Thumbs: HISD superintendent’s holiday humbug
You’re a mean one, Mr. Miles. Not only has Houston ISD’s state-appointed superintendent demanded that teachers teach and students student, this week Mike Miles apparently put the kibosh on mindnumbing movie time in which students lose precious hours of instruction in the waning days before Christmas break watching “The Polar Express” and other holiday classics that have questionable educational value. The gall! But that wasn’t all: He also required that school parties held during class time be “tied to instruction” in some way. That quickly got construed as a Grinchy ban on holiday festivities, leading at least one principal, Kizzy Luke of Bell Elementary, to send a letter ordering staff to cancel the pizza and cupcakes because “classroom parties are strictly prohibited and will not take place.”
Would Miles really stoop to taking cupcakes from a second grader? No, apparently. The district said that Luke’s interpretation of
Miles’ guidance was inaccurate and the Chronicle learned that parties at
Bell Elementary were reinstated at the 11th hour.
We’re not sure if Miles was on hand to carve the roast beast. Incidentally, anyone who traumatizes children with a visit from a convincingly costumed Grinch isn’t just a “mean one,” they’re a nasty wasty sadist. Enough with the #prankmybaby videos of Grinch horror shows at preschools and family gatherings, especially if they’re primarily orchestrated for the viewing pleasure of gawkers on social media. This particular plea to stop this madness is not born of a news story but of a highly disturbing collection of photos that a certain Central Texas pre-K chose to post on its Facebook page depicting toddlers in various stages of panic and frozen terror while perched on the knee of a sinister-smirking, snot-green Grinch. Sure, some of the tikes seem to be enjoying themselves — probably just counting their blessings they weren’t subjected to the real Jim Carey. Still others are depicted with pudgy arms outstretched, reaching futilely for rescue that won’t come. Parents whose children are subjected to such treatment need to channel their inner Cindy Lou Who and ask the people who run this preschool: “Why, Ms. pre-K director, why? Why are you giving our children PTSD?” Maybe it will finally dawn on the perpetrators that the stunt is cruel and unusual and you’ll get to watch not only their hearts grow three sizes that day — but their brains, too.
In its zeal to purge school libraries of books it finds inappropriate, Moms for Liberty should preemptively ban a sure-to-be-forthcoming bestseller before it ever has a chance to defile the innocent minds of American schoolchildren: “Bridget Ziegler’s Diary.” OK, OK, the title doesn’t exist yet but we surmise it’s just a matter of time before Ziegler, the Moms for Liberty co-founder, cashes in her lurid sex scandal story for a fast buck. Ziegler, the morality-policing Mama Bear and scrappy arbiter of literary appropriateness, is defying colleagues’ calls to resign from the Sarasota County School Board after revelations that she and her husband, Florida state Republican Party chairman Christian Ziegler, planned a threesome with a woman who later accused him of sexual assault. He maintains his innocence and has rejected calls to step down as well. But lest Bridget Ziegler, known for championing Florida Gov. Rick DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” law in public schools, assumes those calling for her ouster are employing the same kind of judgmental homophobia she dished out, one Harvard student activist set the record straight. Kudos to Zander Moricz, who addressed Ziegler at a school board meeting in remarks that quickly went viral, clarifying it was her actions in the board room, not the bedroom, that disgust people: “You deserve to be fired from your job because you are terrible at your job, not because you had sex with a woman,” he said. Will Bridget Ziegler acknowledge her hypocrisy and resign — or will she, ahem, just keep swinging?
Also: Traumatic Grinch encounters; Permian no-fly zone
Santa should exercise extra caution this year over West Texas. It’s not just the risk of a super-salty Old Faithful erupting from the earth, hitting his sleigh and firehosing his reindeer with potentially poisonous oil field chemicals. Now there’s a 3,000feet-high no-fly zone he’ll need to avoid in Crane County around aging oil fields just north of Fort Stockton, the Chronicle’s Amanda Drane reported this week. The Texas Railroad Commission says its crews have been working to contain “uncontrolled water flow” first reported weeks ago. Water running amok underground travels until it finds an outlet, including unplugged “zombie wells.” It’s a problem the Railroad Commission seems more interested in covering up than solving: its reason for asking the feds for a no-fly zone was to stop a drone from supposedly flying dangerously close to crews and equipment. But the drone pilot, nearby resident Sarah Stogner, denied that she was too close. Stogner might have made some people’s naughty lists in 2022 when she mounted a pumpjack semi-nude for a social media ad to draw attention to her long-shot campaign for Railroad Commission. But this latest stunt should land her back on the nice list: photos she captured with her drone and shared with the Chronicle are among the first known “irrefutable proof,” one expert says, that saltwater disposal in the Permian Basin is pushing through the surface without any well bore tied to it. The Railroad Commission can either keep playing WhacA-Mole with the eruptions or find a solution. This Genie — the byproduct of an industry that’s brought great wealth to this state — ain’t going back in the bottle by itself.