Transcript
Grapevine
Episode 6: A Final Lesson
Grapevine goes to the polls in a contentious school board election driven by the fight over the role of religion and LGBTQ inclusion in public schools. As the dust settles, Ren reflects on the impact of her mother’s allegations. And, after months of feeling as if she’s had to erase herself, Em Ramser reclaims her voice.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: It’s a drizzly gray Sunday morning in April 2023, and Antonia and I are going to church. We cross an expansive parking lot and approach a massive white and brown brick building. At more than 200,000 square feet, Gateway Church’s main campus in Southlake is bigger than a typical Walmart Supercenter. A church volunteer smiles and opens a glass door for us.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Thank you.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Years ago, back before their estrangement, this is where Sharla used to bring Ren to church. It’s also where Weston Brown used to work before he was outed as gay and fired. We’ve come this morning because school board elections are getting underway in this part of North Texas, including in Grapevine. And we’ve got a hunch based on what’s happened in the past couple of years that Gateway’s senior pastor is going to take time to talk about it from the pulpit this morning. Mike and I find a seat near the back of the darkened auditorium as members of the congregation raise their hands in worship.
SINGER: (SINGING)
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: I attended big churches a lot like this one when I was a teenager and in college. If you’ve never been, you might be fooled at first glance into thinking you’re attending a rock concert. The music set is highly produced, with a lead singer strumming a guitar alongside four backup vocalists, a bass player, someone on keyboards, and the hippest looking guy in the room behind them on drums. A fog machine cloaks the musicians in a smoky mist as dozens of bright white stage lights whirl around them creating a truly transcendent atmosphere. All of it recorded with high end television cameras and projected onto massive video screens above the stage.
SINGER: (SINGING)
ANTONIA HYLTON: Today, most churchgoing Americans attend large congregations, many of them a lot like this one. This is where they go for fellowship, to find opportunities to serve their communities, and to seek wisdom. After the singing, Gateway’s lead pastor, Robert Morris, appears on the huge screens. He’s pre-recorded his sermon today. And as expected, he’s got a message about the upcoming local elections.
ROBERT MORRIS: Early voting starts Monday. And at Gateway Church, we vote, we pray, and we vote.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Morris is something of a celebrity in evangelical circles. He was one of the megachurch pastors who threw their support behind Donald Trump in 2016. And he went on to serve on Trump’s spiritual advisory team. Right now, he wants to tell his followers about some other candidates who deserve their prayers.
ROBERT MORRIS: Uh, if you had, uh, an uncle that was running for school board, you’d want to know about it. So we have some brothers and sisters in Christ that are members of the family of churches that I want to just show you and let you know they’re running for school board or city council or whatever. What I’d like --
ANTONIA HYLTON: On the big screen, names of school board and city council candidates begin to appear, nearly all of them endorsed by the political action committee run by the Grapevine cell phone company, Patriot Mobile. Former Colleyville mayor, Richard Newton, and the other two Patriot Mobile-backed Grapevine-Colleyville School Board candidates are among those listed. Morris tells his congregation to take photos of the slides and remember these names when they vote. But he has a disclaimer.
ROBERT MORRIS: Um, I want you to know Gateway Church does not support or endorse any candidate or any political party. But we do endorse biblical principles. And we do believe that as good citizens, we should vote national, state, local elections. And many of you see what Satan has been trying to do even in our school systems. And these are very, very important elections, all right?
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Under federal law, a tax-exempt religious organization like Gateway isn’t allowed to endorse political candidates. But by walking right up to that line, Morris is participating in a full-court-press by evangelicals in North Texas this spring on a mission to tighten their grip on suburban school boards. The rest of Morris’ sermon focuses on another subject: learning to fully trust the word of God, no matter what. He closes in prayer --
ROBERT MORRIS: And I pray God that you will bless my brothers and sisters to trust you and to trust your word in Jesus’ name.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: -- and invites another Gateway leader to speak.
ROBERT MORRIS: I want you all to listen. This is James Robison, one of our apostolic elders.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: James Robison, a televangelist who rose to national prominence in the 1980s for condemning homosexuality, has a warning for believers about what happens when society rejects what he presents as biblical truths.
JAMES ROBISON: We’re being led in a nation where people have changed God’s word into a lie. They redefined marriage. They redefined sex. They redefined gender. And we cannot, cannot think straight. And the only way we do away with that defeat and that death is to return to God’s Word and take Him for who He is and what He says. You heard the truth. Don’t you ever, ever change God’s Word into a lie.
ANTONIA HYLTON: The message that morning could not have been clearer. Satan has been claiming ground all around them, including in area schools. He’s been teaching children lies about sexuality and gender. And now it was up to Christian conservatives to put a stop to it. As election day neared in Grapevine, the leaders at Gateway and the people behind Patriot Mobile appeared to be marching in lockstep, motivated by the conviction that they were carrying out the will of God.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: People opposed to Patriot Mobile had also been getting organized. That coalition of progressives and conservatives were united in their belief that religious values shouldn’t be forced on children in public schools. But settling on a strategy to do something about it? That, it turns out, would be the hard part.
