumption, I'll just tell you that when there is business grift involved, my mind goes to, like, that's the Republican Party. And obviously, that's not entirely true. And the way that I tend to see the world is through the economy and more from, like, capital and labor. And to me, this is, it's odd because it's a public institution. So to me, the idea that anybody who is left leaning is trying to kill a public institution, that person should not be trusted.

Like the people you were talking about, you're in your race. I mean, these are billionaires and millionaires, multi-millionaires. So at that level, they just see green. You know, they're not really. I know. But they lean left. They're like John Arnold, who made his money through the Enron deal. So he's the youngest billionaire.

So he takes his money and he starts these efforts like in the Dallas ISD Home Rule takeover campaign that happened in 2014. It was revealed that he was bankrolling it behind the scenes. So why would he do that? He comes from Dallas ISD. He went to Hillcrest High School and he's largely been successful because of his public education. Why would he come after public education? So you have Mayor Rawlings, the former mayor. You have Mike Morath, the current TEA commissioner who was a board trustee. You have John Arnold. You have Todd Williams, who I mentioned funded my opponent. And then you have have, I even heard Bush was, they met in Bush's house. I wasn't there, so I can't prove that. But that just tells you we got an agenda. So you, you have this sort of, in this kind of shadow

power that is trying to privatize the public education system. But what you're dealing with in Grapevine is a different, I think it's like a super organism. So you have all these religious leaders, you have billionaires, but they're on the right side. So that's why I'm saying that it's happening on the left and the right, but what you're a victim of in your neighborhood is the right. But the power in Texas, and I can say this as a former delegate to the state convention of the GOP and a former precinct chair, I know the power is on the right and the right is calling the shots and the right is wrong on this, very wrong.

So I can say that because I don't have anything. to gain from, you know, I'm not, I'm not going to lie about it. If I see that they're part of the problem, then I'm going to call it out. On the ground, the Democrats do run our city, our major cities, and our schools, and as a whole, they're more left-leaning. But at the state level, it's Republican. And they'll cry about Democrat chairs, but Democrat chairs, that's not what's going on. the lieutenant governor, the governor, and the state reps, I mean, we're talking and the senators. We have a super majority of Republicans directing the legislature and they've been in power for 30 years. So if they bitch about immigration and if they bitch about our elections and bitch about education, they've been in power.

And I hold up a mirror and I'm like, you're part of the problem. Look in the mirror. You can't blame the Democrats about this. But I've fought the Democrats at the local level because they didn't want me on the school board because I'm a, you know, Trump or a right winger. Well, Trump is the reason why voucher passed because he stepped in, stuck his nose in local decisions. Education, there's no justification for any intrusion at the federal level. He has no business in what happens in Texas education. He's got his own house to work on, right?

So he sticks his nose right before the voucher vote. So we had the votes to kill vouchers. There were moms knocking on doors talking to every legislator. But the special interests step in and they manipulate how things go. And so Trump bribed the, he said, I will primary you if you do not vote for this. And I will endorse you with an auto pin endorsement if you say yes to vouchers. So what they all do, they all cave like dominoes, like a bunch of little school girls like trying to stay on the hive. They want to stay in that power position.

They are not going to cross the power and the party. And that's why we have taxpayer-funded subsidies going to private schools to pay for these elite private schools. So people can take their $10,000 coupon and go to the private school. Taxpayer fund is. So we pay for that. Yeah. And I think it's from, again, from just my worldview here is a lot of times when these things end up, when public institutions get stripped. or really just when the buck gets passed to the public,

my worldview sees it as this disproportionately affects minorities, just simply because more of them are poor. I mean, it's a math. But it also, you know, especially in Texas here, where for a long time it seems like the last vestige of opposition was rural. You know, it was the rural schools. Yeah, they were holding the line. And so it truly is like a cross-everything type issue.

whether it's political, racial, almost, what it isn't is it's not an economic. It's a very clear us and them type economic decision. And it just, it sucks because it feels like there's really only a couple of goals that could be being served here. And maybe it's more than one at once. But one of them would be, well, most of the people who are making these decisions are, you know, they're powerful people from the, what do you would you call? evangelical right who are primarily white, they're wealthy, and they're making decisions that at the end of the day are just going to fuck the majority of minorities out of the chance of getting a good education. Now it's also going to screw a lot of white people for sure, but just disproportionately. And then where I come from is like my perspective also is I think that the government back 100 years ago created the ghetto. I think the redlining, the, it's the reason, Things are the way they are as they want them this way.

They want there to be ghettos full of one race of person to fight. And so I see this happening. And I'm like, well, this is just setting something up where 10 years from now you can run news stories about, look at how these public schools are nothing but a fucking zoo now. It's out of control because they've taken all the money out of it. And so on one hand, I'm kind of in my head like, God, this can't just be to just cleave off the full two systems. And the last bit of it was public school, so let's just do that too. I have to figure it's also that there's just people making a lot of money from it, right? It's money.

It's access. It's power. I mean, there are other things going on besides just money and contracts. I mean, you have access to social and emotional data on children, mental health data on children. So there are also those that talk about data harvesting a lot. because Texas has mined more student data than any other state. And education is the most data-minable industry. So if you think about every click a child makes on a device.

And the way that the technology is going now, it can track your engagement through your retina. It can do retinal scans. I'm not saying that they're doing this in every district, but they have headsets and things that can check your blood pressure, your heart rate and all those things. But also where you're clicking, where you're going, computer adaptive assessments that can anticipate if you answer this way, it'll nudge you this way,

it'll back you into a corner and a double bind where you are forced to go against your values. So you have to answer this way or this way you have no other choice. And so there's a lot more going on just from the data. And so every click can be monetized. And the data sharing agreements and the privacy rights, all of those are being violated. And like Todd Williams, I mentioned earlier, I'm going to target him a little. You go off, Queen. Because he is the most powerful man in public education, in my opinion, because he writes a lot of the bills. He lobbies for them.

And then he steers the funding for them. But he has data sharing agreements with a lot of these ISDs, like Dallas ISD, Richardson ISD. We've been sharing data with his nonprofit for since 2014. And I saw the data sharing agreement with Dallas ISD. So that means they're handing over private. private sensitive data to these nonprofits, but these people that come from places like Goldman Sachs, and why do they retire and then go in education as like the primary focus? Because they can

look like the benevolent philanthropists. Look, I'm giving all this money to public education. I'm not trying to screw them over behind the scenes. I'm not trying to, you know, no, look how good I am. And then they win the Linz Award, L-A-N-Z. Then they win the, you you know, whatever award. And so they, they look like there for it. And it's the perfect cover. You know, Gates is, is deeply involved. Gates funds the commit partnership to Todd's Empire. And so Gates, Bill Gates is deeply involved. And they do it through grants. And grants are bribes. So if I give you $30 million, and I want you to do what I want you to do. And the TEA, our education agency is involved in this. So, you know, we've got a governor's race.

