AI, Education, and Underhanded Sabotage

On the grasping corruption in the Education Industrial Complex

In October, I shared a livestream from September 28th about performance reports for billion dollar purchase orders issued by Texas Health and Human Services.^[1] In the post, I also shared my opinion that those purchase orders and performance reports were covering the diversion of the Texas surplus to fund the development of an AI model that would replace human teachers in the Texas public school system.

I ended the post with a quote from an essay I wrote titled “From the Green Book to the River: Lewis, Relativism, and Constructivism in Education” which was published in the very first issue of An Unexpected Journal on Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis.^[2]

That essay was actually inspired by the drama of the selection of Elizabeth Fagen as superintendent for Humble ISD (Texas) in 2016. I have written about that over the years as it was a turning point in my life. It was when I began to realize that people that I thought I could trust, maybe weren’t that trustworthy after all.^[3] It was the aftermath of Fagen’s appointment and the barrage of outside political interference in the 2017 Humble ISD school board election to keep the incumbents who hired her in their seats that made me realize that it wasn’t just local individuals that couldn’t be trusted, but the Republican party as a whole that wasn’t really looking out for the welfare of me, my family, or community.^[4]

The Legacy of Elizabeth Fagen

When I began researching Fagen’s history after waking up to a flurry of frantic text messages after her selection was announced on that May morning in 2016, I realized that her philosophy towards education was what C.S. Lewis warned against in Abolition of Man.^[5] I had just turned in my last paper on AOM for the Research and Writing class in the cultural apologetics masters program at Houston Baptist University, and here was the “Green Book” staring me in the face in our own school district.

Two years later, when we were launching the first issue of An Unexpected Journal on Lewis’s Abolition of Man, I wanted to write about what was going down in our school district that had been taken over by Fagen and her crew, but I didn’t want it to be obviously about our school district because, really … who else would be interested?

Education vs Education Gone Bad

The essay I wrote was on the purpose of education, the true nature of pedagogy, and the danger when that purpose of education is corrupted and pedagogy is devalued and distorted. What our district was in the middle of, and what Fagen had subjected her previous district to (Douglas County ISD in Colorado), was always in the back of my mind as I wrote the essay. The parents of Fagen’s previous district had done what they could to warn us, to help us fight against her hiring, and to prepare us for what was coming in our district under her direction. In my mind, I was writing the essay to honor the efforts of those parents who had fought for eight long years to rid their district of Fagen’s destructive touch; especially the moms who never let up and never let anyone forget how Fagen had brought their once stand-out district low.

That essay was for them: the Hellcats of Douglas County.

The War of Ideologies

The text of the essay doesn’t mention either Fagen or the school district … but both are prominently featured in the footnotes. Reading the footnotes alone, you would see the ideologies of Elizabeth Fagen and C.S. Lewis at war. I’ve mentioned this. Often. I out the shadiness of our district in footnotes every time I can manage it.

That was six years ago. At one point, a digital version of the AUJ: Abolition of Man issue was sent to people as a bonus for signing up for the journal newsletter. Physical and digital copies have found their way into various research libraries. As every issue and essay that An Unexpected Journal has published is available to read online as open access, it has always surprised me how many digital issues of that particular issue would sell year in and year out.

Sabotage and An Unexpected Journal

I’ve spent the past five months chronicling how my devices have been hacked and my platforms have been targeted and sabotaged.^[6] I have also shared that I believe that the attacks are politically motivated and funded by the Republican war machine.^[7]

I think this is for two reasons. The first is that I represent the biggest threat to the GOP: a white, educated, evangelical woman who is still conservative, but will no longer vote Republican. I am the prototype of what the Lincoln Project refers to as “the moveable middle.^[8]” Democrats need more of me. Republicans want to silence me. I am the personification of the existential threat to the GOP, and that is why I think they are funding a steady stream of contractors to hack, harass, and sabotage me.^[9]

Republicans don’t want my voice to be heard because I threaten every one of the false narratives in their platform. They try to convince people that if they don’t vote for the Republican candidate, they aren’t a good Christian.^[10] They push lies about immigration.^[11] They try to push a distorted view of “Biblical” gender relations and roles.^[12] They even try to push a false view of humanity and personhood.^[13]

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In this livestream on stolen words on contraception, I discuss what makes us human. Livestream article. Some of those stolen words, “What is the Purpose of Sex?”

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The heavy sabotage began in 2021, escalated in 2024, and is still continuing. But what I haven’t talked about as much, and what I actually recognized first, was the sabotage to An Unexpected Journal.

