HOUSTON — A Cy-Fair ISD trustee under fire for comments about Black teachers and dropout rates has been fired from his job with a software company.
Scott Henry was a sales engineer at Splunk, a software company based in San Francisco.
"We viewed the employee's conduct as inconsistent with who we are as Splunkers and the individual is no longer employed by our company," the company said in a tweet.
Henry has also apparently deleted his social media accounts and has taken down his website after saying he and his family were getting death threats.
During a CFISD board meeting Thursday night, Henry defended his comments and said they were being twisted for political reasons. He admitted he could have "spoken more eloquently."
The controversial comments were made after he questioned the need for more Black teachers in Cy-Fair ISD following details of a district-wide equity audit.
"The statewide average for black teachers is 10%," Henry said during a work session earlier this week. "HISD, which we’ll use as a shining example, you know what their average number or percentage of Black teachers is? 36%, I looked it up. You know what their dropout rate is? 4%. I don’t want to be at 4%, I don’t want to be HISD.”
Before the board meeting, community leaders joined the NAACP at a news conference to double down on their call for Henry's resignation.
"What we saw the other night was the racism said out loud," Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said. "And if we allow this kind of thing in a public forum by a public official that represents a school district, what are we allowing?"
Cy-Fair trustees can't remove Henry since he was elected.