Raise Your Hand Texas Training: "Track/Report" School Staff Voting Rates
Group promotes taxpayer-funded electoral activism
As the public education industry never appreciates challenges to its dominance of the K-12 domain, school-related electioneering allegations ahead of the March 5 primary reinforce that point. And in that context, a Raise Your Hand Texas advocacy handout takes on new significance with regard to school employee privacy and voting rights.
The handout is used in school board trainings and features three categories of electoral activism: Electoral Engagement, Issue Development & Campaigns and Effective Communications. An “Activate” sub-category under Electoral Engagement offers three action items including “Track and report on staff member voting rates.”
This prompts several questions starting with the propriety of employers tracking employees’ voting habits.
Only in an industry with a culture that indulges its authoritarian impulses and demands bureaucratic loyalty could this occur.
Does such monitoring violate employee privacy or voting rights? And if not an actual violation of law, would the spirit of the law and basic respect for employee privacy rights not seem infringed upon?
Do private sector employers take such action? Hardly. And it’s difficult to believe any acts wouldn’t be met with major resistance and legal action. Only in an industry with a culture that indulges its authoritarian impulses and demands bureaucratic loyalty could this occur.
Per Texas Election Code, an employer cannot unlawfully prohibit an employee from voting (Sec. 276.004), but could tracking and reporting on employee voting rates not only suggest or incite fears of retaliation (Sec. 276.001), but might it also be construed as coercion (Sec. 36.03)?
The RYHT direction specifies districts to not only “track” voting rates, but to also “report on” employee voting rates. To what end? Who does the tracking? Who does the reporting? To whom is the reporting done and for what purpose or potential follow-up action?
Education industry mobilizes for election activism
A recent column, Democrats, Public Ed Industry Target Texas Republican Primary, noted this about the upcoming primary:
Texas’ Democrat-led public education system has a big challenge this primary election cycle and if overcoming it requires hook or crook, crook in the form of Democrats voting in Republican primaries seems the chosen option.
The challenge is the protection and preservation of public education’s monopolistic hold on Texas K-12 students as discussed in School Choice Debate Shows Texas Public Ed More “For the System” than “For the Children.” And the course of action it seems is Democrats planning to vote in Republican primaries.
The public education industry views Texas’ recent movement toward school choice legislation as a major threat and has therefore adopted a “kill it in the crib” mentality. Can’t win on substance (i.e., the issue)? Then up next is style meaning that with few areas having significantly competitive Democrat races, targeting Republican primary contests becomes the emerging strategy.
The article goes on to detail the advocacy arm of the public education industry seeming to support this strategy. Though not mentioned specifically in this article, this is the terrain on which RYHT operates.
Think this instruction can’t encourage additional school district electioneering? The “monkey see, monkey do” nature of government – especially school districts – prompts a two-word response: think again.
Another op-ed, Temple ISD Board Tapped for Raise Your Hand Texas’ Activist Training, discussed the RYHT Trustee Advocate Program and Temple ISD’s selection as a participant.
Signaling a move from “non-partisanship” pretense, the Temple ISD Board of Trustees and Superintendent Bobby Ott will participate in Raise Your Hand Texas’ Trustee Advocate Program, an 18-month program which gives “Texas school boards and their superintendents the tools they need to find, use, and amplify their voices and the voices of communities to influence state education policy.” Temple is one of eight districts selected for the organization’s second cohort of activist trainees.
The article discusses the fallacy of “non-partisanship” describing RYHT and its advocacy training as follows:
For the uninitiated and unindoctrinated, Raise Your Hand Texas is an advocacy/lobbying organization. Its Trustee Advocate Program will train elected school boards and superintendents to lobby legislators and mobilize those in its sphere of influence – teachers and staff, students, taxpayers and community members at large – in support of leftist public policies. Instead of operating as individuals with independent thoughts, school boards generally operate collectively so why would its approach to activism be any different?
With this organizational landscape it’s disturbing to now find actual RYHT training materials directing school district elected officials and administrators to “track and report on staff member voting rates.” Think this instruction can’t encourage additional school district electioneering? The “monkey see, monkey do” nature of government – especially school districts – prompts a two-word response: think again.
Lou Ann Anderson is a writer, former radio producer and current podcaster at Political Pursuits. Her tenure as Watchdog Wire–Texas editor involved covering state news and coordinating the site’s citizen journalist network. As a past Policy Analyst with Americans for Prosperity–Texas, Lou Ann wrote and spoke on a variety of issues including the growing issue of probate abuse in which wills, trusts, guardianships and powers of attorney are used to loot assets from intended heirs or beneficiaries. She holds a degree from the University of North Texas in Denton.