Tina Descovich - Co-Founder & Executive Director, Mon's For Liberty Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
It is seven fifty two, now here in Judson's Morning News. Right.
I'm sure this happens a lot more than we ever
hear about it. But this is, this is Gardner quite
a bit of an attention. So much so the governor
has kind of stuck his nose into this business as well.
He should, Governor happen demanding an investigation into an alleged
secret transitioning of a student at Bellair High School. In

(00:21):
a nutshell, we're talking about Christian parents who did not
give permission for their child, in fact, denied permission for
the child to be called by a different pronoun, and
yet they went ahead allegedly and did this anyway. Tina
Dskovitch joins us co founder and executive director of Moms
for Liberty. I guess the whole thing is I understand started.

(00:43):
Did they not like send home a survey to the
parents about, you know, this particular issue and what pronoun
does your student want to be or named? Does your
student want to use? That type of thing?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
You know, they usually don't do that for junior high
and high school anymore. In general, it's you know, when
they're in elementary school, those forms are filled out for
high school. They nowadays they ask the kids. However, the
problem is all across the country and obviously in Texas too.
There are guide they're called gender transition guidelines that are

(01:17):
put in place, and they usually bypass school boards and
they just put them in place to the superintendent and
through the bureaucracy. Parents don't even know it's happening. And
the school districts follows those guides, and they don't call
them policies because they haven't been voted on and presented
to the public. They call them guidelines. But the district
and teachers and schools follow those and that's what's happening
here at the school.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Okay, you know what kind of recourse The governor obviously
wants to have some sort of an investigation, But from
a practical standpoint, what sort of recourse does the state have,
if any, in dealing with a local school that's doing
something like this.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Well, I think the power for education belongs at a
state level and is at the state level ultimately, so
Governor abb Abbott and the state legislature has a variety
of tools they can pull from. You can just look
around the country laws that have been passed and signed
into law by governors and places like Florida and other
places that have stopped these actions and these behaviors.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Okay, but by actions, are we talking about criminal charges
against the people responsible? Are we talking about withholding state
funding for a school that does something like this?

Speaker 2 (02:21):
State funding? Absolutely, but more specifically and Florida for example,
they can go after your teaching credentials and certificates and
things of that nature, and so you lose your career.
If you're going to violate, you have to have a
state law in place, but the teeth and the law,
they can uphold your certifications, all types of things. There's
a lot of tools in the toolbox to change this

(02:43):
behavior and make sure we're protecting the fundamental of parents
to raise their children.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
You know. The thing that Tina, that's kind of ironic
about this story though, is HISD is basically being run
by the state. The superintendent, mister Miles, was put into
place by the state of Texas because the goes performing
so poorly. But it shows how deep rooted the problem is.
Even if you've got a school system run basically run
by the state, it's still happening.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
I can tell you so I served on a school
board in Florida in a very conservative county, and all
of these things, all of these guidelines and tools and
resources also came into the school district, so you can
have even a conservative superintendent and a conservative school board.
But like I just said, if you have got teachers,
staff principles, superintendents in some places all attending the state

(03:34):
associations which are controlled by the teachers' unions, no one
should be surprised that this stuff is deeply embedded in
districts all across the country, whether you're in a red
or a blue county.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
And at the end of the day, the only recourse
you have is is parents, concerned parents reporting it right.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
You've got to organize, though, and speak up, because we've
had moms across the country, all different states show up
at school board meetings. When they show up alone, they
don't always usually get a lot of attention. The unions
are always there, they're president every school board meeting. They'll
heckle the moms for speaking up and standing out, and
a lot of moms get scared and go home and
feel bad and all the things. And so you've got
to organize in groups, get five or ten people to

(04:14):
go with you. Make a little bit of a stink
in a very joyful, pleasant way, state your case and
start getting attention on the problem, because when the general
public and parents as a whole find out what's going
on in these schools, there is always an uproar and
push back and then it gets fixed.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
There you go, Tina, thank you so much, appreciate your time.
Dana Dskovic, co founder and the executive director of Moms
for Liberty,