ANTONIA HYLTON: From the NBC News team that brought you Southlake, I’m Antonia Hylton.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: I’m Mike Hixenbaugh.
ANTONIA HYLTON: And this is Grapevine.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Episode Six. A Final Lesson.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: In Grapevine, like the rest of America, school board elections used to be extremely low turnout affairs. Before public schools became the frontline of America’s ugliest political battles, less than 10 percent of registered voters came out for a typical school board race. In Grapevine-Colleyville, that usually meant about 6,000 people cast ballots to decide the district’s future. This year’s spring election would see more than double that turnout. Some voters wanted to reverse the year-old policies that were making transgender students like Ren and LGBTQ affirming educators like Em Ramser feel like targets. Others wanted board members who would continue advancing the conservative campaign to purge “woke” ideas about gender and sexuality from classrooms. And among the very first citizens to line up to make their voices heard on the first morning of early voting is a group of non-binary high school seniors. We meet up with Jenna, Teddy, and Marceline in the parking lot outside the polling site at Grapevine’s library.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: How are y’all doing?
JENNA: Doing good.
MARCELINE: Good. We’re just waiting on, uh, -- hey buddy, where are you?
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: At 17, Marceline isn’t old enough to vote, but they weren’t going to miss the occasion. Teddy and Jenna are both excited to have a say in Grapevine’s future.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Most -- most people’s first election is some big presidential election, right?
JENNA: Right. You know, I think a couple years ago, if I had been 18, I would not have given two craps about this. But now I feel like it’s, like, really big, because it’s, like, affecting all the people that I know who are going to still be here next year. So I feel, like, kind of responsible.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Jenna’s twin brother, Dylan, has also come this morning. After checking to make sure they remembered to bring their IDs, the high school students head inside. They all planned to vote for Sergio Harris, the teacher we heard from last episode and the other two candidates backed by the Texas Nonpartisan PAC. These candidates, each running in separate races for a seat on the board, have been promising to reverse some of the policies pushed by Patriot Mobile, including the policy restricting which bathrooms transgender students can use and the one banning any mention of gender fluidity. After a few minutes, the teens come back out wearing their first ever “I Voted” stickers and huge smiles.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: How did that feel?
TEDDY: Exciting
JENNA: Yes.
TEDDY: This is really weird.
JENNA: I -- I feel like I’m truly an American citizen now. Yes. (LAUGHS)
TEDDY: This is what marks it.
JENNA: I pay taxes. I vote for people.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: This is meaning -- this is a meaningful race for you while you have, like, skin in this game.
DYLAN: Oh yeah.
ANTONIA HYLTON: “Oh yeah,” Jenna’s brother Dylan blurts out. He’s transgender. So yeah. This election feels personal.
DYLAN: When the school board tried to force kids to use the bathroom assigned by their, like, original sex, I was, like, really pissed off about that. Especially because nobody wants to see me in the girls’ bathroom, and I already know that, and everybody else knows it.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Dylan began his gender transition years earlier. That included receiving hormone treatments. He has short hair and a beard. In fact, he says, most teachers at Grapevine High School don’t even realize he’s trans since Dylan was also his birth name. So for the most part, nobody makes a big deal about what bathroom he uses or which pronouns people call him in class. He knows other trans kids don’t have that luxury.
DYLAN: This is how I live comfortably in my body. And I’m not going to let, like, adults who don’t even go to the school make that decision for me. I’m not going to let them step on me. And obviously voting is, like, a big step in not letting them step on me, so.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: There were lots of other folks in Grapevine of all political stripes who, like these teens, were wanting to see the school district move in a different direction. Ahead of election day, we spoke to three Christian conservative parents who’d all voted for the Patriot Mobile candidates back in 2022, but who now felt the board had gone too far in cracking down on teachers and library books. One of them, a mom and Gateway Church attendee named Kim Slater, took a call from us while trying to corral her dogs.
KIM SLATER: I can tell you flat out that I will not vote for a single candidate that is aligned with Patriot Mobile because I do not think they are serving an agenda that serves the kids in our school district well right now.
ANTONIA HYLTON: But for these voters, this election wouldn’t be as simple as just casting a ballot for the other candidates. That’s because the loose coalition of progressives and fed-up conservatives we told you about before, the ones who promised to pull their resources to defeat Patriot Mobile this time around, that group had failed to coalesce around a single candidate for each open seat.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Quick refresher: as we explained last episode, in this election voters would be asked to select new school board members in three separate races. As in the past, Leigh Wambsganss and Patriot Mobile Action were backing one candidate for each open seat. But a total of five anti-Patriot Mobile candidates filed to run against them, threatening to split the opposition vote in two of the races.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Further stacking the odds, the Patriot Mobile-backed board majority had recently voted to change the rules of the election to allow for plurality winners. That meant candidates would no longer be required to win more than 50 percent of the vote to get on the school board.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Do you remember when Pastor Rafael Cruz said it doesn’t take a majority to prevail, but only an irate, tireless minority? Well, that was now literally true in Grapevine.
