Texas school official caught on video talking about evading transgender sports bans

A Texas education bureaucrat who acts as a liaison to parents has been caught on camera advising an undercover journalist how to avoid transgender sports bans.

Education reformer Corey DeAngelis, who shared the video, said it demonstrates how the lack of competition in public education has hurt students and parents.

San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) is already in trouble after a report stretching back decades found repeated violations of Texas laws on education. The report necessitated a takeover of the district by the state’s education agency just this past week.

DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the American Culture Project, posted the video to X, adding that the school official caught on video “then PUSHED the journalist who confronted him about it.”  

The journalist in the video who confronted the district official is Accuracy in Media (AIM) President Adam Guillette, whose group does undercover work exposing corruption and woke policies in public schools.  

“The video is part of Accuracy in Media’s ongoing investigation into Texas school administrators who flout state laws regarding gender and sports participation,” said AIM via the website that accompanies the video. 

“In January, the organization released undercover footage from Irving ISD, Dallas ISD, and Hutto ISD, where officials similarly advised undercover journalists on ways to sidestep the ‘Save Women’s Sports Act.’” 

The act requires Texas “public school students to compete in interscholastic athletic competitions based on biological sex.” 

In the latest video, the San Antonio official is seen to be working with a “parent,” who is actually an undercover journalist, on what Guillette called a birth certificate “work around” that allows transgender males to play sports against girls with the help of the school’s administrators.  

SAISD constituent specialist Arthur Elizondo, who Guillette says works in the district’s office of Family and Community engagement, is shown on the undercover video blaming the opposing players’ parents, who he says “creates all the problems” for transgender participation in sports.   

According to the district’s website, the mission of Elizondo’s department is “to empower every student’s success by building caring relationships with families, schools, and the community, creating an environment where everyone is honored and welcomed.”  

He’s later shown, along with Irving ISD Director of Campus Operations Reny Lizardo, talking about how birth certificates can be changed to allow biological men to compete against girls.  

“It’s not illegal if you don’t get caught, right?” said Lizardo.  

Lizardo later resigned over the comments and Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott called for an investigation of Texas schools using this work-around.  

When asked by a would-be parent if he would call attention to a student that he knew to be a transitioning male when presented with an altered birth certificate, SAISD’s Elizondo said he didn’t know if he would take any action to prevent the male from joining a girls’ sports team.  

But it’s clear from his reaction that he was in favor of the birth certificate work-around.  

Prior to being asked if he would call attention to the altered birth certificate, he advised the “parent” to bring the altered document when enrolling the child in the district. He called the altered birth certificate “legally binding,” and put an emphasis on whether the transgender male has started transitioning with hormones.  

“And, you know, because if she’s already trans, you know, making that transition, already transitioned, I mean, then I don’t know if I would …” Elizondo started.  

“Call attention to it?” the undercover journalist asked.  

“Yeah,” Elizondo answered, with a nod of his head.   

Guillette called the altered birth certificate scheme “a ruse.”  

When asked by Guillette later about his comments, Elizondo denied making any of the statements captured on the AIM video.  

“No, I’m not gonna say anything. I don’t know any of you guys,” said Elizondo as he walked into the district headquarters while confronted by AIM. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”  

When asked if he said it was usually the parents who cause the problems surrounding transgender participation in sports, Elizondo flatly denied it.  

“I’ve never said that,” he told Guillette, before pushing the AIM president back with his hands.  

DeAngelis later appeared in the video and said the scheme to alter birth certificates to evade Texas law is caused by the monopoly that public schools have on education – adding it’s neither a red state nor a blue state issue, but part of a bureaucracy that is out of control because it lacks competition.  

“All of these problems just demonstrate the issue of the one-size-fits-all, government-run school monopoly,” said DeAngelis, while standing in front of a mobile digital billboard of the AIM video.   

DeAngelis said these problems would be solved if the government allowed families to “vote with their feet” on where kids get educated.  

As a result of previous AIM undercover videos, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is investigating both the Dallas and Irving school districts. 

SAISD has already been buried in investigations.    

The district was taken over by the Texas Education Agency this week after a report found “systemic violations of the Texas Education Code” along with problems that stretch back “decades,” according to comments made by a state education official, reported local KSAT News 12.   

And now it looks like SAISD might have another investigation on its hands. 

“I’ve been undercover in roughly 100 school districts across Texas,” Guillette says. “It’s abundantly clear that these radicals have no respect for the law and no respect for parents. They view education as an opportunity to advance their radical agenda, rather than an opportunity to set children on a path for success.”