I think there is a siphoning off of royalties of the journal, which may or may not be related to the political sabotage. What seemed odd to me is that over the years, regardless of the increase in the number of issues we had available for sale, the monthly royalties never seemed to increase. I realized that everything could be read online and that we were in an odd sort of niche, but it still seemed strange to me that from month to month and as we added issue after issue that the sales never seemed to grow.

The cause for that became more apparent earlier this year when we discovered a bootleg issue of the Advent 2023 Dostoevsky issue of An Unexpected Journal on Amazon. It was reported, pulled for a short time, and then the bootleg issue was back live on Amazon outranking the journal’s actual issue. I have not been in leadership for the journal other than producing the books ever, and especially since Jasmin Biggs and Jason Smith took over as Editor-in-Chief and President of the Board respectively at the beginning of 2023. Annie Nardone took over as President of the Board in June of 2024 year and a decision was made to have Jason Smith handle the nuts and bolts of the production and publishing of the journal through his publishing company, Wootton Major Press, at the same time, so the burden of production was entirely off my plate. The last issue I had involvement with was the assembly of the manuscript and cover for the Modernity issue (Spring 2024), which I then handed over to Jason Smith to actually publish on the distribution platforms.

If you’ve followed An Unexpected Journal through the years, you will have noticed that the website for the journal has a new look. Grant Broadhurst took it over and rebuilt the site on the Extra theme from Elegant Themes. He wanted to do the redesign as he said he wanted to start a business doing websites.

The new look is updated and modernized; however, this is my perspective as someone who has done website development and worked with small businesses and brands for twenty years: the new look bore absolutely no connection to the branding that the journal had built up over the past six years. The previous colors were black, gold and an accent of red. The feel was more aged and focused towards books. The new theme is green and white and, quite frankly, I question whether or not it might infringe on existing Tolkien and Lord of the Rings trademarks and branding.]

If you didn’t know what An Unexpected Journal was, you would have no idea that you had come across a site for an actual publication. There is no link on the entire site to buy an actual book and you have to navigate three pages in to even discover that you could subscribe to the journal. (This was when the new design first launched. The ability to subscribe has now been completely removed.) It looks like a random blog, maybe even a blog ripping off content from an actual publication. You would have no way of knowing because you would have to do an entire investigation to figure out what the site was.

Beyond the branding and look of the site, the category structure of the site was changed. If you are familiar with web development, you know that is the number one rule of a website redesign: don’t touch the site structure unless you must, and if you must, map out redirects and make sure that new site structure is seeded in to search. A good percentage of the essays were unpublished during the transition. The original collection pages for the contributions in each issue were at first unpublished and when published, no longer in the crawlable site structure.

The redirection plugin used previously, Pretty Links, was deleted. The result was that six years of short links published across the web and in every issue published until that point were no longer valid.

All of this could be attributed to ignorance. None of those structural changes were necessary to change the look of the site. The site runs on Wordpress. The theme could have been changed, the theme settings adjusted, and the rest could have remained as it was.

I did give feedback on all of these things, assuming that none of them … Grant, Jasmin, or Jason … were aware of the impact of the changes made. But that is all I could do … give feedback. I was not in charge and was only one person on the board. They chose not to take the feedback. As all this was going on while I was under a barrage of hacking attacks, I left it. Again, I was not in charge.

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Two of out the 200-page report I submitted to the FBI in July 2024 illustrating the publishing scam and royalty theft that the journal issue was being targeted by.

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This was throughout the first months of 2024. In May 2024, Seth Myers brought the bootleg version of the Dostoevsky issue on Amazon to the attention of the board. Actually, I didn’t realize at first it was a bootleg version. The bootleg version was listed as a preorder … in May 2024 for an issue that had been published since December 2023. As that was an issue I had uploaded to the distribution platforms, I investigated it and discovered that it was a bootleg version published on an owned ISBN — owned by someone other than AUJ. After I discovering this, I recognizing that the publication date was extended daily, I realized this had to be part of a larger system of royalty and intellectual property theft. This was included in my report to the FBI in July.

To recap the timeline: the first months of 2024 saw change after change to the journal website that, as I told someone, if you were trying to tank the journal site in search, you couldn’t have done a better job. There was not just one bootleg version of the journal on Amazon, but every single issue had a bootleg doppleganger copy listed on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. My essay, “The Making of a Hero,” was being sabotaged in search with weird urls indexed and manipulated excerpts displaying in search. I discovered that my work had been stolen and people I knew were involved.