So Governor Abbott, those of us in the grassroots, we call him a globalist because he doesn't, he doesn't really care about what the grassroots and the party leaders at the grassroots level care about and the voters. He does whatever his donors say. And his donors are people like, yeah, they're coming from other states. Like they were trying to get vouchers passed in Texas through, you know, so they were funding his campaign. He's got $106 million. dollars. So, you know, people ask me, they're like, who are you going to vote for? Well, I'm not voting for Governor Abbott. Well, then you're handing it over to the Democrat. Well, great. Then the power, then what happens is if Jeannie Anahosa wins the governor's race, she's going to boot the TEEA

commissioner because that's appointed by the governor. Well, that's a good day in Texas. Then you have a balance of power. I don't want Democrats running things. I see how they mucked up Dallas. And, you know, so I'm not saying it's going to be any better if Democrats are running things. but when people who see how the power brokers are keeping us fighting over culture wars and fighting each other the left and the right while they're all laughing all the way to the bank and they're calling the shots in both parties, then I think that that would be a great thing if Abbott was booted to the curb and somebody else was running things because then that commissioner would not be running Texas education

because that's appointed by the governor. So if a Democrat gets an office, yeah, they're going to, you know, she may appoint somebody who's bad, but at least it, it disrupts the power. Because right now they have, they have carte blanche. I mean, they have full spectrum dominance over public education. So what's happening in Grapevine, they're coming after schools. They're going to do it. If they can't do it through takeovers like hostile takeovers like what's happening in Houston ISD,

where you've got the former Dallas ISD superintendent is running it. appointed by Mike Marath, who was appointed by Governor Greg Abbott. You've got a military man in there sent there to blow it up like he blew up Dallas ISD. We lost 10,100 teachers in Dallas ISD when Miles was there. Now Miles is in Houston as an appointed superintendent. And so he's handed over all this business to his for-profit charter from Colorado. So our Texas dollars are going to fund his fledgling and failed charter school model. in Colorado. Brett Shipp did a huge expose on that when he was working for Spectrum. So,

you know, you've got these districts being taken over by the state. That means your voters are disenfranchised. The majority of Houston ISD is black and brown, okay, minority majority or majority minority district. So now you've got the corporate interests running it. You've got real estate people appointed to be on the board? Why all the real estate people on the board? These people don't know a lot about education. They have conflicts of interest, but that's purposeful. So they're going to vote and steer contracts and all kinds of funding to the special interests. They don't give a shit about the kids. Don't care at all. It has nothing to do with education. It has nothing to do with outcomes and making the district better. You will see.

he will implode it and he'll leave in a few years and it'll go bomb another district or he'll just be in Colorado running his charter school model. Let me ask you about the Todd Williams thing. So it seems clear to me like I'm grossed out by the idea of the basically if we're just talking about Patriot Mobile at all, right? On that sort of thing. Oh yeah. And I can go. I can talk about that too. Yeah.

But I'm interested in this on the other quote side thing. So if because it never really occurred to me. I mean, you see somebody's like, oh, I gave a huge grant to this school district. And I mean, it is, I don't know. Like, how is this? It puts the school in an odd spot. If they take money, if they're going to be immediately just accused of like, okay, well, now you just have to dance or whoever.

Because they brought you, yeah. So, I mean, ideally there would be the level of funding where that was never necessary, where grants were, you know, illegal or something. But at this stage, like, I'm trying to figure out, like, what you would do about that, right? how do you I'm trying to acknowledge that there are people of all different ideological approaches here who are grifting or making money off or at minimum like buying the education system they want and using their money for ideological reasons which at the end of the day is all Patriot mobile is doing too right it's just their ideological bent is kill the school and the Todd Williams ideological bent might be

something else. It might be, I want kids to learn about this. It might be I want them to use iPads instead of. Yeah. A big part of it is like with the bond. So like Dallas ISD has a $6.2 billion dollar bond. And that is to buy every kid a device in K through 12.

And we know that's a big. We want to go away from that, right? Right. Because if it was working, then we would have better outcomes statewide because they've been on the devices. And the money. Yeah. So education is really not as.

expensive as we've made it out to be. Is there any sort of momentum behind that? I mean, I guess we have to talk about the test first, but just getting away from the iPad? Yes, there's tons of talk about it. Now they did the decoy where it was like, oh, get the cell phones out of the school cell phones. So it was awful cell phones. The parent issued device. Not a word about the government issued device.

So I'm like, no. Okay. So now they have an uninterrupted stream of data on the Chromebook. books and the iPads. My district, Richardson, just passed a $1.4 billion bond to buy iPads for every student. When they know, we have the evidence that it doesn't move the needle, doesn't result in better reading outcomes, math, nothing, nothing. Because you and I know, writing and reading on, you know, a physical book and writing paper, pencil, education is simple. That's how I learned. And I'm not, saying that we have to go back to, you know, the 70s to be successful, but we had a lot of

strategies in the 50s, 60s, and 70s that produced all these people who are very well-educated. Made you twice as smart. We'd do it. Right. But if it's the same thing, then... But it's the lie that they keep perpetuating that this is innovation and this is going to be better for these kids and these urban settings and the black and brown kids and they need the innovation and the access and all that. And it hasn't done one darn bit of good. So the technology, actually, it lines the pockets of the ed tech vendors and they're lobbying through TPPF, the Texas Public Policy Foundation. And that's a huge driver of what kind of bills we get. So like, I mean, part of how I got in all of this is because my own child was impacted by star testing, which is the,

you know, that's what we call it in Texas. Other states. has a different name, but it's the accountability system. Under George Bush, who used to be a Texas governor, all the bad shit starts in Texas. So he goes to be the president and he works with Ted Kennedy to get no child left behind past. That set off a marketplace for reading response to intervention and ed tech vendors. We have a big one in Dallas, I station. So this is really interesting, I think. So I station.

You've seen the gold double tree buildings there on Northwest Highway and 75. Oh, yeah, actually. I mean, I don't know if you're, yeah, but they're old. They're like, you'll see. And when they pan the Dallas skyline in Dallas, the TV show, which I don't know if I watched that one. But it's that building. It's those gold buildings. So they're kind of vintage buildings.

But anyway, it says I station on there. So it's run by a multimillionaire Dick Collins. And they'll, they're taking the company to maybe 100 million. I don't know. But that company benefits. benefited after no child left behind passed because it was a little stealthy software company waiting in the wings for when the bill passed. So the bill passes and then they pilot it in Houston, Dallas, Terrell, Richardson, Fort Worth. How many of those districts are being taken over now after 20 years of using this, this experiment of technology? Two of them and more were to come. So Fort Worth's being taken over. Houston's taken over and they're like, oh, the reading scores, the kids can't read more than half the kids don't read on grade. level. Dick Collins' daughter is a lobbyist for the Coke-funded AFP, which is Americans for Prosperity. She goes to the legislature, lobbying for vouchers. I'm like, you've got to be

kidding me. So, okay, so your daddy gets this company to be adopted by all these school districts teaching the kids to read and doing reading assessment, like to see where they are like a diagnosis. Do a shitty job of it. After 20 years of doing that, they literally piloted it after the bill passed. And then she goes and bitches at the legislature. You know, kids can't read. We need vouchers to get them out of the trapped. They're trapped in failing schools. I'm like, you cannot make this shit up. You cannot make it up. And it pisses me off that these people, they are paid operatives. And then now she's going around with the governor talking about property tax relief. Where do you think our property taxes come from the people? And we pay them through our

property taxes. And what do they fund? Our schools. who sets the property tax rate, the school board trustees. So now Abbott's like, oh, we're going to do property tax relief after we've been griping about it. The cost of living is insane. My kids can't afford to buy a house. I have a grandbaby and a son who's saving for a house. When's he going to be able to afford a house?

