School Board Member Blames Black Teachers for His Student Drop-Out Rates
Dan Carson, Houston Chronicle, January 12, 2022
School board member Scott Henry of Cypress-Fairbanks ISD is under fire for comments made during a meeting earlier this week.
Henry, a first-year member of the district’s board of trustees, is facing public calls for his resignation from Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo among many others following comments made during a work session in which he seemingly linked a higher numbers of Black teachers with increased drop-out rates in other districts.
The incident occurred Monday when board members convened for a presentation by consulting group Millennium Learning Concepts (MLC), which the district commissioned to conduct an analysis of the promotion of diversity and equity in its schools. The results of the study, which included suggestions for how Cy-Fair ISD can improve services for an increasingly diverse student body and staff, were presented by MLC director Onica Mayers.
In Q&A session that followed the presentation, Henry, a sales engineering manager at the data insight company Splunk, called the audit “a pile of rubbish” and questioned the integrity of MLC’s findings.
{snip}
Henry questioned the need for increasing the number of Black teachers employed by the district, and seemingly attempted to link Black educators at Houston ISD with high drop-out rates in the district.
{snip}
“Cy-Fair has, what, 13 percent Black teachers?” Henry asked. “Do you know what the state-wide average is for Black teachers? Ten percent. I looked it up. The state-wide average for Black teachers is 10 percent.”
“Houston ISD, which I used as one example—do you know what the average number, percentage, of Black teachers is? Thirty-six percent,” Henry said. “I looked that up. You know what their drop-out rate is? Four percent.”
Henry continued to deride the study and proclaim his fears of Cy-Fair ISD becoming more like the “shiny examples” of more diverse districts named in the presentation.
{snip}