Then in August, we had a meeting for feedback on the cover for the fall issue of the journal on Community. Look at that cover. Look at every other cover that has come before and tell me your thoughts. Everyone else on the board that gave feedback on the cover liked it. As I said in my update announcing my resignation from the board for the journal, very obviously our ideas of what is “good” and the standard for the journal have diverged.^[14]

Immediately after the board meeting discussing the cover, we had more of a discussion on the bootleg Dostoevsky issue, as it was now live and for sale on Amazon. Jasmin Biggs, the Editor-in-Chief, said that the position the board had decided on was to “report and move on.” I also saw that the writers’ agreement had been edited in September 2023. I didn’t bother investigating how. At that point, I decided I was done. We could have had an unpublished work from C.S. Lewis himself in that issue and I still wouldn’t have promoted it with that horrendous cover.

It’s one thing to be hit by sabotage. It’s something entirely different to be in a group of people who are, at the very least, complacent to that sabotage.

I removed myself and shut myself off from that avenue of exposure and attack.

One final word on the Community issue before I move on to what I believe is the original source and motivation of the sabotage. The Community issue is available in Kindle Unlimited. If you are familiar with the rules for publishing in Kindle Unlimited, the book has to be exclusive on Amazon. It cannot be published on any other platform, including your own website. This is why previous issues of the journal were never available in Kindle Unlimited. We published them on multiple other platforms in addition to selling subscriptions, not to mention the fact that every contribution is available for free on the journal website. This makes the journal issues ineligible from being in Kindle Unlimited. The journal account with Amazon KDP could be closed for this.

Politically Motivated Sabotage

While writing this update and quoting the constructivism essay from the Abolition of Man issue, I pulled up the PDF of my essay from the issue. Scrolling through through the footnotes, number twelve stood out to me.

12 Note: The claim constructivists believe teachers can be replaced

with technology may seem far-fetched; however, it actually played out

in the Douglas County Independent School District in Colorado. Along

with a series of other district actions, the position of teacher was so

devalued that administration saw the portrayal of a teacher in front of

a classroom as completely unrepresentative of the district. Below is

the text of a response to an approval request for a promotional piece by

then DCISD superintendent Elizabeth Fagen. The email was obtained

through a Freedom of Information request by Douglas County parents.

Elizabeth Fagen, "Re: Flat Earth Promo," June 25, 2015, accessed

January 31, 2018, http://douglascountyparents.com/fagen-move-theteacher-

to-the-side/.

"The one thing that bothers me is that we have a teacher in front

of the class with a book…that’s the anthesis [sic] of us and what we

aspire to offer our kids. :) So…can that visual either move the teacher

to the side without the book or just have kids with robot? I think it’s a

key moment. :)"

Under Fagen's direction, the educational philosophy was strongly

constructivist. See commentary on a district sponsored article by Rick

Hess on EdWeek titled "Douglas County: The Most Interesting District

in America?" dated September 18, 2013. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rickhessstraightup/2013/09

/douglascountythemostinterestingschooldistrictin_america.html

Fagen didn’t think that a picture of a teacher with children was a good representation of the Douglas County ISD … a public school district. She wanted a robot in the picture. That was more her style.

Here I am, battling hacking and sabotage from people who have not only stolen every thing I have published and used it to build an AI model based on that work, but also my random thoughts and experiences that I have shared informally on social media, and now want to eliminate me from public view because what I have to say threatens their business based on theft and deception.

The person their AI model is based upon is too much of a problem, so they just want to get rid of the person and keep the model.^[15]

And I think this is the same thing Greg Abbott and the State of Texas are trying to do with teachers.^[16]

Humans are too “troublesome.^[17]” They have a mind of their own and can’t be reliably controlled. I think those purchase orders for $35 billion in pens and $32 billion in printer supplies were actually funneled to those same “friends” who built an AI model off of my work to build an AI model and virtual education system that would completely replace Texas physical public schools.^[18]

I think we were right when we were convinced that Fagen was being brought in to implement vouchers.^[19] (Or at least was, it turns out she is too much of a problem as well, but in an entirely different way).^[20]

I thought the sabotage of An Unexpected Journal was because a maliciously petty person with access to the means and political funding just wanted to attack me personally and the journal was something I had poured my heart into.

Maybe it wasn’t personal. Maybe it was all political and commercial.