You know, I mean, it's crazy. Yes, it is. There's a lot there. Sorry. No, you're good. I should have been writing things down as we went. Yes. Write this down so you can retain it.

There's just a couple of things that I wanted to follow up on. So I think the iPad thing, that's a good example of just bloat, right, that there are people here. Yeah. Because see, like with my, millions, yeah. With my, again, with my general worldview, I was talking to somebody about this last night, actually. But there are going to be people when you change an economic system who lose some. My goal is it for it to be the people who have the most to lose a little. but in this case

those tech vendors obviously they would be the ones holding the bag I don't know that anybody really cares about that other than the politician who might have been elected yeah because they they donate to them

you look at most of the Republican like Van Taylor who he got caught in a what ISIS Queen okay you know about him yeah there's nothing Isn't that ironic there's nothing that I'm not gonna

It's so ironic isn't it Yeah I mean I give you yeah sure You know? Yeah. That's one way to put it. So, okay, so when he was in office, I would always look at who was hosting his events. I couldn't afford to go to him.

I mean, I wasn't going to pay whatever, however me thousands of dollars to go to the Democrats. Or whatever else. Yeah. And so, you know, I can't even get access to. And he's not my senator. He wasn't. Don Hefines was my senator. And that little shit has been going around the state trying to be the comptroller.

He's up against the Democrat now. So he won the. primary. And he's trying to grow, which is so funny, he wants to doge the, the comptroller's office. And now, he's not going to doge it. He's going to double it. He's going to grow the comptroller's office where he sits there and manages the voucher program. And there's a big fat vendor that is, has the lion's share of the market in Texas. It was supposed to be multiple vendors, which is not any better, but one vendor, Odyssey, gets it. So this contract with, so the Vinyl is, Whoever runs the voucher gets a cut of it.

They take a percentage of every transaction. So it's a banking scheme. So this voucher thing is going to grow. Don Huffines wants us, the taxpayers, to fund all kids. So we need to not only pay for our five and a half million public school kids. We need to add that new lane of the private school kids and homeschoolers. He's going further, really. Yes.

So they're growing government. This is why I'm saying. Holding that mirror. The hypocrisy. Look in the mirror, Don. You're supposed to be the small government guy. You're the one who's going to doge it and clean it up and get rid of fraud, waste, and abuse.

And you're literally growing a whole lane of education that we weren't paying for thus far. Because the thought is, so those who want to privatize, they want to shift the money into private hands, but they also want to collapse the traditional public schools and drain them of students and money and whatever. So they want the kids to take the vouch, leave the public schools and take the voucher. But it's not really what's happening. if you look at who's applied to it. You know, they said it's like kids trapped in failing schools.

Right. We've got to save the black and brown kids and the kids in poverty and give them leg up and give, you know, no. The private schools don't want them because they can discriminate and they do and they will. So the private schools aren't really an option for most kids because they have to test to get in there. And then what if they can't, 10,000 is not anything. Most private schools, even the crappy ones are 15, 20. Yeah, and then the testing. 30? If you have special needs, you can get up to $30,000,

but the special needs, the schools for special needs kids, there's not that many. So what you'll see, you'll see a lot of grifters popping up with a new pop-up school and they'll say, oh, we take vouchers and come on over. I'm hearing about a lot of sports schools. There's going to be it. I want to get back to that. Yeah, go ahead.

The bloat and the grift. But so you brought up the culture war thing, which is obviously, like, That's the thrust of, I re-listened to the Grapevine podcast. And it really got me thinking about a lot of different stuff. Because, again, I, you know, I don't, I'm not the type of a lefty that was too worried about the language people were using. I'd prefer everyone be cool to each other, but it's not what drives me. But at the same time, you know, I didn't really know what was in. I don't know what's supposed to be in libraries.

I don't know. Like, I remember being in high school and being like, some of the shit's like definitely are rated. And like, you're 16, you're 17. You're reading books that have like sex scenes in them. So it's like, all right. I mean, I'm, I don't know. I remember there's a, like, we say this about Trump all the time.

Like, he'll say something just that everyone says like, this is the dumbest shit ever. Can you believe he said this? And I'll be in the back like, yeah. Because I'm like, I didn't know either. So like when people are like, can you believe they're taking these books out of the libraries? I'm like, well, I don't know. Some of them seem like a lot. And I feel like we have to be able to give a little bit on that.

And as you and I were talking about that. I appreciate that because that's being honest. You know, it's like you shouldn't have a book teaching a kid to give a blowjob. Yeah. No, I mean, and I don't want to be the one. Nobody can defend that. If they defend it, they're saying free speech. I'm like, bullshit.

There's no free speech for a child. Somebody has to come up with what the line is. I don't want it to be me. I think also, you know, you said on the phone. And I don't really. know how to solve this, but there is the, like, most people who go to school to be a librarian, they're going to be, like, slightly left of center. Now, I don't think they're going to be as left as people, like, you, they're not going to be me. They don't want to, like, get a

Maltaff cocktail. They're just, like, old, old lesbians. Like, I don't think they're a huge threat at large, but I do think ideologically, sometimes you end up with people that are, like, I'd like for these kids to see the world the way that I do a little bit. But that's just what every teacher's doing. It's just that when your teacher's a lesbian or your teacher in the case in Grapevine, I think she was a lesbian. I don't think she was trans. The kid was trans. But this all gets very confusing on like what's a teacher allowed to say? I don't really know. My camp counselor was a lesbian in the 70s. She dipped snuff while I was at camp. This has been going on for a very long time. My friend always says the 70s, it was benign neglect. If you look at like the 50s,

it was like the children were seen, not heard. Then you get into the 60s and 70s, benign neglect. The way we were raised, nobody knew what we were doing. We'd go to the library on our bike. We'd never come home, you know, until dark. And we would look up, you know, books at the library. And they had bad books back then. I mean, I didn't know to do that, but I had a bad friend who And she's like, look at this. And I'm going, oh, my gosh. You know, so this has been going on for a long time. The book thing was a political tool, a weapon.

So it is my opinion and my assessment that the books were bundled and they were sent to the schools and they were not sent by the left-leaning people. But the left-leaning librarian goes, oh, free books. Oh, nice. You know, whatever. May not have even read them. Stuck them on the shelf and whatever the, the order. or, you know, where they're supposed to go. And she didn't care.

