On Monday, Cy-Fair school board member, Scott Henry who has been serving since 2021, shocked everyone by insinuating that a higher percentage of Black teachers led to more school dropouts.
According to the Houston Chronicle, Henry ran for his board seat last year in part to eliminate “critical race theory” from the school district.
At the school board’s work session, Henry used the Houston ISD – which is predominantly Hispanic and Black – as a prime example of what he didn’t aspire to be.
He told the board that the statewide average for Black teachers was 10 percent, and then proceeded to ask them if they knew what the Houston ISD percentage was.
“36 percent. I looked that up. You know what their dropout rate is? 4 percent.” Henry continued, “I don’t want to be 4 percent. I don’t want to be HISD. I want to be a shining example. I want to be the district standard. I want to be the premium place where people go to be.”
After the story went viral, Mr. Henry released a statement on his social media accounts, saying that his words were taken out of context, “I just care about our kids and their education. Unfortunately my words are getting twisted by political actors for political purposes.”
According to the statement, he was simply defending the school district from the metrics of an out-of-state political organization, “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 that there is no one metric that determines education quality.”
He then closed his statement by saying he was proud of the district’s emphasis on hiring a diverse group of teachers.
