


Parents in the district claimed the books taught Critical race theory and started an online petition, prompting the district to cancel the author visit and remove the book from school libraries. In October 2021, author Jerry Craft was scheduled to speak to fourth and fifth graders about his graphic novels New Kid and Class Act. The district's decision to retain a law firm for possible defamation lawsuits was also criticized as possibly an act of bullying in and of itself by the district against its critics, or even an attempt by a taxpayer-funded entity to silence those who were thinking about criticizing a public official. The district has been criticized for its perceived inaction on Hindt's plagiarism allegations, which critics say run afoul of the district's responsibility to provide an ethical education to its students. Hindt would later campaign for the KISD board members who had defended him and arranged his huge severance bonus. To pursue any defamation claims on behalf of Hindt, the district hired the law firm Feldman and Feldman.
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The district agreed to pay $955,795 as severance a payment which violated Texas Education Code Section 11.201 and resulted in a loss of $513,755 in funding. In May 2018, Hindt announced his resignation and retirement effective January 1, 2019, saying that he cannot fulfill his duties as superintendent and that he had done "dumb things".

Īfter an 18-month investigation, the University of Houston removed Hindt's dissertation from their official website. The University of Houston administration stated that it would investigate the matter. Īt around the same time, a man named Sean Dolan ran Hindt's dissertation through a software, and discovered that it matched with another paper, leading to accusations of plagiarism. Prior to the incidents' surfacing, Hindt was noted to have taken very public stance against bullying. While Carpenter said that he was not a victim of Hindt's bullying, he has witnessed "frightening, intense and near constant" bullying of weaker classmates by Hindt. įollowing the incident, Alabama judge David Carpenter also accused Hindt of bullying during their secondary school years. Hindt denied Gay's allegations, claiming he will only be judged by God. ĭuring a school board meeting in March 2018, an individual named Greg Gay (also known as Greg Barrett) spoke during a public forum segment of the meeting, and accused Hindt of shoving his head in a urinal when they were both enrolled in a secondary school within the district, and said the incident drove him to the brink of suicide. Lance Hindt, who served as the district's superintendent from 2016 to 2018, was an alumnus of Katy Taylor High School, and in 2012 wrote a PhD thesis for the University of Houston (UH). In 2015 two sections of Thornwood, two and three, currently served by KISD, proposed being removed from KISD and placed in the Spring Branch Independent School District, but both KISD and SBISD's boards denied the proposal. This matter had already been settled by the Supreme Court of the United States as constitutional before KISD chose to implement it. The district responded to this by having every student who wished to participate in the said activities sign a waiver granting the school district to test them randomly. Many parents complained to the school district, citing the new policy as the violation of individual rights. This caused much controversy prior to its instatement. During the 2004–2005 school year Katy ISD began a new and revolutionary program in the history of the district, with the use of random drug testing for all individuals involved in UIL competitive organizations, student leaders of any official school clubs, and anyone wishing to park on campus.