She doesn't care. Yeah. This is, this is extremely my shit. So that's, uh, because it gets right at the, the over emphasis on language. But in a way that, you know, I hadn't really considered because one, I don't really know how books end up at libraries now that I'd never thought about it until you said it. But I do remember like, even being in school, then being like, oh, there's a truck with a thousand books here today that somebody donated.

There's no way. Nobody was reading all those. And that's the thing is I'd never considered the idea that somebody would do this surreptitiously because setting that trap is very politically astute and savvy because the lesbians will fight that. And they did. And that's what I'm saying. Right. They're digging their heels.

And obviously I'm saying that in jest, but I mean like people lefty type liberal, especially like your Hillary type neoliberal, they're going to take that very seriously. Oh, yeah. And they're going to defend it. And they took the bait. And that became what these elections were about. And the result of that is, right?

Like we got people who either at best or incompetent and at worst are like bad actors in their spot. And so the idea that they were sort of planted there, it makes too much sense. I know. And the reason, and I told you this on the phone that, so I went to Lano County. There was a huge book debate going on there in a lawsuit. I think it was a federal lawsuit because their public library had all this, these bad books in there.

And there's a woman named Bonnie Wallace. And she is kind of the face of that lawsuit. So I go to this GOP event in Lano County. And I see the books on like a kiosk or like a table. You know, the shock, they need a shock. like, God, because they need to spur on the grassroots. People show up at your school board meeting. You read this nasty stuff.

And then they're going to tell you you can't read that because it's inappropriate. And then you call out their hypocrisy. So it launched an army of people going out, either grandpa or the pastor or showing up and they're like, you know, this, but you know, reading it. And Bonnie Wallace would go around. She's still going around. She was just at Houston ISD. And she gets off reading these nasty things.

I hosted her at an event in Dallas. We had to tell her, I was like, stop. We get it. We understand this is inappropriate. And he stuck his and he did this. Yeah, he sent me a video. She's into it. She's into it.

And it's weird. Yeah. And she gets a high from going around and reading this explicit, disgusting content. I don't want that in the schools. But let me just tell you, the threat is not the books. I wish, I wish that that, no, they're not reading books. Chrome books. solution back then was like, why don't you just check the book out and fucking throw it out.

That wasn't my, actually, Mary Lowe, who lives near you. She, that was her. It's still funny to just be like, this is a pretty simple. This is a pretty simple. Throw them out. Nobody else was really checking for the book. You can do that because they're not even that up to, you know, they're not that advanced to where they replenish it.

Yeah. And if it was free, they're definitely not going to replenish it. They don't care. But it did set the stage for a battle. Perfect battle. again, the oligarchs up here are, you know, like doing this. Well, if we do this over here, they're going to react like this over here. And like even like with an Islam thing, that's the only thing the party's talking about right now.

So I actually went on Steve Bannon, which, you know, your listeners are like, whoa, why are you talking? No, no. It was a huge achievement for me to talk to somebody who talked to Bannon. I kind of think he looks like Roseanne. What do you think? My grandma, too. My grandma turned into Steve Bannon at the end of her life. Interesting.

Well, yeah, because the men look at Dan Patrick's starting to look like a woman. When people get in the end of their life, the women start looking like men and it's a hormone issue. Why not lean into it? He's losing his and she's, you know, so like, men become women. Steve Bannon should just lean into it. Right. Well, I watched you on there. Yeah.

Well, I mean, the thing is I go on there and I do want to talk about the Islam thing. Well, the point is just that that's the squirrel. And I said that on the show, it's a squirrel to detract from the real issues going on. And that's the control that the nation state of company, I mean, a country starting with I, is directing what's going on, even in Texas. But I, so the, that part is, there's the debate over whether or not they should receive vouchers, right? Like, that's partially what's going on, right? But then also there's the, I mean, and for me, obviously, I'm against any private school getting vouchers. And in my case, particularly religious.

But I know that there's like some level of like is, is Abbott beholden to like a Muslim business lobby or something? No, it's just it really. So what I was talking about is the charter school model. So if they're going to gripe about Islam and the Islamization of Texas. No, no. I mean, we can talk about it. Well, no, so the number one charter school in Texas, the largest one, is it was founded by a Turkish imam, a Muslim cleric who was extradited in the Poconos. Is this, does this, where does this go back?

Is this, what's the, what's the mosque, the 9-11 mosque? That's how care got wrapped up in this, right? Oh, yeah. Well, and, I mean, they used 9-11 to basically strip our rights and the Patriot Act. Yeah. So everything that's supposed to make us freer. and liberty and freedom, that's what the right uses those dog whistles. Liberty, freedom, liberty, freedom. And it's usually manipulation of the base because we're trusting and we're

for liberty and freedom. And so that must be good. I think also that you have religion involved. So people on the, on the writer are obviously, they scan more religious. So I think that they stay together more. I think that they, you know, I just think that you move as a movement better because of a religious tie, but I also think that means that you can be misled easier, personally. But I think the, I don't know anything about the guy from Turkey. I do. He's dead, so. Well, or like the, like, it, I doubt, I don't buy that they're like running full scale, like,

terrace madrasas and like Richardson. But I do, I don't want any of those schools getting my money. Right. But. And they are. And for me, I think so... They will. I do, I have like a decent number of Muslim friends.

And the one that really bummed me out was, and it sucks too, because, you know, they could have just called it something else, as someone pointed out. But the Muslim Games thing, right, was going to be at Colorado. I think all that is just absolute, it's just dropped right in there for everything to go, I know. And they say that it's because, right, like Greg Abbott has designated. care is a terrorist organization. And I'm positive that if you went through like every transnational organization, you're going to find criminals. And I just,

in my, I play like flag football with a bunch of guys who would play in that. And it just strikes me as like, these guys are trying to do like the most American thing. They just want to get away from their wives and play football. And so like, it's, they bum me out because it was like,

dude, these are not terrorists. Like you just don't want to, You just don't want to deal with this. And really what you want is you want people to be mad at them. Because if they're mad at them or mad at something else, then we're not talking about what I consider to be the real issue, which is economic disparity and opportunities being, you know,

the disparity in opportunities. Because I had a pretty good start in life. You know, nothing like crazy. But I generally, that's kind of where my shit comes from. It's like I wish everybody had like a decent, like start to things to go back to my complex, I think, as you've said. But, well, I mean, that's kind of where I, you know, and I get it like you're a Christian. Like there is a, you have a different belief than those people do.

You both kind of believe each other are wrong. But the problem is you have so much in common. Like there's so much like tradition in their culture and like welcoming and respect. And honestly, like they have a little bit of a different. I don't, I don't know. It's just weird. I don't, I'm not like a Muslim scholar. No, no, no.

I guess talking out of my ass. I just have had some experiences. You know, is that the way that they treat women and the true power of women, because we had a woman come to our high school talking about the beauty and the hijab. And she's saying, no, we don't do it because, you know, it's all this. But it was really about covering up so that the man doesn't want to, you know, make advances towards you.