ANTONIA HYLTON: After two weeks of early voting and a rush of last-minute campaigning by candidates on all sides, election day arrives. It’s a warm and sunny Saturday in early May. We catch up with one of the candidates opposed to Patriot Mobile as he’s greeting voters in the parking lot outside of the Grapevine library.
DAVE STEIN: My name is Dave Stein.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Dave Stein is a retired federal criminal investigator, a father of Grapevine-Colleyville students, and the husband of a fifth-grade teacher in the district. He’s a Republican. But he says he’s deeply concerned about the extreme strain of conservative politics that’s consumed the district in recent years. His wife has told him stories about teachers boxing up every book in their classrooms to avoid getting in trouble with the board. Lots of staffers are saying the school board’s 36-page policy on systemic racism and gender is vague and confusing, and it’s made them afraid to say the wrong thing in class.
DAVE STEIN: What’s got us to this point, this fear, fear of the boogeyman, fear of one thing or the other. You end up on two ends of a spectrum, yelling and screaming at each other, uh, and not getting together and working something out.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Stein believes his brand of moderate conservatism is the best hope for defeating Patriot Mobile in a traditionally right-leaning district like Grapevine-Colleyville. But the Texas Nonpartisan PAC was backing the Democrat Sergio Harris in the race and, at one point, had urged Stein to drop out to avoid splitting the anti-Patriot Mobile vote. Stein says he refused to go along.
DAVE STEIN: What happens when you have PACs involved, you’re -- you end up being beholden to somebody, okay? So if your campaign is not -- is built on nothing but support from one group, then you end up, you know, it’s like, you know, they have your hand in your pocket a little bit like your -- you owe them. I just never have liked that. I’ve never liked PAC involvement in any politics: nationally, local, especially local, really.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: We ask Stein if he’s worried that his candidacy will make it easier for Patriot Mobile to retain its influence over the board.
DAVE STEIN: It would be much easier to me, in my emotional standing, if there was just two -- two candidates in my race. But I had -- I really have faith that the majority of our community is in the middle. If everybody comes out and votes, the people that -- the reasonable people in the middle that don’t have an extreme view on either side, they win every time because that’s the majority of our community.
KIMBERLY PHOENIX: Hey there, how are y’all today?
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: On the other side of the parking lot, we spot another candidate, Kimberly Phoenix handing out campaign flyers. She’d just been talking to a teacher who was promising to vote for her.
KIMBERLY PHOENIX: I think people are really excited. We’ve had -- we’ve had a lot of people saying that they’re, um, they’re motivated.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Like Stein, Phoenix is a Christian and a longtime Republican who opposes Patriot Mobile. But unlike Stein, she’s getting support from the Nonpartisan PAC and other local groups working to counter the influence of far-right politics. Phoenix has spent years volunteering in Grapevine schools and is the parent of a middle school student enrolled in the ASPIRE gifted program where Em Ramser teaches.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Phoenix says she’s hopeful, but extremely worried about what will happen if things don’t go her way when the election results come in tonight. She says she’s heard from teachers that if the Patriot Mobile candidates retain control, they’re planning to leave at the end of the school year.
KIMBERLY PHOENIX: So that’s really hard. Um, because part of me is like, you know, I win and they’re gone already, right? And so we have a lot of rebuilding to do. Um, but if we lose, there’s a lot of them that are going to leave, so I have to decide what to do for my kid.
ANTONIA HYLTON: What do you mean when you say that? Like, your kid might need to go to a different district?
KIMBERLY PHOENIX: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Um, I mean, maybe not this next year because she’s in middle school, but definitely for high school. If the same kind of things happen in this next year that have happened this year, I think the program that my daughter’s in will have just been decimated at the high school level.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Hey sir, are you here to vote?
VOTER: Huh? Who you guys with?
ANTONIA HYLTON: We’re with NBC News and we’re talking to people for a podcast about, uh, what matters to them in this election.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: All day, voters file in and out of the Grapevine library voting site. We approach several, trying to get a feel for what residents are thinking and to find out if the divisive fights over LGBTQ inclusion and the role of God in education have trickled down to voters. Short answer, they had.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Why are -- why are you coming out to vote for school board?
VOTER: I think there’s a lot of idiots running for school board who think that, uh, we are a monolithic country and uh, I think they’re wrong. I don’t think this country was based on a single religion. Somehow, we’ve gone from being Catholic, Quakers, Lutherans, Episcopalians to being either your -- either your with us or you’re against us. And uh, it’s a very narrow view. And uh, I don’t like that.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: That voter tells us his number one issue is driving Patriot Mobile out of Grapevine school board politics. For him, that means casting a ballot for Sergio Harris and the other candidates backed by the Texas Nonpartisan PAC. Another voter tells us she also wants to defeat Patriot Mobile, but she’s planning to vote for Dave Stein instead of Harris.
