CANTON—Even before the last of six tornadoes hit Van Zandt and surrounding counties east of Dallas on the afternoon of Monday, May 1, SBTC disaster relief teams assembled in Canton under the supervision of white hat, or incident commander, Daniel White. 

Crossroads Church of Canton is hosting SBTC volunteers, providing accommodations, meals, and a highly visible place to park the DR command center, communications trailer, laundry and shower unit, and other equipment.

The National Weather Service confirmed four tornadoes—two EF-0s, with winds from 65 to 85 mph, and two EF-3s, with winds from 136 to 165 mph—cut a deadly swath through parts of Van Zandt, Henderson and Rains counties on Saturday, April 29. The following Monday, an EF-0 tornado struck near Cumby, Texas, and an EF-2 again hit portions of Van Zandt county. Four people were killed and dozens injured during the storms.

One area man stopped off Tuesday with a donation of nearly $200 for victims, which White delivered to Crossroads pastor Mark Robinson to dispense to those in need.

“The man said, ‘We took this up in our community. Use it where it is needed,’” said SBTC DR Director Scottie Stice, adding that they’re grateful even for “a widow’s mite kind of gift.”

Stice confirmed 36 SBTC volunteers were on site in Canton by Tuesday. A 10-member chainsaw, rigging and tarping team from the Harmony Pittsburg Association led by Paul Easter started work on jobs Monday. Monte Furrh’s five-man team from Bonham arrived Tuesday and began tarping houses. Other volunteers in communications, assessment, chaplaincy, shower and laundry and administration assembled as well.

“This is one of the quickest responses to a disaster we have ever seen,” White told the room full of yellow-shirted volunteers gathered after Tuesday’s dinner at Crossroads. “So much came together so fast.”

Encouraging the volunteers, White added, “It’s not about how many trees we cut but about people, telling them about the love of Jesus Christ.”

White and Stice confirmed that work orders, which numbered 25 by Tuesday evening, are expected to increase over the weekend, and the deployment is likely to be both lengthy and widespread.

Alluding to the latest estimates from Gov. Greg Abbott’s office that 5,000 homes and structures were affected by the tornadoes, Stice said he believed many of these addresses would be throughout Van Zandt and neighboring counties. “We are going to have to go out in the rural areas and find the work,” Stice explained.

“This situation in the first week of a disaster is very fluid,” White noted. “Many homeowners will have gone to stay with friends and relatives; they have jobs. Typically, we would expect the numbers to jump over the weekend as people return from jobs to their homes.”

Teams are expected to rotate in and out over the weekend and next week, White said, noting that Mike Jansen will assume white hat duties over the weekend.

For more information on how to give or volunteer, visit sbtexas.com/evangelism/disaster-relief/how-to-help.

COPPELL—Parents in a north Texas school district learned last week that for almost a year their district has allowed students to use the bathroom that conforms to their gender identity. It is the latest revelation in the gender-inclusive restrooms controversy that has kept parents in the dark and legislators seeking remedies.

Reports of a 5-year-old biological boy dressed as a girl and using the girls’ restroom at a Coppell Independent School District campus prompted local and state representatives to take the district to task. Proponents of legislation that would prohibit the establishment of gender-inclusive policies in Texas public schools used the revelation to demand action on two bills currently stalled in the Texas House.

“There’s no justification for this,” Rep. Matt Rinaldi, R-Farmers Branch, told the TEXAN.

A mid-April call from the mom of a kindergartener brought the issue to his attention. The woman recounted an exchange with her daughter about a female classmate who “has a penis.”

That discovery reportedly occurred in the girls’ restroom when the daughter saw the classmate—who had not closed the stall door—urinating while standing.

Rinaldi said Superintendent Mike Waldrip and the school board allowed the practice without informing parents. District administrators told him the policy complies with the President Obama May 2016 guidance letter recommending all public schools create gender-inclusive bathroom policies or lose federal funds.

That guidance has been rescinded, but CISD will maintain the policy until further guidance is provided, Rinaldi was told.

The TEXAN contacted CISD spokesperson Amanda McCune for comment but did not receive a response before deadline.

Coppell ISD is in Rinaldi’s district and skirts the boundaries of Rep. Ron Simmons, R- Carrollton and author of House Bill 2899, which would establish a uniform policy governing private facility use in public buildings including schools.

Rinaldi supports the stronger language of the Senate Bill 6, often called “the bathroom bill,” but would support a House floor debate on either one, but both are languishing in the House. SB 6 passed the Senate March 16 but has not been assigned to a House committee. HB2899 had a public hearing April 19 yet has not been voted out of committee.

Supporters blame the lack of action on House leadership, specifically Speaker of the House Joe Straus, who has publicly opposed both bills as bad for Texas business. The National Football League and the National College Athletic Association have threatened to pull events from Texas if the legislature becomes law.

Rinaldi said the sporting organizations are entitled to their opinions but not to any share of the state’s special grant to fund for future events should they follow through with their threats.