And so I don't like it when it doesn't make. sense to me when people defend the culture when that is. No, and I want to be clear. I think, yeah, I would say I'm not religious. I think there's the Islam's approach to male-female dynamic. For me, I consider problematic. But it's really a matter of how you practice it. And I know people who practice it and practice it not like that, right?

Just in the same way that my girls, I had a grandfather by marriage who was a Baptist preacher who was, you know. Chauvinist. Right. And so, you know, it just kind of depends on how it happens in every religion. And the thing is, you know, as far as the money going to religious schools, this, we warned the legislatures, legislatures, legislatures. Holly Plymonds is a good friend of mine. And she went door to door, told them this, this will go. It can go to Muslim schools. It can go to Scientology. You can go to an LGBTQ school. It can go wherever. It can go to, but they are only thinking of their own faith and their own. religious schools accepting the money, but we told them, and they didn't care. I mean, the actual com, the comptroller right now was a senator at the time. He'll be, he'll be bumped once whoever's elected in the fall. Yeah, he's been doing quite the spit shine on the voucher. Is he yours, Hancock? No. No, it would be currently the guy who's on his way out would be Giovanni, right? Oh, yeah, Gia. Right. I mean, perfect example of a hypocrite, you know, paying for abortions while he's standing for abortion.

I can't. No, I know. I think it's like you have a justice complex. It's just, well, it's just so, I know, but okay,

so, but the money should not be going to my own faith, to other faiths. I think that is unacceptable. And we mourn them and here we are now. They lost their court cases, what I predicted. So I'm not clairvoyant.

I just study the players and the positions and, you know, then it's easy to predict the outcome. So if the vouchers are where they are, and I don't even, I don't know how, like, you know, repealing that. Is that even an option in like 10 years or something? One of my solutions, repealing it. So, or we could just quit expanding it. Right.

Leave it. The, it's one billion to grow to 11 billion. And it, but they want to increase it, 2030. And so they want to double that. They, I mean, only one percent get, um, it's, like, you know, they, I forget how many they have, who have applied for it, but not all will get that. Yeah.

A thousand kids. So, um, repealing, limiting the growth of these are things that would, could be done every two years, obviously. Right. Then as far as the test goes, my understanding of it, um, which comes from a couple months ago was zero. So take this for what it's worth. But the idea of, you, you,

used to have one test, and now you do take three throughout the year. The goal was to get to some sort of progress measurement type test, right? What do they call it in other states is something? There's a word I forget. Every time I remember. That might be a normative, I don't know. So those three tests that we administer now are just basically three bites at the same, they're the same tests, essentially.

I mean, it will start as, oh, no, these are. less stressful because we're spreading it out through the year. But we know how the districts work. The tailwags, the dog. And like my district is terrible. This is part of the reason I ran for school board is because the way they treat the teachers and the students during testing because they're so hell bent on, you know, getting that accountability rating because now we rate the schools. We don't fail the students. We fail the schools. And it's all tied to the test. So what gets tested is what gets taught. And that's by design. So it narrows everything to the, Only the test is what matters.

So they'll do that three times a year. And the pressure on the children through benchmarks, simulations, the way that they do practice rounds. They'll practice three times a year. It'll be the same. But it'll be worse because it's three times a year instead of the big, bad thing at the end of the year. And I mean, it will be online.

So they've changed. So the star is online now. So they have to have their devices issued by the school. See? So it traps you. They're like, well, you can't opt out now. it's you know and you can't not do the computer work because that's what the stars we can't get rid of the devices and go to pen pencil paper and pay the teachers with the money that we're spending all

this I love it harmful stuff because Mike Marath moved it to technology and stars online now with a little inner as it has a little AI component to it so if you um so on those three tests how they're not achieving uh a measure a measurement, a progress-based? Like, what are they doing with these three-tips? I mean, to some degree, yes, but the complaint is that, you know, parents don't see it. And the teachers don't learn from it based on how the students do because it comes out after the fact. It's not really, it has no, it has no value and no benefit to the parent.

I don't give a flip how my kids did on the star test because I care about what they're learning in the class. and I'd like to know that the teacher is testing them based on what he or she has given the kids and then they would grade that. But that's, we're getting so far away from that. So then the teacher doesn't really like, you know, I mentioned I station earlier, that technology that, you know, with the reading. So my niece was reading through the eye station. The teacher never read with her because it took away the teacher's role and that hands. on access, you know, to see how this the child's doing. So my, my sister was like, yeah, she's never even read with the teacher. She was working with a specialist that would come in to help with dyslexia. But, you know, that that was a real disconnect with that teacher because the technology is doing her job. That's the goal of many of those in the privatization movement.

And you saw, I don't know if you saw, Melania, Trump came out a couple of weeks ago with a a humanoid walking with her down the runway. I saw the one last week. What? Oh, I bet. Sometimes she's not. I'm not a hooker.

I'm not a hooker. Well, so she comes out with a robot. She's like, this is the way of the future. It's technology in the classroom teachers. We no longer need that. They can access a perfect education and they can get all their social, emotional,

and everything from the robot. Yeah. Yeah. And part of me thinks, okay. Stopian. Are we supposed to look at that? Is that another thing just to steer our attention? Well, so I waited a while to chime in on that one.

But yeah, so here, you know, her children and Trump's children get a classical education with human teachers, books, paper, pencils, and they're so articulate. And Ivanka's, you know, saying, you know, whatever she does. And now, your impression actually hit. That was pretty good. I'm a singer. I have you back for that. I'm a singer. So I have an ear for impressions.

and I can do a lot. It wasn't bad. It was actually very good. So how do the states that do it best do it, in your opinion? Accountability testing. Because I would imagine the problem you just laid out, it's a problem they created. But teachers are expensive. iPads aren't.

So at some level here, there has to be more human capital. Like there just has to be more people, more hours, more. Because, you know, that's, I told you like what's happened in our district. We're over the student limit right now. in Nora's classroom next year when we absorb another school, we're going to be well over it. She's got her issues that might. So at the end of the day,

I know people say you can't just throw money at it, but somehow you have to throw people at it. And so if you, I know it costs money to administer three tests. What is the full like package of measuring progress look like in an ideal system? Well, I think local control, local responsibility. You hear a lot about things.

the control, but the responsibility and governance. So they are independent ISDs. And they are, so you're supposed to be going to the polls and voting for your duly elected local representative. And school board trustees are the highest number of elected officials in the nation. So if you think about there's more of them than any. So that's supposed to be your, your vote and your voice. And so you can go redress your government and talk to your school board. But because it's become so political and because that there's kind of a machine that runs most of the school district's boards. It could be a left machine or a right machine depending on your district. My district looks right.

