Mother outraged after daughter is told 'God is a myth' at school

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A school teacher from the Katy Independent School District tells her 7th grade students that God is a myth. That's according to 12-year-old Jordan Wooley, and corroborated by other students in the class.

Jordan showed FOX 26 a classroom assignment where students are asked to differentiate between fact, common assertion, or opinion. The second item on the paper was the statement "There is a God."

"I told her it was a fact, indeed true, based on my religion, and she said that I was incorrect. I was wrong," Jordan told FOX 26.

She says she still answered that the statement was factual because her faith is more important than getting a question right on an assignment. She also texted her mother from school, flooring Chantel Wooley that there was even a discussion about this in a public classroom.

"The majority of the kids believed in God," Jordan's mother told FOX 26, "and they're being told by their teacher that there's no God."

Jordan says she and other students argued with the teacher about God being real. That's when she says the teacher told them it became an argument in all of her classes Monday.

"They were really really upset.  Jordan told me that one kid slammed her books on the desk  that she wanted it [the discussion] to stop. Another kid went home crying," Chantel Wooley said.

Ms. Wooley complained to the West Memorial Junior High principal Monday afternoon, but Jordan took her complaint to the Katy ISD school board Monday night.

"I can tell you that while she was up there at the school board speaking, I was crying," Chantel Wooley said. "Here's my kid, braver than most adults, speaking about her faith and how she felt violated at school."

But when school board members started asking Jordan questions, it can be heard on the video recording of the meeting, that Superintendent Alton Frailey shut down the discussion.

That's why Chantel Wooley says she wants this story told before Katy ISD can pretend it did not happen.
Chantel says she doesn't want other parents blindsided like she was, and she says she's probably the most liberal parent in Katy.

"In New York, California, Vermont, the liberal states, I could totally see this as happening," Jordan's mom said. "But in Houston, Texas, where it's red, white, and blue, and stars all over, and God bless the USA, and 'Don't Mess With Texas', you know, Texas is messing with my kid."

Katy ISD responded in a statement, defending the intent of the assignment, to encourage critical thinking skills.  But the district concluded in its investigation that the item on the assignment was "unnecessary for achieving the instructional standard" and would no longer be used.

Jordan said her reading teacher was not in class Tuesday, but that friends in the other 7th grade reading class told her their teacher used the same assignment Tuesday.