Maybe whoever came up with the idea to sabotage the journal thought that if they could drive AUJ into folding that, as with any nonprofit, the assets would be turned over to another nonprofit and they assumed that would include the copyright to the contributed essays. They would then have control over the essay with the unflattering Fagen footnotes that they could bury.^[21]

The thing is, AUJ does NOT own the copyright to the contributions.

The writers’ agreement for An Unexpected Journal granted the journal the exclusive right to publish for the first 90 days after publication of the issue it is featured in and a nonexclusive right after that. AUJ has rights to a specific use, the writer maintained the copyright.

If that was the plan, it was a bad one founded on ignorance.

The Tell Is In the Response

I do think that was the plan.

Almost everything I have discovered has been the result of the response of the perpetrators to something I said or did. The tell is always in the response.

I published the first part of “$35 billion in pens” on Substack on October 28th and included a PDF of my essay on constructivism. I wrote the majority of this post the next day, but, as I have mentioned, I’ve been continually hacked and my platforms sabotaged. I was focused on documenting the attacks.

Finishing this post in December, I opened that PDF of my essay again to grab the text of that footnote #12, and guess what? I couldn’t select the full text of Fagen’s comment. Somehow the PDF had been sabotaged in a way that made that text no longer selectable. (Converting it to an image?)

If you’re thinking, “Well that’s dumb. What good does that do?”

You’re right it doesn’t accomplish anything other than slowing down someone who wants to copy the quote. But maybe the point was making the text so it isn’t scannable by search engines.

School superintendents saying they want to replace teachers with robots is never a good look.

Again, the tell is always in the response and I do think that is exactly the plan.

Referenced Substack Posts

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Endnotes

^[1] Carla Sallee Alvarez. “$35 Billion in Pens.” Substack newsletter. Raised to Walk with Carla Sallee Alvarez (blog), October 28, 2024. Accessed January 13, 2024 https://raisedtowalk.substack.com/p/35-billion-in-pens.

^[2] C. M. Alvarez, “From The Green Book to The River: Lewis, Relativism, and Constructivism in Education.” An Unexpected Journal 1, no. 1 (Spring 2018): 121–41. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://raisedtowalk.substack.com/p/from-the-green-book-to-the-river.

^[3] Carla M. Sallee Alvarez, “On Elections, Faith, and Parties.” Blog. Raised to Walk, November 6, 2018. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://raisedtowalk.org/foreign-land/on-elections-faith-and-parties/.

^[4] C.M. Alvarez, “Just Trust Us.” Efusion Media Group (blog), May 2017. https://efusionmg.com/hisd/just-trust-us.html.

^[5] Cory McCord, “Controversy Surrounds Humble ISD Superintendent Finalist.” KHOU, May 25, 2016. Accessed January 1, 2025. https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/controversy-surrounds-humble-isd-superintendent-finalist/285-215188940.

Elizabeth Fernandez, “As Superintendent Liz Fagen Departs, Douglas County Parents Celebrate and Texas Parents Petition” The Denver Post, May 25, 2016. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://www.denverpost.com/2016/05/25/as-fagen-leaves-schools-dougco-parents-celebrate-texas-parents-petition/.

Tom Abrahams, “Humble Superintendent Wants Parents to Ignore Controversy and Give Her a Shot - ABC13 Houston.” ABC Eyewitness News, July 11, 2016. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://abc13.com/humble-isd-superintendent-dr-elizabeth-fagen-liz/1422690/.

Alvaro “Al” Ortiz, “Humble ISD Board Of Trustees Approves Hiring Elizabeth Fagen As New Superintendent.” Houston Public Media, June 15, 2016. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2016/06/15/156898/humble-isd-board-of-trustees-approves-hiring-elizabeth-fagen-as-new-superintendent/.

Mark Boyle, “Liz Fagen Is Sole Finalist for Houston Position.” Denver 7. Accessed January 13, 2025. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://www.denver7.com/lifestyle/education/douglas-county-schools-superintendent-liz-fagen-leaving-for-position-in-texas.

Egberto Willies, “Dr. Elizabeth Fagen Appointed next Superintendent of Humble ISD.” EgbertoWillies.com, June 15, 2016. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://egbertowillies.com/2016/06/15/dr-elizabeth-fagen-officially-appointed-next-superintendent-humble-isd/.

Diane Ravitch, “Colorado: Controversial Superintendent of DougCo Resigns.” Diane Ravitch’s Blog (blog), May 25, 2016. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://dianeravitch.net/2016/05/25/colorado-controversial-superintendent-of-dougco-resigns/.