Like if you look at their voting record, they seem right, but they actually very much vote left. And so it's a frustrating thing, but they can be voted out and you can show up at school board meetings. People are just too lazy. They don't want to show up at the school or too busy or. whatever people don't show up at school board meetings. I'm one of those rare people that showed up for years. I don't do it anymore because I've moved on to the state level, but I did it for years. You should be able to talk to your trustees and tell them like, this is what we want. And if parents would go in mass and say what they wanted, then that pressure would actually work to get the change

that we need, but I think people don't really understand how their rights work. And, you know, I think it's a difficult landscape to get, you know, them to do the right thing. But if we were paying, if the special interests were out of the way and campaigns, if we had some sort of control over how much people can donate to steer, to manipulate a race, especially like the governor, like 106 million, how could he not win? We need campaign finance reform big time. But there are other solutions and the money should not be going to these special interests. And if everyone understood that at the local level, they could push back and say,

why are we paying Apple, you know, however many millions of dollars. Why wouldn't we then pay the teachers? But the teachers don't have any collective bargaining in Texas. So when people say those powerful unions and not true, the right. says it all the time. Even I corrected Steve. I'm like, no, unions don't have ban on. I was like, unions don't have power. In Texas, if they did, they'd be making as much as the lobbyists do. Teachers aren't. Teachers have been paid more over the years. I mean, there have been salary increases, but with that come the insurance and everything. Yeah. And they can't afford houses. I mean,

the housing is not accessible to them in the districts where they teach. They have to go to a neighboring community that has cheaper cost of living and they can't afford and that happens with a lot of the first responders and people they can't live in the city where they actually work so paying the teachers training them well and paying them well with the money saved on the the experiments the consultants the devices the software programs all the shiny things even you know what they build in these districts these massive stadiums elementary elementary school looks like a small college. Now it's STEM school and it's beautiful and it doesn't, it's not like over the top,

but it's pretty nice. Yeah, they don't spare a penny. Like, look at, I mean, my school was so 1960 bare bones, you know, just utilitarian. Everything's very fancy now and they have, I call them, it's like IKEA meets Starbucks now. Like when we do these bond referendums. Everything looks like private equity. It's just ridiculous. Yeah.

So it's like there is graft and waste and abuse, the local. level. The state is not wrong when they point to some of these districts that do a water park or whatever with bond money. Like I think that we we can be honest at both levels. Like the locals need to say, yeah, we probably shouldn't be doing that. But I always say that the locals are a victim and villain as far as our school districts. The state is all villain. There's no good coming from the state. There's no good. So the testing, we'd have more teachers, obviously. So that's the model. How are we administering that? Oh, yeah. So they have testing coordinators or so many people involved in the testing. They'll even pull in the PE teacher.

Right, right. I'm saying, how would you do it? If we had throughout the year, we've got some more teachers, we got a little more money. How are we doing this? Okay, got it. So, yeah, we would have, I don't mind a test. I have no problem with a test, norm reference test or whatever, Iowa state test. I don't care. That will, that will assess basic knowledge. I'm fine with that. It's the high stakes component. So when you tie that test to the teacher pay, or if you tie it to a school rating,

or if you tie it to money, then you've just corrupted the whole thing. And children that come from higher income families, it's a direct correlation. They do better on the test. Sure. Mommy and daddy read to them before bed. So it's a different deal.

And those schools then who have a disproportionate number of kids who either come from other countries, like we're a dumping ground for refugees in Richardson ISD. So those schools where those kids go, they overload them. People don't speak, you know, I mean, some of these dialects is like, I don't even, you know, nobody, there's not tutors. There's not Spanish translators. And so, yeah, so you have a campus that then gets a D or F rating. because those kids, they can't get them ready for star in two years. So that's the kind of thing that the system is rigged to set up schools for failure.

And so then they can shudder. They can close more schools. And the people like starting with Bush and, you know, at the top, they use these reforms that sounds like it's so go. You know, Johnny can't read. So we want to help their reading. No, it's about setting up the schools for takeover. And they use different tools in the toolbox. So it depends on who's doing it.

It could be the real estate agenda to bring in charters. It could be the testing to then replace a teacher with technology. Yeah. Yeah. So there's, you know, there's different agendas. But Trump is on the voucher and privatization. How would you measure the school then? I wouldn't.

That's the locals, the people. Parents. They have an accountability structure and place. It's all up to you. That's how we did it before. I mean, my dad grew up in Dallas Highest D.

My parents went to Sunset and Kimball High Schools. And I mean, how did people know? Because the proof was in the pudding. You knew when your kid, you could see your report card. You could see what they're, their parent portal and they're,

because they call it a parent portal that you get with this new Lubonic curriculum, it's just the state curriculum. Parent portals, parents can see what the kids are learning. Well, that was at our kitchen table. Parents could see. There's a book.

And there's a lesson and the parents could actually help them because you could go back to the, you know, if you forgot your math, you're like, and you could flip back the other pages and go, oh, yeah, I need a refresher. Okay, here's how you do it. And you can actually help your child. The math now and the way that they do it, parents can't help their kids. So it just creates this never ending dependence on the state and the government and the, you know, the schools to do it all. Parents really just feel helpless. I'm like, what do I do? Yeah.

And it's, see, this is where I really respect what you've done here. And it's, it's obvious that you've, you've just poured yourself into this. And you're, I think you have all this correct. I think you've unspooled this correctly. I don't know what happens next. I guess you're just looking for candidates that speak on behalf of, hey, we want to have public schools. Like, is it basic? Yeah.

That's a good, good question. So, the thing is. There's going to be Republicans, too. right, that are still going to be, like somebody's going to buck the, or not you. Well, I'll tell you. So what I'm seeing, so that I use this example often because it's a lesson for my own party because I don't want Democrats running things. I want, I want true conservative leadership. But so in that Senate District 9 seat, because Lee Wamskans went after the schools, you know, don't bite the hand that votes for.

you, Republicans actually use the public schools. That's this misconception that all public school kids are from Democrat families. No. Now in large districts, sure, urban districts, sure. But if you look at your area, I mean, there could be, I don't know what the Republican versus Democrat statistic is, but Tarrant County is red, right? So the, what is it? It starts to the, okay, the, the, the district that Lee went after to split it up. I'm drawing a blank on the Keller. Keller ISD. Yeah, yeah.

Keller ISD voters, they were pissed and they either didn't vote for her because they couldn't vote for a Democrat or, you know, just didn't show up at all, or they went and voted for the Democrat. And the Democrat won the primary. So for the, I mean,

the Democrat won. So now she'll go up against the run it again. They'll run again. Right. And she could lose. And so they lose that seat because they come after the public schools. And those have, Republican voters in them and they want their high school football. They want their drill team.

They want their neighborhood schools. They want to, I wanted to know my neighbors and their kids. And I wanted my kids to walk down the street to my neighborhood school and I want choice in my neighborhood school. I don't want all this experimental crap. I just want great teachers. I want to pay them very well. I want to attract the best. And I want the kids to be learning time tested learning strategies. I want them to learn to read and write. I learned speed reading. That's part of how I'm able to do what I do. I learned speed reading in high school. I was a terrible student, but I learned a speed read so I can go through, I can skim a book and an article like that. I can digest an insane amount of information just because I had some teacher who taught me to speed read.

They should have had you read all the, uh, the blowjob books and everything to determine whether or not. Thanks. That's her job. Yeah. No, I, I didn't even read. I got, I did not get involved in that battle because I was like, this is a, this is theater. Yeah. And everybody's just taking the bait. And the left is like, yeah, we want these gross books. I went to the league. I know what was it? Oh, I forget where I was. It was like the Jewish women's something.