The May 6 CISD school board election could force board members to address the issue. Ron Hansen, candidate for CISD school board Place 4, said he would repeal the policy if elected. Hansen’s challenger incumbent Thom Hulme has served on the board for nine years. According to Rinaldi, the school board knew about the policy.

Advocates for a state-wide policy that standardizes the use of public restrooms point to Coppell ISD as the latest example in a growing list of rogue school districts that will continue to establish gender inclusive policies, without parental consent, effecting the privacy and safety of all its students.

“It’s ironic that the school district only cares about the privacy of the identity of some students but not the bathroom and locker room privacy of everyone else,” said Jonathan Saenz, president of Texas Values. “Laws designed to prevent discrimination should not be interpreted in a way that puts children in harm’s way.”

AUSTIN—The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) approved streamlined Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) science standards for grades K-12 at its April 21 meeting, a move that placated both conservative and progressive constituencies concerned with the teaching of evolution in Texas public schools.

“It’s pretty interesting that people on both sides of the issue like the revised standards,” Barbara Cargill of The Woodlands, SBOE member for District 8 and former board chair, told the TEXAN.

In the second of five scheduled meetings this year, the 15-member elected board adopted “compromise-language on two high-profile standards,” after considering comments from teachers and a variety of speakers, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) posted on its website.

Changes to TEKS biology standards (4)(A) concerning cellular complexity and (6)(A) concerning DNA and scientific theories of its origin occasioned the compromise.

Instead of “evaluating” scientific theories, Texas students must now “compare and contrast” theories regarding cellular complexity. Rather than “evaluating” scientific explanations for the origin of DNA, students now must “examine” them.

Scientific explanations include “theories and hypotheses,” Cargill said, adding that the 2009 requirement that students examine “all sides” of scientific arguments was found “confusing” and dropped from TEKS standards.

The new “compromise” language addresses “both the need to streamline content while encouraging critical thinking by students,” SBOE chair Donna Bahorich said in a statement cited by TEA.

Streamlined standards go into effect in the 2018-19 school year.

For proponents of evolution, the changes signaled victory. The Texas Freedom Network posted on Twitter: “SBOE votes & for the 1st time in 30 years, standards are free of junk science designed to cast doubt on evolution. No, for real!”

The Austin Chronicle reported that Southern Methodist University evolutionary anthropologist Ron Wetherington, a member of the SBOE’s science review committee tasked with recommending changes, praised the deletion of the term “evaluate,” which he deemed a “dog whistle” enabling creationist agendas.

The Houston Press hailed the changed language as a sign of “real progress,” since students must no longer “evaluate evolution and creationism” but “compare and contrast” them, ending years of controversy by allowing students to “learn high school biology without being required to challenge evolution.”

Nonetheless, the terms “analyze, evaluate, and critique” have not gone away.

The streamlined TEKS biology process standard (3)(A) requires students in all fields of science to “analyze, evaluate, and critique scientific explanations by using empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing, so as to encourage critical thinking by the student.”

Sarah Chaffee of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute discussed the SBOE changes in an April 26 article posted on evolutionnews.org, pointing out that the SBOE kept requirements emphasizing “critical inquiry on such topics as the origin of DNA—life’s code—the intricacies of the cell, natural selection, and other subjects relating to biodiversity and evolution.”

Furthermore, TEKS biology standard (7)(B) calls for students to consider extra-evolutionary theory: “Examine scientific explanations of abrupt appearance and stasis in the fossil record.”

Claiming such concepts were “developmentally inappropriate” for ninth graders, the biology review panel initially recommended deleting the subjects of stasis, sudden appearance, cell complexity, and origin of life from the standards entirely, Cargill said, adding that SBOE reinserted these concepts following input from teachers, the public, and scientists.

The hotly-contested “analyze and evaluate” phrase was also retained in TEKS standards dealing with natural selection and common ancestry, Chaffee and Cargill confirmed.

Noting that many media outlets have given “erroneous information about the revised standards,” Cargill explained in a written statement that the “streamlined TEKS in biology continue to call for critical thinking in the study of theories such as evolution.”

The use of the word “examine” is meant to encourage students to “take a deeper look at scientific evidence and to analyze, evaluate and critique theories, whether that theory is evolution or any other theory,” Cargill stated.

Before the April vote, the SBOE heard from concerned Texas parents, educators, scholars and scientists.

The science review committee included fellows from the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture as well as teachers, university professors and evolutionary biologists.

Despite much ado from proponents of evolution, the words “creation theory” and “intelligent design” do not appear in TEKS standards.

Even the Discovery Institute’s science education policy calls for a “common ground approach” for public school science curriculums emphasizing the “strengths and weaknesses of neo-Darwinian and chemical evolutionary theories” rather than the teaching of alternative theories such as intelligent design, Chaffee stated.

“Science should be open to close scrutiny and debate, no matter where the evidence leads,” Cargill argued. “Only then can we hope that our students will become great thinkers.”