A Texas school district has acknowledged footage of one of its administrators telling an undercover journalist posing as a parent to change a transgender child's birth certificate to compete in girls sports. 

The Irving Independent School District in Irving, Texas, has provided a statement to Fox News Digital addressing the recent video of Reny Lizardo, the executive director of campus operations, giving this guidance, which was obtained by Accuracy in Media. 

The statement indicates Lizardo has resigned from his position. 

"In Irving ISD, we are committed to upholding the requirements of state and federal laws, especially as it pertains to ensuring the safety and well-being of our students, and we will cooperate with any investigation initiated by relevant authorities," the statement said. 

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"We are aware of the unauthorized video footage circulating on social media of an individual connected with Irving ISD. The videos were obtained under false pretenses by an individual who posed as a concerned parent and additional individuals who posed as family friends of the employee pictured. 

"The individuals also held themselves out as members of the media, but were not credentialed as such, constituting a breach of security. In addition, the footage has been edited and is an incomplete representation of the entire conversation, making it difficult to properly assess its probative value."

In the footage, Lizardo said, "It’s not illegal if you don’t get caught," with regard to changing the gender on a child's birth certificate, and "if you can get that done, and you turn us a birth certificate that says ‘this gender,’ that's the gender we go with." 

While discussing potential repercussions of the discussion, Lizardo suggested pleading plausible deniability.  

The district insists Lizardo's handling of the situation does not reflect the values and protocols of the school district. 

Fox News Digital has reached out to Lizardo for comment.

HOW TRANSGENDERISM IN SPORTS SHIFTED THE 2024 ELECTION AND IGNITED A NATIONAL COUNTERCULTURE

"We want to reiterate that Irving ISD complies with all state and federal laws, and all employees are expected to adhere to any and all legal and ethical standards. The message conveyed in the video, as presented, does not reflect the views nor policies of the district," the statement said. 

"Individual employees do not speak on behalf of the district. The individual identified was acting outside of his role as it relates to legal and regulatory expertise. While the matter continues to be under investigation, the individual identified in the video has tendered his resignation." 

The district's statement concludes by claiming all of its athletes participate in the proper gender category. 

"We can also confirm that all Irving ISD student-athletes are participating in their sport in accordance with the sex they were assigned at birth," the district said. "Irving ISD is unwavering in our commitment to the safety and well-being of all of our students and staff. We remain focused on our primary function to maintain educational excellence and foster the full potential of our students." 

Texas is one of 25 states in the U.S. with a law that prevents or restricts transgender athletes from competing against girls and women. In June 2023, the state passed the Save Women's Sports Act that prohibits transgender athletes from competing in girls and women's sports and only allows students to compete in the gender category listed on their birth certificate. 

The law only allows schools to recognize changes made to birth certificates that were made to correct a clerical error.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott addressed the footage involving Lizardo in a post on X and called for him to be fired and investigated. 

"This Irving ISD Administrator should be fired on the spot. Both criminal & civil investigations must be taken against both the Administrator & Irving ISD," Abbott wrote. "Has Irving ISD and its employees been involved in a fraudulent breach of state laws & a cover up? We must get the facts."

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Tempers flared during a high school basketball game in Georgia this month. The heated moment appeared to spark a physical altercation between players from opposing teams. 

TMZ reported that the fight in question happened during a game between Sonoraville High School and Rockmart High School on Jan. 3 in Calhoun, Georgia. Calhoun is located approximately 70 miles from downtown Atlanta.

A video posted to social media appeared to show an unidentified Rockmart player shoving one of Sonoraville's athletes to the ground. The Rockmart athlete then immediately hit the Sonoraville player in the face immediately after he regained his footing.

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The Rockmart player was later seen punching a separate player from the opposing team. 

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The second Sonoraville player was hit after he dashed toward the scuffle. Spectators in the crowd could be heard making noises as they reacted to the situation. The video also showed some individuals moving from the stands to the court area to intervene.