And there were all these women there. And they were like defending it. I was going, what? Do you hear yourself? You really are okay with a kid reading that? But it was because it's, okay, so it's reality tunnels. We're all stuck in these reality tunnels, as my friend Allison calls them. And so you get in that lane.

can't get out of it. It's like, oh, I'm, I'm pro public ed. And I think that these books are fine. It's cognitive dissonance. And then you've got those who are like, public schools are evil. They're indoctrinating kids, purple hair teachers trying to trans my kid. Sure, there are horrible teachers that are going to try and talk your kid into that. But the large majority just show up. They care for kids. They want to do their jobs. They want support. They need resources. They want printer paper. They want to give the kids whatever. They give them the shirt off their back. They spend their own money to do their classrooms and give the kids everything they can. It's a calling. Teaching is a calling. They like they go into that field. They already know they're not

going to make much money. They do it because they know that that is what they're supposed to do. Not all teachers. Some of them pull a paycheck and they're terrible. Yeah, I didn't really, you know, I had some good experiences, but my daughter's teachers have just been so phenomenal for her that maybe that's part of what's lit a fire under me a little bit as well. And, you know, it's just a, it's the dynamic. I mean, evolutionary wise, I don't know that we've had like someone else helping raise your kid throughout the human history. So, like, if you think about, you know, I think a lot of parents, they don't, there's

another adult influencing them every day. And if the kid starts fucking around, like, they don't want to blame themselves. I do that a lot. teachers aren't like I do it right what's it must be a TV like you're the parent but sometimes you don't want to take responsibility or it's like look in the mirror type thing it's like well the teacher she's I think gay that's probably what's going on here so I don't know that's it's a tricky situation and I'm not in it yet so I can't really speak on it some mom whenever I was popping off on Twitter the other day was like you know I had a high school age kid um in grapevine at that time

you don't know what it was like and you know the message I was trying to drive home was not that I don't care what it was like, but that the people who were pushing that do want to close the schools. So if they were only concerned about the blowjob books, then I'd be like, I don't know, maybe you guys, maybe you have a point. But if you're using it, even if you're not using it, if you're doing both, people are going to accuse you of using it. Right. If you're doing both, that's what's going to have. Yes. Yeah. And they are, they are absolutely, they have a game board. and they have a billionaire backing them and they are deliberately taking over.

What do people say when you, if you were to sit down with Tammy or one of these people and you're like, hey, how do you square this? This guy kind of wants to close these schools. You're on a public school board. I don't, that's kind of my goal is like to sit down

with someone and just be like, how would you, how would you square this? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it's hard. I first have to kind of know if I, studied what they do, then I can, I know with their angle and then I know how to approach them.

And I'm sorry to cut you off again. When it's at the state level, what they would say is like, well, I just believe kids should have a choice. The parents should have a choice. The tax money should follow the kid. That a state rep could reasonably say that. If you are a local trustee, like that doesn't, no, you have a conflict of interest. That's why I say if you're on the state board or the school board. So there's this, um, this woman, Julie Pickering is on the, state board. Oh my gosh. She is the worst. The worst. And she's up for re-election. So I hope that's a case where it's like, I don't care if the Democrat wins because she's so bad. That bad for that she's that bad. And so she, yeah, these people, she has a conflict of interest. And then

she's pushing all of these special interests. And for profit and these grifters that come along because she's introducing their product or like Prager, you, and trying to get them involved. Well, you know, they have no business getting involved in the State Board of Education. They're supposed to,

the State Board is supposed to set the standards for education, the TECs, the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. And, you know, I wish that they'd be more of a checks and balances on the commissioner and calling him out for all the, the vendors and Gryft and the special

interest. Yeah, Marath. Yeah, because he's running, he's laundering all kinds of, steering contracts through these service centers all across the state. So I don't know what region y'all are in, but we're region 10. There's 20 of them across the state. And he runs ed tech vendors and, I mean, all kinds of contracts through there. Our state, our government money. And no one's watching it. But the state board has become this political shit show that, you know, you got a Republican majority on there. And they're. There, you know, it's just theater, so much theater coming from in. They're supposed to be examining what the kids are learning, how they're learning, and who's profiting. And instead it becomes them trying to control and insert and inject religion. And that is not the role. Like I, as a Christian, I did not send my kids to the public schools to learn my faith. That's my job. And I certainly don't trust all denominations to do that.

We can't even agree on which version of the Bible. Right. Right? Yeah. So which, you know. I wish everyone could get on board with the, the AA thing. If they put higher power in there, I wouldn't even care. A.A., we had to settle on higher power.

Right. My grandpa had that. So that serenity prayer could come together. Mm-hmm. So I think, I think it's interesting to me, you're obviously like aware of like the Nick Shirley thing, the day-key. care fraud, no? Oh, you're talking about in Minneapolis? Yeah, Minnesota. Yeah. So that became like a huge story. And it was like Somali daycares and it was a lot of memes and the presidents talking

about it in Vance, I think said he should win a Pulitzer for it. That was a great case of something that I think happens a lot. And I was talking to again a buddy about this recently who's a big sort of socialist just wonk. And the idea is like that sort of private grift is happening everywhere. And you'll find the Somalis because people are pissed about this or that. Immigration's hot right now. But, you know, when they released the list of people who were doing daycare fraud that

they busted that weekend, you know, 75% of them were white. And that's not even a race thing. It's just that most white people are, the business owners are white. And they know how to game the system. So, yeah. And so that was what I would, that's like a, whether it's the, what do they call it when Mexicans that are coming up,

the caravans, right? So you only hear about it. And I'm not saying that we didn't have a borders problem also. But these things that come up and it's like, no, that's... So on the daycare thing, they just got me thinking.

First of all, that's... If you look at the daycare system as it is, you know, done basically through vouchers, that's essentially what it is. The vouchers can go to child care. Right. And so basically, but pre-K. For the sort of thing where the government is, there's, as he said it, there's three ways

you could do this. You could just give people money. The government could do the service for you. Or the third way is the way we do it, which is we give it to these businesses and the businesses administer the service. Right. And there is 10, whatever times more grift involved in that than in just the government doing it or even giving people money. Yeah. So that's at least his take on it. And so we're about to enter this situation. where we're just going to speed run that approach that's terrible for daycare with schools. Yeah.

And my thought is, and I don't care how you vote in the future, whatever. I think you've done great work. I think that if you like, and people like you looked at really anywhere in the economy, you would find the same thing. And I don't know that that would make you like somebody who would vote Democrat because I'm not represented by, like the Democratic Party. But I am represented just by the idea that the distribution, I'm a hard worker,

my parents are super hard workers. I do believe in hard work. I'm not sure you should have to work to like get health care, but there's a perception of people who are like, quote, socialist that you don't want to work. You're lazy. You want to take things from people.