VOTER: I mean, this should be all about local elections. Um, Patriot Mobile, I’m sorry, scares me, so. (LAUGHS)
ANTONIA HYLTON: What -- what scares you about Patriot Mobile?
VOTER: Um, just the power and the influence that they have. Um, I’m a Christian person. I don’t think our schools should be religious. If I had kids and I wanted them to go to a religious school, I would pay for that. I worry about the Christian nationalist movement, and that’s it.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: But some voters tell us they like what the Patriot Mobile-backed school board majority is doing, and they want more of it. Like this longtime Grapevine resident who says she wishes the country would go back to the days when students were free to pray openly in schools.
VOTER: I don’t think you can separate morals and the basic tenants of Christianity from just basic moral codes of how you treat people. I think you can have prayer on the football field without insulting someone. I mean, what happened to where we were, um, inclusive and what’s the word where you’re — tolerant? Tolerant. I’m tired of somebody doesn’t like something so we have to change the whole thing for one or two people. It’s just -- it’s gotten ridiculous in my opinion.
ANTONIA HYLTON: That evening, just before the polls were set to close at 7:00 p.m., one of the final voters of the night rushes up the stairs of the Grapevine library wearing a lacy black dress. She’s a transgender high schooler named June, and her friend, Teddy, is with her. Tonight is their senior prom. But June, who’s 18, forgot to vote earlier. So Teddy made them stop off on the way. We catch up with them on their way out.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: How did it feel to cast a school board election vote on your way to prom?
JUNE: Well, this is my first time voting at all. So it’s kind of weird for my first time to vote to be in a school board election. I don’t necessarily know if we’re going to win or not. So I’m kind of -- kind of iffy, but I’m holding out hope, at least a little bit.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Well, you did your part.
JUNE: Yeah, exactly. (LAUGHS)
TEDDY: Just under the wire.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: This is how you are with homework?
JUNE: Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah.
ANTONIA HYLTON: By the time polls closed a few minutes later, a record-setting 14,000 people had cast ballots in the Grapevine-Colleyville school board election. Competing groups and candidates had spent more than a quarter of a million dollars on three races. The only thing left now was the counting.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Right after the polls close on the evening of May 6th, Tarrant County election officials release the first batch of results in the Grapevine-Colleyville school board election and, as expected, all three board races are close.
KIMBERLY PHOENIX: We made it to the finish line, y’all. So exciting.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Kimberly Phoenix smiles as she walks into a joint election results party for her and fellow candidate, Sergio Harris, at a local sports bar.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: But the truth is, despite the tight margin, things are not looking great for her or the coalition of parents who’d vowed to beat Patriot Mobile at its own game. Based on the early vote results, Patriot Mobile-backed candidates are leading in two of the three school board races. As opposition groups had feared, with the vote split between multiple candidates in their races, Phoenix and Harris are both losing by a few percentage points. Former Colleyville mayor Richard Newton is the only Patriot Mobile-endorsed candidate trailing.
ANTONIA HYLTON: After a few hours, the rest of the votes are posted online, confirming that outcome.
KIMBERLY PHOENIX: Is that it? Is it all of them? Dang it.
ANTONIA HYLTON: The result? Even though its candidates had all failed to win support from a majority of voters, Patriot Mobile had tightened its grip on the school board by winning two out of the three races. With an expanded five to two majority, the board members backed by the far-right group would be in control of setting policy in the district for at least another two years. Patriot Mobile Action celebrated the results in a press release a couple days later. The PAC’s leader, Leigh Wambsganss gave credit to conservative parents, writing, quote, “We are humbled to witness their selfless sacrifice and honored to stand with them in this never-ending battle for the hearts and minds of Texas children.”
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Surrounded by supporters on election night, Kimberly Phoenix starts to contemplate what this will mean for the school district.
KIMBERLY PHOENIX: Now our community is going to have to go through another year of the chaos. Ah, that makes me sad. Not for me. It’s for them, it’s for our kids, you know?
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: A few tables down, we spot Sergio Harris slouching in a booth with his wife and two boys. He’s studying the results on his phone.
SERGIO HARRIS: I’m exhausted. We’re disappointed, but, you know.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Harris says he’s thinking about all the teachers who told him they were planning to quit if things turned out this way.
SERGIO HARRIS: I don’t blame them for leaving. As a teacher myself, I don’t blame them. Nobody wants to teach under these conditions. Nobody wants to work like this. So I -- I fully understand for them not wanting to sign their contracts.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Are you worried about what message the outcome might send to the kids who are worried about whether or not this school will be a safe place for them?
