HARRIS COUNTY, Texas — A growing number of Houston-area leaders are calling for the resignation of a Cy-Fair ISD board member after he made comments suggesting that the more Black teachers a district has, the greater the dropout rate.
The comments were made Monday night during a work session about Cy-Fair ISD's equity audit report.
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"Cy-Fair has what? 13% black teachers?" Scott Henry said. "Houston ISD is 36%. Their dropout rate is 4%. I don’t want to be 4%. I don’t want to be HISD. I want to be a shining example. I want to be the district standard."
Since Henrys remarks, political leaders, including Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and State Rep. Jon Rosenthal, are calling for Henry to resign.
"Divisiveness and racism are what’s hurting our students. Not diversity. Resign," tweeted Hidalgo.
"Beyond unacceptable. I've not personally met any of the new @CyFairISD Trustees, but this man's blatant racism is cause for immediate dismissal as far as I'm concerned," Rosenthal said in a tweet.
CFISD Superintendent Dr. Mark Henry -- no relation to Scott Henry -- said the district "is more committed than ever to continue to recruit educators who reflect our district’s demographics."
In a statement Thursday, Henry said a diverse workforce helps all students succeed.
It is our goal for students to be inspired by this diverse group of leaders and teachers. Our commitment is to value and promote all deserving educators. CFISD has shown that a large diverse district can succeed in academics, athletics and fine arts when all employees, students and parents are valued."
Scott Henry posted to his Facebook page that his "words are getting twisted" for political purposes.
"I was defending our school district against attacks from an out-of-state political organization that claimed our schools were failing our students because we did not one pre-determined diversity metric," wrote Henry. "This political organization claimed that one metric - the percent of black teachers in our schools - determined the quality of education our students receive. I was simply refuting that by pointing out the fact there is no one metric that determines education quality - there are a number of important metrics that should also be taken into account."
Read the full statement below.
You can watch the full board meeting here