An incident report from the Gordon County Sheriff’s Office suggested a Rockmart player was provoked by the repeated use of a racial slur by the player from the opposing team.

The teenager who appeared to initiate physical contact during the incident faces two charges of simple battery, per the police report. The brawl broke out during the third quarter of the game.

Officials from Rockmart High School and Sonoraville High School have yet to offer public comment on the incident.

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The Department of Education was established more than 40 years ago in an effort to refine the U.S. school system. But as incoming political leaders, including President-elect Trump, consider dismantling the agency, a Fox News Digital review examines the trends in test scores, graduation rates and federal funding since its inception. What follows is the results of those findings. 

When former President Jimmy Carter was in office, Congress passed the Department of Education Organization Act in October 1979, which officially established the agency in 1980. 

The department was created to determine policy for, administer and coordinate federal assistance to educational institutions around the country, but has seen opposition since its founding – commonly from Republican lawmakers.

Trump said he is going to dissolve the agency when he assumes office, asking whether the department is crucial in the development of education or if schools would benefit from a more localized education system. 

The modern-day educational system appears vastly different to that of the agency's founding. And a decades-long debate on whether individual states should have more control over local school systems, rather than the federal government, has been reignited as Trump prepares to take office.

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"Federal government efforts to improve education have been dismal," Lindsey Burke, director of the right-leaning think tank the Heritage Foundation's Center for Education Policy, wrote of the current education system amid years of low test scores. "Even if there were a constitutional basis for its involvement – which there isn’t – the federal government is simply ill-positioned to determine what education policies will best serve the diverse local communities across our vast nation."

It has been argued that having such a department allows people with the right expertise to make decisions as it relates to funding.

Clare McCann, the managing director of policy and operations at the Postsecondary Equity & Economics Research (PEER) Center, told ABC News in November: "There's a reason the Department of Education was created, and it was to have this kind of in-house expertise and policy background on these [education] issues. 

"The civil servants who work at the Department of Education are true experts in the field."

Average test scores among students have fallen significantly since the Department of Education was created more than 40 years ago. 

Both math and reading scores among 13-year-old students are at their lowest levels in decades, according to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for the 2022–2023 school year.

While the Department of Education doesn't control how students perform on tests, it is responsible for issuing the requirement for schools to conduct standardized testing in schools – which have reached their lowest scores in decades in 2024, according to NAEP.

The average U.S. ACT composite score in the 1990s was about 20.8, data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) shows. But, since then, standardized test scores have dropped. 

According to 2024 ACT data, Nevada has the lowest test scores in the country, with an average score of 17.2, while Oklahoma follows with the second-lowest average score of 17.6.

"The results are sobering," National Center for Educational Statistics Commissioner Peggy G. Carr told ABC News of today's test scores. 

Most schools reopened after shifting to an all-online learning environment during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, but Carr said that "this decline that we're seeing was there in 2015, so all of this cannot be blamed on COVID."

Average test scores in the U.S. are commonly based off the standardized testing average. Europe and East Asian countries, which don't use ACT or SAT testing as required by the U.S., usually rank as having higher test scores, comparably.

Proponents of a dedicated education agency say federal involvement aids the system, while many critics say it is a waste of taxpayer dollars. 

In its early years, the department made specific requirements when allocating funding to schools, such as requiring higher education institutions to offer a campus drug and alcohol abuse prevention program under the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act, passed in 1989. 

However, under President Biden, the Department of Education has seen funds spent on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts in K-12 schools across the country – an initiative critics say diverts funding away from core educational objectives.

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A recent study found that Biden's Department of Education spent $1 billion on grants advancing DEI in hiring, Fox News Digital reported. 

Since 2021, the Biden administration spent $489,883,797 on grants for race-based hiring; $343,337,286 on general DEI programming; and $169,301,221 on DEI-based mental health training and programming, totaling $1,002,522,304.81, according to Parents Defending Education, a right-leaning nonprofit. 