Egberto Willies, “School District Parents Trying to Save Their Kids from Dysfunctional Superintendent (VIDEO).” Blog. EgbertoWillies.com, June 13, 2016. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://egbertowillies.com/2016/06/12/humble-isd-parents-continue-quest/.

Jennifer Bauer, “Humble ISD Superintendent Seated after Months of Parent Protest.” Click2Houston, July 11, 2016. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://www.click2houston.com/news/2016/07/11/humble-isd-superintendent-seated-after-months-of-parent-protest/.

Brian Malone, “Education Inc Transcript.” Media Education Foundation, 2015. accessed January 13, 2025. https://www.mediaed.org/transcripts/Education-Inc-Transcript.pdf.

^[6] Carla M. Sallee Alvarez, “Hacked: The Saga.” Blog. Raised to Walk, August 2024. https://raisedtowalk.org/hacked-the-saga/.

^[7] Carla M. Sallee Alvarez, “Hey, Ted Cruz! I’m Not Going Anywhere.” Blog. Raised to Walk (blog), August 22, 2024. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://raisedtowalk.org/hacked/hey-ted-cruz-im-not-going-anywhere/.

Carla Sallee Alvarez, “On Obstructions, Sabotage, & Politics.” Substack newsletter. Raised to Walk with Carla Sallee Alvarez (blog), September 4, 2024. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://raisedtowalk.substack.com/p/on-obstructions-sabotage-and-politics.

^[8] Mark Imerman, “The Moveable Middle and Statistics.” Substack newsletter. My Two Cents (blog), November 25, 2024. Accessed January 13, 2025.

The Moveable Middle and Statistics

.

Allison Norlian, “Anti-Trump PAC ‘The Lincoln Project’ Launching ‘Lincoln Women,’ Led By Prominent GOP Women.” August 24, 2020. Forbes, August 24, 2020. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://www.forbes.com/sites/allisonnorlian/2020/08/24/exclusive-anti-trump-pac-the-lincoln-project-launching-lincoln-women-led-by-prominent-gop-women/.

^[9] Nancy L Cohen, “Opinion | Republican Women Are in Crisis.” The New York Times, December 31, 2019, accessed January 13, 2025. sec. Opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/opinion/republican-party-women.html.

Ronald Brownstein, “Educated White Women Were Already Recoiling from Trump. Then Came Kavanaugh. | CNN Politics.” CNN, October 2, 2018. https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/02/politics/trump-brett-kavanaugh-turning-point-election-educated-white-women-voters/index.html.

William H Frey, “Educated White Women Could Trigger a Decisive Trump Defeat.” Brookings Institute, August 16, 2016. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/educated-white-women-could-trigger-a-decisive-trump-defeat/.

Philip Elliott, “College-Educated Women Are Fleeing Donald Trump. It Could Cost Him North Carolina.” TIME, October 27, 2020. https://time.com/5904482/college-educated-women-donald-trump-north-carolina/.

^[10] Alvarez, “On Elections, Faith, and Parties.”

^[11] Carla M. Sallee Alvarez, “Kabul Hope: Afghan Immigration Updates.” Blog. Raised to Walk, January 2023. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://raisedtowalk.org/kabul-hope.

^[12] Carla Alvarez @RaisedtoWalkTV, “Barbie: Biblical or Bogus? A Discussion.” YouTube, August 14, 2023.

.In this livestream discussion on The Barbie Movie (2023), the thread throughout the discussion was on the “Biblical” role of women and the messages coming from both culture and the church.

^[13] Carla M. Sallee Alvarez, “What Christians Think About Sex.” Blog. Raised to Walk (blog), October 26, 2024. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://raisedtowalk.org/hacked/what-christians-think-about-sex/.

One of the current religious issues being used to divide is the debate over when life begins and contraception. The Biblical view is given in Genesis 2. God created everything that was made. He created man (Adam) from the dust, common matter from creation.

What separates man from the rest of creation is recorded in Genesis 2:7, God “breathed” life into Adam. Unlike all of the rest of living things that exists, mankind’s life comes from God Himself (Ecclesiastes 12:7).

This is one of the things that it means to be human, to be created in God’s image (Genesis 5:2), also referred to as the imago Dei.

The question of when life, or personhood … becoming a human being, has been debated for centuries. It is this question that Roe v. Wade was actually about. The decision did not say that another person had the right to end the life of another. What court said was that if scientists, philosophers, and theologians could not tell them when life began, how could the courts rule on it?

What was left up to the mother and her doctor was balancing the health and wellbeing of the mother and the child.