SERGIO HARRIS: Until we can flip our board, yes, I am. Yeah.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: What would you say to those kids?
SERGIO HARRIS: Change is coming. You already see that the community is ready to make a difference. It’s the adults that gotta get on the right page. And so it’s the adults that gotta come together, but it’s gonna happen.
ANTONIA HYLTON: “Change is coming.” “It’s gonna happen.” Harris and Phoenix are both looking for the silver lining in their election defeats. But promises of future change will have little impact on the life of a freshman at Grapevine High whose high school career would now be shaped by Patriot Mobile’s political influence. After a few more minutes, Harris tells his wife and boys it’s time to go home.
SERGIO HARRIS: You ready to go? Let’s go. Let’s go.
ANTONIA HYLTON: It’s drizzling as they step out into the parking lot. Lightning flashes in the distance, Harris puts his arm over his oldest boy’s shoulder as they walk to the car, and his son lets him know he believed in him and he’s sorry that he lost.
SERGIO’S SON: I really thought you had this one, Dad.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: The next morning, we head to Teddy’s house. Jenna and the others are hanging out after prom the night before. Marceline and June are out back, splashing in Teddy’s pool. The teens were disappointed when they saw the election results. They were upset with the adults in the community who all agreed that Patriot Mobile’s vision for education was hurting the school district, but who couldn’t seem to agree on what to do about it. Jenna’s worried about all the kids who aren’t graduating.
JENNA: I kind of have, like, surrogate family members who took their kids out because they are a queer family, and their children were being bullied, and they’re, like, in elementary school. And so I know that it’s affecting them even at that level. They had to move out of GCISD. And I -- the other thing too is, like, it -- it’s all well and good. Like, you can kind of destroy something super easily, but it’s more of the question of, can we build it back as efficiently? I don’t know if, like, you can heal what has been broken at the same rate that you can break it.
ANTONIA HYLTON: In a few weeks, these students would all be graduating, but Teddy wouldn’t walk across the stage with the rest of the class of 2023. Grapevine-Colleyville administrators were insisting on calling them by their female birth name from the stage, even though Teddy’s parents pleaded with them to do otherwise. Refusing to be deadnamed at their own graduation, Teddy decided to skip the ceremony. These teens know it’s going to take student voices to convince more adults in Grapevine to support the rights of trans teens like them. But having spent the past four years fighting for acceptance, Teddy has conflicting feelings about that.
TEDDY: One side of me wants to come home from college after my first semester and hear that there was another walkout or hear that there was another protest and hear that students are still fighting even -- even though we’re gone. And then another part of me is like, I don’t want to -- I don’t want them to have to do that. I don’t -- I don’t want these -- these freshmen and sophomores and, like, these -- these kids to have to fight for their rights. Because I’ve had to do that. And that has changed me fundamentally. Like, having to fight for my rights from a young age, having to fight for respect from a young age, like, that has changed who I am because I have learned to be this, sort of, fighter. And I -- I don’t like all of those changes to myself, and I don’t want to see more kids get hurt that way.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Teddy’s hopes and fears for young trans students extended beyond their hometown. With the political fight settled for now in Grapevine, that spring, Republican state officials in Austin were forging ahead with plans to restrict trans healthcare and ban classroom discussions about gender and sexuality.
CHAIR: Chair calls Frank Gonzalez.
ANTONIA HYLTON: And parents like Frank Gonzalez were showing up at the statehouse, week after week, and urging GOP lawmakers to change course. Gonzalez had driven down from Dallas. Standing before a Texas House committee, he tells the lawmakers he spent years trying to convince his daughter that she was the little boy he’d brought home from the hospital.
FRANK GONZALEZ: By the time she was three, she was desperate for us to buy her girls dress up clothes. I full forced refused to let it happen. So she proceeded to turn every baby blanket, towel, or big t-shirt into a dress, skirt, or long hair.
ANTONIA HYLTON: It wasn’t until Christmas, two years later, that Gonzalez finally realized he was wrong.
FRANK GONZALEZ: When she was five, I will never forget the disappointment on her face Christmas morning. She had received dozens of gifts. When my wife sat down with her to see what was really going on, she broke down crying and said she needed Santa to turn her into a girl. It was the moment I realized I needed to set my issues aside and figure out the next steps. We’re a regular family with a really regular life, juggling kids’ schedules, working, and getting dinner on the table. But coming here is now part of what I need to do as a father to keep my family safe and healthy. I am begging you, as a father, to trust that I know my kid.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Gonzalez’s emotional testimony didn’t seem to persuade many Republicans. The campaign to stop the spread of “woke gender ideology” was continuing to pick up steam in the weeks after Grapevine’s election. Under the banner of “parents’ rights” and with the support of Seven Mountains adherents like Representative Nate Schatzline, the freshman rep who’d staged a worship rally in the Capitol rotunda, Texas lawmakers passed bills banning dads like Gonzalez from seeking gender affirming medical care for their children, restricting family friendly drag shows, and making it easier for citizens to force educators to remove books dealing with gender and sexuality. Other attempts to infuse conservative Christian morality into the state’s public schools had mixed results. The legislature sent a bill to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk to allow schools to replace licensed therapists with pastors, which he signed into law. But bills to force schools to display the 10 Commandments, to set aside time for prayer each school day, and to provide public funding for private Christian schooling all came up short this session.