Rethinking the department could be as simple as giving states the funding and then allowing its leaders to decide how it is dished out, Neal McCluskey, an education analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute public policy think tank, told ABC News in November.

In the 1970-1971 school year, high school graduation rates were at 78%. 

But those rates fell, dropping to a 72.9% average graduation rate in 1982, shortly after the Department of Education was established. 

Rates remained in the low 70th percentiles until the early 2000s, data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows. 

However, data from the 2021–2022 school year shows that the average graduation rate for public high school students was 87% – an increase of seven percentage points higher than a decade earlier.

Technological advances have transformed the educational environment for students, with typing often taking the place of lessons on cursive writing, digital tools enhancing math instruction, and GPS technology reducing the reliance on traditional map reading skills. 

Today's technology-driven workforce has also reshaped the school system, as computer and artifical intelligence classes take precedence over home economics, such as sewing or baking. 

The Department of Education does not establish curriculum requirements for schools, but rather it is left to the state and local school boards to decide. 

However, curriculum changes have still been at the forefront of recent political conversations, specifically as it relates to parents seeking more involvement in their child's classroom. Parents from all around the country have spoken out against certain topics being included in their child's curriculum, usually related to gender and sex, and reportedly not being informed about the content before it was shared in class.

Fox News Digital recently reported on an elementary school in the New York City suburbs that was teaching a "gender curriculum" to elementary-level children in an effort to promote "inclusion" in school. 

Meanwhile, in 2016, the Washington Office (OSPI) set health education standards for all public schools, requiring children in kindergarten and first grade to learn that "there are many ways to express gender."

In Oregon, the state board of education adopted health education standards, also in 2016, requiring kindergartners and first-graders to "recognize that there are many ways to express gender," while third-graders in the state have been expected to be able to "define sexual orientation," Fox reported in 2022.

Opponents of the Department of Education, such as Trump, have used such examples of controversial curriculum to argue that parents should be granted more power in their child's learning.

The incoming Republican president, however, was not the first to propose the idea. Former President Ronald Reagan called for the department to be abolished to "ensure that local needs and preferences, rather than the wishes of Washington, determine the education of our children."

"There's only one way to shrink the size and cost of big government, and that is by eliminating agencies that are not needed and are getting in the way of a solution," Reagan said in 1981. 

David Kanani, president of Los Angeles ORT College, a Jewish education nonprofit, suggested the department be cleaned up rather than completely eradicated. 

"The Department of Education ensures consistency and quality across schools, particularly in STEM education, which is critical for national security and global competitiveness," Kanani told Fox News Digital in January. "Instead of elimination, we should clean up and reform the department to collaborate more effectively with state and local systems, prioritizing STEM as a national imperative."

Andrew Clark, president of advocacy group yes. every kid., recently said Trump should establish pathways to redesign the education system rather than bulldozing the entire department.

"To make real change, you have to do it in ways that benefit people's lives, and so if you just drop the hammer overnight you are going to cause pain for people [who] are dependent. So you're going to have to come up with pathways to make changes," Clark told Ravi Gupta, a former Obama staffer turned school principal and host of the "Lost Debate" podcast.

Trump would need congressional approval in order to make any changes to the Education Department. 

Republicans currently have the majority in both the House and the Senate, meaning lawmakers could pass new legislation addressing the laws establishing and sanctioning the department.

Fox News' Kristine Parks and Jessica Chasmar contributed to this report.

EXCLUSIVE: Taylor Starling, a high school cross-country runner at Martin Luther King High School in Riverside, California, lost her spot on the varsity team earlier this season to a transgender transfer student. 

Multiple parents of students at Martin Luther King have told Fox News Digital that the school has allowed the trans athlete to compete on the varsity cross-country team despite missing practices for academic reasons. These parents include Starling's father, longtime firefighter Ryan Starling, and construction subcontractor Dan Slavin, father to Kaitlyn, another runner on the team. 