Rather than answering the question that the decision posed, abortion was turned into a political football by both sides of the aisle and the real issue was lost. Now that Roe v Wade has been struck down, a new wedge issue was needed to stir up division and to manipulate and control.

That new issue is contraception and in vitro fertilization. The faction that wants to ban both is essentially taking a naturalist position in terms of human origin, leaving God out of the picture entirely.

What makes humans unique among the created is that “God breathed” spirit. We are more than simply matter. All of us have our own Genesis 2:7 moment. The question is when that moment is.

^[14] Carla M. Sallee. Alvarez, “Why I’m No Longer Associated with An Unexpected Journal.” Blog. Raised to Walk (blog), August 18, 2024. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://raisedtowalk.org/hacked/why-im-no-longer-associated-with-an-unexpected-journal/.

^[15] Carla M. Sallee Alvarez, “A Message to My Stalker.” Raised to Walk (blog), August 4, 2024. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://raisedtowalk.org/hacked/a-message-to-my-stalker/.

^[16] Jaden Edison, “Abbott Says Texas Will Pass Vouchers, School Funding in 2025.” The Texas Tribune, November 6, 2024. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://www.texastribune.org/2024/11/06/texas-house-greg-abbott-school-vouchers-funding/.

Megan Cardona, “Texas Public Schools Face a ‘budget Crisis’ under Gov. Greg Abbott, Teachers and Lawmakers Say | KERA News.” KERA News, May 14, 2024. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://www.keranews.org/education/2024-05-14/texas-public-schools-face-a-budget-crisis-under-gov-greg-abbott-teachers-and-lawmakers-say.

^[17] Carla Sallee Alvarez, “Serenity and the Theodicy of Joss Whedon.” Substack newsletter. Raised to Walk with Carla Sallee Alvarez (blog), December 3, 2024. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://raisedtowalk.substack.com/p/serenity-and-the-theodicy-of-joss.

^[18] Alvarez, “$35 billion in pens.”

Jack Crosbie, “Greg Abbott Reveals the GOP’s Plan After Killing Roe v. Wade: Killing Public Education.” Rolling Stone (blog), May 5, 2022. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/greg-abbott-plyler-doe-public-education-1348208/.

Roxanne Bustamante, “LULAC Responds to Texas Governor Comments to Challenge Plyler v Doe Supreme Court Decision - ABC13 Houston.” ABC 13 Eyewitness News, May 6, 2022. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://abc13.com/lulac-governor-greg-abbott-education-public/11824025/.

Giulia. Carbonaro, “Greg Abbott’s Dream of Defunding Public Schools Moves One Step Closer - Newsweek.” Newsweek, October 13, 2023. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://www.newsweek.com/greg-abbott-dream-defunding-public-schools-moves-one-step-closer-1834445.

Nora De La Cour, “Texas’s Governor Is Trying to Destroy Public Education — and Dim Those Friday Night Lights.” Jacobin, October 2023. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://jacobin.com/2023/10/greg-abbott-rural-public-schools-education-privatization-vouchers.

^[19] Patrick Svitek, “Texas Republicans Who Defied Gov. Greg Abbott on School Vouchers Face Mounting Primary Attacks - Mineral Wells Area News.” Mineral Wells Area News (blog), January 31, 2024. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://mwareanews.com/2024/01/31/texas-republicans-who-defied-gov-greg-abbott-on-school-vouchers-face-mounting-primary-attacks/.

^[20] Brooke Kushwaha, “Humble ISD Superintendent Ousted amid Husband’s Scandal.” Houston Chronicle, May 15, 2024. https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/education/article/humble-isd-superintendent-ousted-19459430.php.

Miranda Dunlap, “Investigators: Humble Superintendent’s Husband Made Sexual Remarks, Created Hostile Workplace.” Houston Landing, April 12, 2024. http://houstonlanding.org/investigators-humble-superintendents-husband-made-sexual-remarks-created-hostile-workplace/.

Adam Zuvanich, “Humble ISD Board Votes to Uphold Termination of Superintendent Elizabeth Fagen.” Houston Public Media, November 27, 2024. https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/education-news/2024/11/27/507394/humble-isd-board-votes-to-uphold-termination-of-superintendent-elizabeth-fagen/.

^[21] I don’t think this is the first time they have buried media that is unflattering to the education “reform” movement. Brian Malone’s documentary, The Reformers, which tells the tale of wreckage during Fagen’s tenure at Douglas County ISD is no longer publicly available.