State Board of Education members sided with parent advocates, approving a hybrid trustee training syllabus on parental rights and tossing the original version.
The course is the result of a new state law that requires all school district trustees to receive training on the rights of parents in regard to their child’s education.
The new law directed the State Board of Education and Texas Education Agency to develop the training.
A work group was created by the SBOE Committee on School Initiatives last fall to create the syllabus.
The board gave initial approval to the product in January and postponed final approval in February until April.
During this time, parental rights activists had shared concerns that the course syllabus posted on the SBOE website was missing much of what the work group had proposed while putting the training together, leading to a motion during the board’s meeting last week to swap out the posted syllabus for something that is more digestible, relevant, and “parent-informed.”
SBOE Member Will Hickman put forward the substitute proposed by Paula Hilliard, a grassroots activist and member of the work group committee.
Hilliard, who focuses on parental rights and education advocacy, told Texas Scorecard, “The TEA version of the training was missing Trey’s Law and HB 4623, recent court cases, and even the new Texas Constitutional Amendment on parent rights. While it was a highly professional and thorough listing of laws, I thought there were a few ways to make it more digestible and relevant.”
Upon the release of the agenda for the board’s April meeting, Hilliard noticed that the board had made very few changes from previous suggestions given by parental rights activists, prompting her to send a more comprehensive suggestion in the form of slides to each member of the board, creating a hybrid product of both the work group’s and TEA’s designs.
SBOE vice chair Pam Little told Texas Scorecard that she was impressed with the substitute training, noting it contains “real-world scenarios [that] were relevant to what parents frequently experience in their school districts.”
“It included many new Texas laws, including the state constitutional amendment on parental rights,” said Little. “It presented a robust training for school board trustees which our constituents wanted to see. I also had the SBOE attorney Tim Davis review it and he felt it was a very good training document.”
The motion to substitute the hybrid program ultimately passed Friday. Board members also adopted a rule that will require the course to be five hours long for the first year and three hours for subsequent years.
All school district trustees are required to complete the training by September 1, 2026.
The training will be available on the TEA website.
Hilliard says she hopes trustees walk away excited to work on building the educator-parent relationship that is so essential to a student’s success. “Parent rights don’t stand in opposition to what is good for a school district. Honoring them is fully compatible and necessary to operating excellent schools.”
