Mr.
Dale Frey.
Good evening, fellow board.
Thank you for the time.
I'm Dale Frey.
I am a resident of Lewisville ISD, and I wanted
to come to you today.
First, I need to apologize in advance if my speech
is a little bit dated.
I'm not sure if you guys have had the opportunity
to think about the following subject yet or come to
a conclusion on this.
But today I want to bring up the concept of
the blue bonnet curriculum being brought up by the State
Board of Education.
And when I say blue bonnet to those in the
room, I'm not talking about the school, I'm talking about
a curriculum.
I grow very concerned about this as this curriculum, of
course, is something that pushes Christian theology into our schools
and teaches Bible lessons starting from kindergarten going up to
a grade five.
I think this really opens up a very large can
of worms.
First of all, we have to ask ourselves which which
denomination is being taught here.
If you take a Catholic and a Southern Baptist and
you put them in the same room theologically, they're going
to disagree on probably quite more than a few things.
So it really opens up a can of worms, right?
Not to mention this can also turn our schools into
a potential uh competitor to our churches, because if you're
going to send your youngster to church once a week
on Sundays, well, that parent's also gonna say, well, wait
a minute, I send my kid to a public school
on multiple days per week.
It can make the school look like a competitor to
the church.
So I wanted to voice my concern there, and I
also, of course, did want to say that, you know,
obviously this would also hurt those who are Jewish and
Muslim and those who have who are not of faith,
and of course, this applies to both our students and
our teachers as well.
Uh with that said, if I have if I do
have that much time, then I'll keep going.
I understand why this could be tempting.
The reason it's tempting is because it will increase slightly
the amount of funding coming to this ISD.
I understand that all of our ISDs are lacking in
funds.
If I were you, I would do anything that I
can to increase the amount of funding coming into our
ISD.
I would take any deal that I could.
However, this one, this is just simply not enough.
From what I understand, this curriculum would only, if you
were to accept this curriculum into this ISD, I believe
it would only increase your funding by $60 per student.
$60 per student to you, honestly, to me, feels like
a slap in the face
Because look, guys, we had a lot of really good
candidates run in this past election.
And almost every one of us, at least us on
the Democratic side of the aisle, have been pushing for
and running for increasing the basic allotment by $1,400.
Because we know that basic allotment hasn't been adjusted since
2019 and inflation's been killing us in the sector.
$1,400 per student is what we need at least to
just to combat the inflation we've had since 2019.
And so when I see this as only going to
increase the funding, $60 per kit, merely $60 per kit
for all of us who wanted to increase the basic
allotment by $1,400, that's a real punch in the gut.
So I'm not sure if you all have had the
opportunity to sit down and think about whether or not
you all will accept this curriculum.
But if you are still thinking about it, I want
you to take that to your heart and to your
concerns.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr.
Cray.