ANTONIA HYLTON: The Christian lawmakers behind these efforts did not see this as defeat, though. They believed fate and momentum were on their side, and not just in Texas.
DONALD TRUMP: The Democrats, I don’t understand it. It’s like with religion. We fight for religion. They fight against religion. How can a religious person vote for the Democrats? What they’ve done to Christianity and --
ANTONIA HYLTON: That same spring, as the 2024 presidential election got going, the GOP frontrunner, the man who helped spark a revival of America’s Christian right, was promising to continue fighting on their behalf, to be their retribution, and to protect their children.
DONALD TRUMP: On day one, I will immediately sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children. (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) It’s amazing how strongly people feel about that. I talk about transgender, everyone goes crazy. Who would’ve thought? Five years ago, you didn’t know what the hell it was.
ANTONIA HYLTON: “Talk about transgender. Everyone goes crazy.” As he made his bid to return to the White House, Trump was betting that Republican primary voters would be more disturbed by the growing acceptance of transgender people than about his mounting legal troubles or his lies about the 2020 election. Left out of the discussion entirely was how this powerful new political cudgel was impacting the lives of real people, including children like Ren and teachers like Em Ramser.
ANTONIA HYLTON: As the 2022-23 school year came to an end, the longest, hardest year of Em Ramser’s life, we stopped by to see how she was doing.
EM RAMSER: Hello, come on in. How are you?
ANTONIA HYLTON: She wasn’t surprised that the community had rewarded Patriot Mobile Action, and the people behind the policies that she says made her life hell, with an even bigger majority on the school board.
EM RAMSER: Yes. Because I knew I knew nothing would change because the people don’t actually care enough to make things change.
ANTONIA HYLTON: At age 27, Ramser no longer saw a future for herself in the Texas public school system. After all the personal attacks and restrictive new policies, she decided even before the latest election to resign from Grapevine High at the end of the school year. That fall, she’d be starting at a private school that had expressed a commitment to creating an environment that’s inclusive for all students. She hated to quit public schools, but she felt she didn’t have a choice.
EM RAMSER: But I realized that if my mom was so worried that I was going to kill myself from this job or that somebody was going to come after me, I couldn’t safely stay there. And I couldn’t, like -- for one point, I had to put myself above the kids and say, I can’t do this anymore.
ANTONIA HYLTON: She wasn’t the only one leaving. As anticipated, Grapevine-Colleyville saw an exodus of educators after the election. More than 160 district staffers would resign at the end of the school year, an 83 percent increase from a year earlier. Many of them left scathing comments in an employee satisfaction survey that spring. When asked how the school district could improve, one Grapevine-Colleyville educator wrote, quote, “if the school board policies were less racist, homophobic, and transphobic.” In response to a question about what had been the best part of the year, another said, “the days I don’t want to leave crying are good days.” In a written statement, a school district spokesperson acknowledged the increase in vacancies, saying, quote, “Many other school districts, not only in Texas, but across the nation are also experiencing this declining retention rate of teachers and other employees.”
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: With only a few weeks left in the school year, Ramser hasn’t let any of her students know just how much she’s struggling to keep it together. She’s still trying to protect them, make them feel safe and seen. That’s always what’s been most important to her.
EM RAMSER: One of the things that I try to do is call every student by their name every single day. So when kids come into class, it’ll be, like, you know, hello, Bob, hello, Susie, hello guys, or whatever else. And I really want to, like, I walk around the halls, and I’ll be like, hi so and so, hi so and so, and, like, yell at them across the hallway just because, like, every kid deserves to be acknowledged.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Ramser says she knows what it’s like to feel overlooked or like you don’t belong. She understands that feelings of isolation and rejection can lead to some really dark thoughts. She’s seen the data showing growing youth suicide rates, especially among LGBTQ teens.
EM RAMSER: And so, when I see kids like Ren, when I see kids who are quiet or who are going through it or who are queer or trans or sad or shy or nerdy, I make a point to say, you know, hi to them every day and say their name every day and ask them how they’re doing and tell them that I’m proud of them. Because every kid deserves to have somebody in their corner.
ANTONIA HYLTON: As her time at Grapevine winds down, Ramser has been thinking a lot about the mom whose allegations helped drive her away. Ren’s mother, Sharla, never did get back in touch with us, but her words from last fall were continuing to reverberate.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: And obviously her actions had a big impact in your life. I’m just wondering if you were -- what -- what you would want to say to her.