You want to just give it to welfare queens. And I'm trying to get home to people the idea that it's not really so much the government. It's like these these private entities that are siphoning away public money and it's being concentrated at the top. And as you said, when it comes to like the gates, there's people on both sides of the aisle in that. But to me, I feel like anywhere you went with what your passion and your intellect and I think you would probably say intuition, you would find that this shit is happening everywhere. We're being ripped off by government. by private public partnerships.

Yeah. That produce poor services, cost too much, and are not responsive to people. So, yeah, it's an epidemic. Yeah.

And I wanted to shine a lot. I figure out the data center thing next. Yeah. I'm interested. Well, and the data center thing, you know, Austin has that pickle,

JJ Pickle Research Center. That's where I was told that they harvest, or they store a lot of the, the private, the kids data. there. But yeah, on the, let's see, you said something about pre-K. And it made me think of, I don't know, I lost my. Well, I just, yeah, it makes me think of, okay, there's a really bad example.

Okay, yeah, of how daycare work. It's a really bad example. This is not going well. A lot of fraud, a whole lot of fraud, underperforming. Look, these buildings aren't even open. And they're like, we want to do that. That is absolutely happening in Texas. and that was just kind of a microcosm, but you could apply it directly in the nonprofit industrial

complex that feeds off of the problems. And the more you make money on the problem, the more the problem grows. Homelessness is a perfect example of that because, I mean, we do a homelessness count and then it keeps going up. And then you have these people who, you know, get on the podium and we need to do this and that for the homeless. and you see that they're all making six figures, a lot of these people,

and there's so many people making money on the problem, and then they get the grants and whatnot, and we have more homeless people. It keeps growing. Yeah, and that's tricky too, right? Because, I mean, again, I do think that I'm someone who thinks there's a value in hard work, but at some point, and this gets into way more economic theory of just like, there's people who would just say that you just give people money.

That is just the only, the cleanest, easiest way to get somebody out of poverty, even if some of them are going to spend it on drugs. Oh, that was what I was going to talk about. That sort of thing. At some point, it becomes harder to, like more expensive to administer it with all these. Now $1 becomes two because you didn't want to just give it to them type of thing. I didn't like the money. I don't know that's a moral question.

It is. But, I mean, there are studies that show that if you give money, then it doesn't solve the problem with humbleness. But at least we learned that in my church. But the money fell from the sky during the pandemic. No strings attached. People just got it straight in their bank account, right? Well, one argument we had with the voucher is there are so many strings with it. So if you take that money, you've got to jump through all the government hoops.

And that actually impacts the freedom and choice of the homeschool and the private schools. Because then they're now. Right. And so we were saying, well, if the money can just fall, it can fall from the sky during the pandemic, why don't you just give people their money back and, you know, if you're going to pass this anyway, do it where it doesn't have the strings because I am concerned about choice. We'll have no choice because the private schools are now beholden to the government. It's not really going to be choice because it'll start out.

It's incrementalism. Oh, first, you just have to report this. Now you have to send this data about the teachers. Now you need the social emotional. Now you need all these things in order to keep getting the money. And so that will be just like the government system. trying to flee. So what are you going to do next?

Are you ever going to run for anything? I don't think so. No, I don't think there's a value. You want to go to like a Ramadan dinner with me or something and just see how it's this. I just, I feel like more people need to just hang out in Muslim settings. Just be like, damn, this is cool. No, I don't, I'm not even interested in that. I, I, I, no, I know you are.

But I don't know, I think you're, you've obviously got a, your heart is. is in the right place of fighting for people. And I think a lot of times people get, you know, demonized or whatever. And they're just kind of standing there because they're like, shit, they've got an objective and somebody's going to have to be the bad guy here. Yeah, the right comes after me more than the left does. And people say, oh, this is because you're left-leaning. Well, I'm not.

No, no, I don't. The right used to be like. You're like a conservative. Yeah, I'm a true conservative. And I like to vote like one, but I don't have any representatives to really support that, you know, represent me. And so then it leaves us politically, you know, we're orphans and can't vote for them, can't vote for them.

Then who do we vote for? We'll just don't vote. But I can use my voice and that's what I do. I use my time, my resources and I just, I go where people can hear me. And, you know, you emerge as somebody who can hear me. And so I'm going to, to, I just speak to different audiences. And next, I don't know, I'm definitely not running for anything. That's a good question.

and I'm not sure. I mean, on Tuesdays, I work with unemployed people, and I coached them on, I used to be a recruiter. So I coached them on navigating the whole job search. And it's really interesting because I've seen so many teachers come through the program. I've said this a lot. They'll say I'll do anything but teach. And they need me to help them transition into a different industry.

And I always ask them, like, why are you leaving? And their hair is falling out of stress. Or they can't do, they can't harm children anymore with the testing. And it really grieves their spirit because they are called to that. And they're like, what do I do? And it's very difficult to transition out. And then you have people who can't, you know, find a job. And so they're saying, I might go teach because, you know, you don't have to be certified in a lot of places now.

So it's kind of like what you saw was. I see. Everybody's like, oh, these guys are terrible with all these other people. Like, I'll get my student debt paid off tomorrow. Why not? Right. So, yeah. I think this has been great.

I appreciate it. My partner would make fun of me for saying that. Like, oh, I said it's great. I'm the one doing it. It's not really, nobody gives a shit what I think about it's what everyone else thinks about it. No, you're a dad and you have a vested interest. You have skin in the game. Like, it matters that you have a school to send your child to.

And it matters that she gets the education that she needs. And it matters that her teachers are good. And it matters, you know, where your money's going. So we all really do or should, I think, care about what happens with education. is whatever happens with their with this system if it's if it collapses what you know what does it look like when it's the wild west of you know pop up fake schools just from a social fabric standpoint like like i just it just it just really really bums me out i think it bums everyone out and that's why um even though this past i think there's a lot of a lot of people who who are pretty fired up about it um

so you said yeah i'm interested i'm a dad so my final thing is there's a story right now in godly. Oh gosh. I know all about this one. Yeah, no. Hoker or the? Escort is a nomenclature we use, ma'am. That's my what, no.

I said I didn't care about what you called people. I did a whole podcast on this thing. And that's, I know too much about it. Yeah, no, I know a decent piece. But I think an interesting question we can end on is, like, don't, don't you think that an escort is actually the perfect person to be on, like, the sex ed panel like that oh okay that's funny um like wouldn't you get troy oickman to coach your football thing if you go no because you are not teaching them that kind of sex ed so i would say it no

that's that is not the right person especially that person that person okay and you know what the question we always had was it was a superintendent a client is that why you put her on all those committees Yeah, I mean, this sounds like there might have been some favoritism involved. Then the police chief? I mean, like the police and not deputy. He was a deputy. What was he? Was he the chief?

I don't know. The chief, yeah. And her husband is like a deputy, I think. So there's multiple involved. I love it. I love just small town Texas drama. I know you would never know that in godly Texas. Love it.

All this going on. And yeah, ungodly. I think that's what we titled it. Ungodly behavior. That is. That's pretty good. We'll let you title this episode. I appreciate your time.

Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.