Texas Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton is the latest official to react to a series of secretly recorded videos that purport to expose North Texas educators partaking in a leftist agenda to woke-ify schools.
Conservative watchdog group Accuracy in Media has been infiltrating North Texas school districts for months. Representatives posing as prospective parents schedule meetings with administrators and ask questions that seem to be rooted in concern — like will their transgender daughter be allowed to join the soccer team, or does the school teach subjects that circumvent the state’s 2021 ban on critical race theory? — all while fitted with a hidden camera.
Last week, a video exposing an administrator with Irving ISD was retweeted by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — who called for a civil and criminal investigation into the administrator and Irving ISD — and has been viewed nearly one million times. In the video, Reny Lizardo, the district’s executive director of campus operations, appears to be coaching a prospective parent on her transgender daughter’s athletic options. Lizardo has since resigned, Irving ISD told the Observer in a statement.
A similar video, released Jan. 16, shows Mahoganie Gaston, Dallas ISD’s LGBT Youth Program coordinator, partaking in a similar conversation.
According to the letters sent to Dallas and Irving ISDs, the videos have left the attorney general’s office “concerned” that the advice “reflects an unstated policy” of each district to allow transgender students to join the athletic teams of the gender they identify with, not the gender they were assigned at birth.
“The idea of school district officials turning their backs on female students and sacrificing the integrity of women’s athletics to advance the radical transgender agenda is disgusting, but that seems to be exactly what occurred here,” Paxton said in a statement. “Any systematic effort by a school district to sidestep state law and allow biological boys to play in girls’ sports in Texas will be rooted out, and my office will explore all avenues to hold those responsible to account.”
The statement from Irving ISD says the comments made by Lizardo do not represent the district’s policies, and the district emphasized that all student athletes within the district are competing in the sport that correlates with the gender they were assigned at birth.
A spokesperson for Dallas ISD did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Paxton’s office has requested an extensive number of documents from each district: documentation of policies and training materials that relate to H.B. 25, the state law that requires students participate in the sport of their biological sex; communications to or between district employees about sex-based student eligibility for athletics; details of the educators’ respective placement within their district’s organizational structure; and, for Dallas ISD, “district policy as it relates to LGBT student participation in interscholastic athletic competitions.”
Each district will have 10 days to respond, the letter states.
In 2024, Accuracy in Media collected similar videos in Plano ISD, Mesquite ISD, Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD, McKinney ISD, Keller ISD, Saginaw ISD and Coppell ISD.
Paxton’s inquiry comes just one day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order that mandates Title IX, the federal law banning sex discrimination in schools, be interpreted as prohibiting transgender women from participating in sports. Any schools found to not be in compliance could risk federal funding.
“From now on, women’s sports will only be for women,” Trump said.