EM RAMSER: Honestly, the biggest thing that I’ve wanted to say to her in a long time is that I’m really sorry that all of this happened to her. I understand that it’s really, really hard when you lose somebody, and you look for any excuse as to why that person is gone, and that might be blaming somebody else. I also know that when you are confronted with things you don’t understand that it’s really easy to be scared. I’ve had, you know, almost a year now to work through that anger with her because there was a time when I was angry with her. But at the end of the day, I don’t see somebody right now who is inherently malicious. I see a mom who is scared, and I see a mom who doesn’t understand. And we’re not going to ever make any headway by just being angry at people who don’t understand. All we can do is help people understand.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: In Oregon, Ren’s junior year of high school is also wrapping up. She’s looking forward to spending the summer playing video games with friends and going hiking with her dad. Normal kid stuff. She’d seen Grapevine’s election results. And she’s aware that politicians like Donald Trump have been escalating their attacks on transgender people.
REN: I try not to think about things like that too much because it kind of sucks knowing that there’s people out there who want to hurt you badly and want to take away everything you love and all that, blah, blah, blah. But still doesn’t stop me from having emotions about it.
ANTONIA HYLTON: She still hasn’t been in touch with her mom, Sharla, who has launched a website where she promises to continue fighting, to quote, “get groomers and indoctrination out of the public school system.” Nevertheless, Ren says, she started to move on from the bitter resentment that grew between them.
REN: Everything that happened between me and my mom, all the fights, all the disagreements, it’s just -- time passing kind of makes those things more distant. And now, I feel like the memory of my mom isn’t weighing as heavy on me anymore just because I’ve had new experiences here, and I have new friends, my new school, and that’s all going good for me.
ANTONIA HYLTON: As we reported this series, we heard one phrase repeated more than any other from politicians and parents and activists on every side of the fight over transgender rights. Everyone claims they’re trying to protect kids. While we sit with Ren’s dad, Rich, at their home in Oregon, he tells us he wishes he could have done a better job of protecting his own.
RICH: To have that sort of a rejection as is an adolescent is -- is something that will be with her forever. And so that part hurts, you know, as a -- as a dad, knowing that you didn’t protect your child to the extent that you should have or could have, you know, will -- will always hurt me.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Rich has one other regret. He wishes his family’s dispute hadn’t done so much to hurt his daughter’s favorite former teacher. He and Ren have both heard about Em Ramser’s plans to leave Grapevine at the end of the school year.
ANTONIA HYLTON: What do you think the school is losing as she exits?
REN: A really, really kind person. I think, you know, it’s kind of sad that, um, no other kids, at least at that school, will be able to just experience her. Because she was a very good English teacher.
CROWD: -- indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
SPEAKER: And now for the Texas Pledge.
CROWD: Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas --
ANTONIA HYLTON: It’s Monday, May 22nd, 2023. There’s just a few days left in the school year. And tonight, the Grapevine-Colleyville School Board is set to swear in its newly elected members at the end of a bitter campaign season. But first, the board opens the meeting as it always does: by recognizing the achievements of some of its students and employees.
BOARD PRESIDENT: At this time, I’d like to turn the meeting over to superintendent Dr. Brad Schnautz for our recognitions.
BRAD SCHNAUTZ: Thank you, President Ford. For our first recognition tonight, I’d like --
ANTONIA HYLTON: The board is honoring students who performed in a state art competition, student track athletes who’ve returned to Grapevine with state medals, and a certain high school English teacher.
BRAD SCHNAUTZ: And we have Grapevine High School ASPIRE teacher, Emily Ramser, who was named a 2023 Outstanding Teaching of the Humanities Award recipient by Humanities Texas.
ANTONIA HYLTON: All year, Ramser felt like administrators at Grapevine-Colleyville had been avoiding recognizing her publicly. She hadn’t won that award from a local parents’ group. But now a state education nonprofit has named her one of the 12 best humanities teachers in Texas. It’s standard protocol whenever a teacher wins an award from an outside group for the school board to honor them. So with only days to go until she leaves the district, Ramser has come to stand in front of the school leaders whose policy she says have helped push her out. Ramser smiles for a picture, then returns to her seat.
BRAD SCHNAUTZ: Let’s give a big round of applause again for Mrs. Ramser.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: But she hasn’t come tonight just for photos and kind words. Next on the agenda is public comments. After a year of feeling silenced and stifled, a feeling like she’s had to gradually erase herself in order to survive, Ramser is done staying quiet.
BOARD CLERK: Our third speaker is Emily Ramser. Please step to the microphone and state whether you’re resident of GCISD.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: She spent weeks rehearsing what she would say during the one minute allotted to her tonight. Standing at the same lectern where Sharla stood nine months earlier, Ramser leans toward the microphone.
EM RAMSER: I am not a resident, but a teacher here for the next four days.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: She’d always told her students that their voices mattered. Now, she’s reclaiming her own.
