TAKE ACTION by June 14: CALL AND EMAIL INSTRUCTIONS BELOW

For more than four years, a team of native and native ally volunteers have worked to create a course in Native American Studies that the Texas SBOE called for in 2018. Although the previous SBOE chair fully intended to move forward with the course in January 2024, the new Abbot-Appointed SBOE Chair, Aaron Kinsey, has chosen to refuse the American Indian/Native Studies course a place in the SBOE agenda for the past two meetings. If the SBOE Board does not review the course this year, then it will sentence the AI/NS course to, at best, a temporary and vulnerable existence for the foreseeable future.*

SBOE Chair Kinsey can and should add the AI/NS course to the June or September SBOE agenda for 2024.

You can also watch this June 10th press conference to get more updated information.

We are calling on Chair Kinsey's constituents in District 15 as well as all Texas residents to call and email Chair Kinsey by June 13th or as soon as possible.

Chair Kinsey is responsible for the following counties: Andrews, Archer, Armstrong, Bailey, Baylor, Borden, Briscoe, Brown, Callahan, Carson, Castro, Childress, Cochran, Coke, Coleman, Collingsworth, Concho, Cottle, Crane, Crosby, Dallam, Dawson, Deaf Smith, Dickens, Donley, Ector, Fisher, Floyd, Foard, Gaines, Garza, Glasscock, Gray, Hale, Hall, Hansford, Hardeman, Hartley, Haskell, Hemphill, Hockley, Howard, Hutchinson, Irion, Jones, Kent, King, Knox, Lamb, Lipscomb, Loving, Lubbock, Lynn, Martin, McCulloch, Midland, Mitchell, Moore, Motley, Nolan, Ochiltree, Oldham, Parmer, Potter, Randall, Reagan, Roberts, Runnels, Scurry, Shackelford, Sherman, Stephens, Sterling, Stonewall, Swisher, Taylor, Terry, Throckmorton, Tom Green, Upton, Ward, Wheeler, Wichita, Wilbarger, Winkler, Yoakum, and Young.

If you are unsure if you are one of his constituents, use this tool to find out. You can still call and email Chair Kinsey if you are a Texas resident. As Chair, he is still accountable to you.

Step 1: Make a Call

Take a minute to review the course.

Then call Chair Kinsey at (325) 238-6050.

We encourage you to personalize the script as much as possible.

Sample Phone Script: "Hello, my name is ______. I am one of your constituents. I live in _____. I am calling because I would really like for you to place the American Indian/Native Studies course on the next available SBOE agenda. I have looked at the course, and I believe it can and should be reviewed for TEKS adoption this year."

Step 2: Send a Personal Email

Use this email tool to send Chair Kinsey a personalized email. This is not a petition that you click send and go. You can and should make the suggested email text your own. If you are a constituent and/or are a member of a tribal community, make sure to tell him this in your email.

Step 3: Sign and Share the Petition

If you have not yet done so, sign and share the AI/NS petition. It can be signed by anyone who wants the AI/NS course to be adopted in Texas.

Step 4: Ask Your District to Offer the AI/NS Course

From 2024-2025, districts can offer the AI/NS Innovative course. After 2025, districts will either be able to offer the course as an Innovative Course or as a Special Topics course. Grand Prairie ISD is ready and willing to share resources and offers a yearly summer professional development. Districts can and should continue to prepare themselves to offer the course. Regardless of what happens at the SBOE this year or next, we encourage you to begin the local course adoption process now.

How did we get here?

Since the Spring of 2020, a committee of Native community members and allies have been collectively developing a course in American Indian/Native Studies. The AI/NS course has been piloted at Grand Prairie ISD for two and a half years and was approved as an Innovative Course by the Texas Education Agency in the summer of 2023. Since then, the course has been adopted or is in the process of being adopted in Robstown ISD and Crowley ISD, along with a few other districts.

In November of 2023, previous SBOE Chair Ellis stated that he intended to place the AI/NS course for first reading on the January 2024 SBOE agenda.  In January 2024, the new Governor Abbot-appointed SBOE Chair Aaron Kinsey pulled the AI/NS course from its expected place in the SBOE agenda, After receiving hundreds of emails and a petition signed by nearly a thousand Texans, Kinsey then refused to place the AI/NS course on the April agenda. Kinsey also neglected to have promised conversations about the course standards with fellow board members, choosing instead to focus on the recommended course materials, which will not be part of the TEKS adoption process.

Most recently, Chair Kinsey has stated that the AI/NS course is already an innovative course. This is, however, misleading. The SBOE board itself called for the creation of a course in Native American Studies in 2018, and the community answered the call. For more than four years a team of native and native ally volunteers worked to create a course that the SBOE had indicated it would consider for the social studies elective catalogue, right next to Mexican American Studies, African American Studies, and a future course in Asian American Studies that could also be delayed using similar tactics. Because of the board's stated priorities for the fall meetings, this June is likely the last chance the AI/NS course has to be considered for TEKS adoption this year. If the SBOE Board does not review the course this year, then it will sentence the course to, at best, a temporary and vulnerable status for the foreseeable future.

The Texas community has been calling for Ethnic Studies courses for more than 40 years. More than thirty years ago, the SBOE approved Ethnic Studies courses, only to not fully support them or turn away from them when new leadership came in. Between 2018 and 2023, the SBOE board was willing to support Ethnic Studies courses on a bi-partisan basis. Let's not allow the American Indian/Native Studies course to experience a slow bureaucratic death simply because there has been a change in leadership.