EM RAMSER: I was 19 and living in North Carolina when I first heard of GCISD and changed my entire life trajectory to come work here and eventually retire from here. And yet, at 27, I am leaving as this community has continuously harassed me for the past few years. Getting up at this podium, on Facebook and elsewhere online, and lying about me, my personhood, my curriculum, and my teaching to the point that there were days I didn’t even want to be alive anymore, much less be a teacher. And despite numerous investigations that found I did nothing wrong, this district has refused to publicly acknowledge any of it. And frankly, parent and student voice are an integral part of my teaching. So I’m going to listen to what I am hearing from this community, which is that y’all don’t want people like me, people who might be gay, to teach here, regardless of the awards they win or the successes they bring students. And to my students, I want you to know that you did nothing wrong. And I am so incredibly proud of each and every one of you. And I wish I could have been the teacher that this district wanted. Thank you for giving me the privilege to teach you these past few years.
BOARD CLERK: Thank you. Our fourth speaker is --
ANTONIA HYLTON: The room is quiet. Members of the school board show little emotion as Ramser sits down, wiping tears from her eyes. But she isn’t the only one who’s come to sound off. Some students had heard Ramser was being recognized tonight, and they want to let the board know what they think of her departure.
STUDENT: The only thing Ms. Ramser has instilled in me is critical thinking skills and empathy.
STUDENT: Ms. Ramser is my current English teacher and who could have been my future AP Research teacher. Has instilled the value of English and language more so than any other teacher I’ve ever had.
STUDENT: I recently finished my yearlong research paper under Ms. Emily Ramser, who, I might add, is the best and most influential teacher I’ve ever had.
STUDENT: I was looking forward to having Ms. Ramser as my freshman English teacher and I’m sad that won’t happen now.
STUDENT: Because of Ramser’s encouragement, I was able to submit my writing about the bullying that I faced at the hands of teachers in this district. And I won awards for it. And instead of addressing those teachers, y’all are the bullies.
ANTONIA HYLTON: After public comments, the board goes into closed session and Ramser and more than a dozen students head outside. Many run up to hug her. She’d been crying as she listened to their speeches. She thanks them for coming to support her.
EM RAMSER: It’s very kind. I think a lot of times we don’t know that we’re making any kind of an impact.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Ramser will be their teacher for only a few more days. But before she goes, she has one last lesson for them. Things might seem hard right now, she says, but they are in charge of their own education. Not the school board, not lawmakers in Austin, not a Christian nationalist cell phone company.
EM RAMSER: Nobody can stop you from getting the education you deserve. People can try, but there’s a wealth of resources online. You have my email. I will give you book recommendations, because I can give you book recommendations now.
ANTONIA HYLTON: A few minutes later, the English teacher tells the teens goodbye and heads to her car. This isn’t how Ramser imagined the end of her tenure in Grapevine, but she’s confident she’s made the right decision.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: The political forces that derailed her dream job would continue spreading across America in the weeks and months to come, making headlines nearly every day. A new law banning gender identity from classrooms in Iowa. A rainbow flag set ablaze inside a California elementary school. A veteran teacher in Georgia fired for reading a picture book about gender to fifth graders.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Right now, Ramser gets on the road and watches Grapevine’s admin building fade in her rear-view mirror. She’s thinking about whether her comments to the school board will change anyone’s mind. She doubts it. The hopeful sense of purpose that propelled her into education had now been worn down to a dull cynicism. The voters in Grapevine had made their choice. But after hearing the defiant student speeches tonight, Ramser also has hope that, just like Ren, despite everything, these kids are going to be okay. And maybe someday, she will be, too.
ANTONIA HYLTON: From NBC News Studios, this is the final of six episodes of Grapevine, a series about faith and power -- and what it means to protect children -- in an American suburb. Grapevine was written, reported, and hosted by me, Antonia Hylton.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: And by me, Mike Hixenbaugh. The series is produced by Frannie Kelley. Our senior editor is Julie Shapiro, with story editing by Michelle Garcia. We had production support from Emily Berk and Eva Ruth Moravec. Fact checking by Janina Huang. Sound design by Rick Kwan. Original music by Ali Shaheed Muhammad. Bryson Barnes is our technical director. Alexa Danner is our executive producer. Marisa Reilly is the director of production and Liz Cole runs NBC News Studios.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Special thanks to Nick Offenberg, Susan Carroll, Reid Cherlin, Alex Ziccardi, Lai Ling Jew, Alexa Corea, Craig Carras, Kayla McCormick, Nina Sen, Marianne Raphael, Andrew Nichols, Sarah Tanner, Mike Zlotnick, Mary Somers, Andre Razo, Laura Zito, and Claudia Meyer-Samargia.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: If this is the first time you’re hearing a podcast made by us, you might want to also listen to the one we made a couple years ago about the town next door. It’s called Southlake, and it’s almost a prequel to this one. Search for Southlake, wherever you’re listening now.