"The fact that the male athlete was able to compete while attending less than 25% of the practices is not fair. In what era, on what team, in what sport can you barely show up to practice and still compete?" Dan Slavin told Fox News Digital. "It is not fair, and it is not right to those who work hard every day for the entire season." 

Both families are currently engaged in a lawsuit against the Riverside Unified School District (RUSD). 

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Ryan Starling told Fox News Digital that the loss of his daughter's varsity spot disrupted his entire family emotionally, as cross-country played a pivotal role in her life. And then when his daughter and other girls on the team confronted their school administrators about it, he claims they were told "transgenders have more rights than cisgenders."

"It's been told multiple times to not just Taylor, but her sister," Ryan Starling said, adding that Taylor is one of three triplets, and all three are active on varsity sports teams. "All the administrators at Martin Luther King have stated this comment, and the Title IX coordinator for the Riverside Unified School District has stated ‘that as a Cisgender girl, they do not have the same rights as a transgender girl' to multiple girls, not just our daughters, but multiple girls on campus." 

An RUSD spokesperson declined to give official comment on Ryan Starling's claims in a conversation with Fox News Digital. 

The RUSD previously provided a statement to Fox News Digital insisting that its handling of the situation has been in accordance with California state law. 

"While these rules were not created by RUSD, the District is committed to complying with the law and CIF regulations. California state law prohibits discrimination of students based on gender, gender identity and gender expression, and specifically prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender in physical education and athletics. The protections we provide to all students are not only aligned with the law but also with our core values which include equity and well-being," the statement said. 

In California, a law called AB 1266 has been in effect since 2014, giving California students at scholastic and collegiate levels the right to "participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records."

HOW TRANSGENDERISM IN SPORTS SHIFTED THE 2024 ELECTION AND IGNITED A NATIONAL COUNTERCULTURE

California Code of Regulations section 4910(k) defines gender as: "A person’s actual sex or perceived sex and includes a person’s perceived identity, appearance or behavior, whether or not that identity, appearance, or behavior is different from that traditionally associated with a person’s sex at birth."

California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Bylaw 300.D. mirrors the Education Code, stating: "All students should have the opportunity to participate in CIF activities in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on a student’s records."

The RUSD also placed blame for its handling of the situation on officials in Washington, D.C., and California's state capital, Sacramento.

"As these matters play out in our courts and the media, opposition and protests should be directed at those in a position to affect those laws and policies (including officials in Washington D.C. and Sacramento)," their statement read. 

But Starling, Slavin, other students and their families have been ready to do far more than simply send a letter to their local legislators. 

Taylor and Kaitlyn ignited a viral trend in their communities when they showed to school in November wearing shirts that read "Save Girls Sports." Martin Luther King administrators allegedly confronted the girls about the shirts, comparing them to swastikas, according to their lawsuit against the district. 

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Then, more and more students began to show up each week wearing the shirts, as the school had to alter its dress code and start placing students in detention for wearing them. This didn't stop the shirts from spreading and growing. It became a weekly ritual for hundreds of students every Wednesday to show up wearing the shirts support of the girls and their messaging, and many of them created viral social media posts on it. 

In early December, the school administrators gave up on their efforts to discipline students for wearing the shirts. Sources told Fox News Digital that more than 400 students have shown up wearing the shirts at a time, and students at other schools in the district have started to wear them to class.

While this was happening, Taylor was also taking steps to reclaim her varsity spot, according to her father. Ryan Starling says it was a "transformative" experience and motivated her both athletically and academically. She has since earned her spot back on the varsity team, and her father says she even beat the trans athlete in a recent competition by more than three seconds. 

"She has had so much support from her friends, where her friends were wearing all the t-shirts," he said.

The Starling family haven't received only positive attention, as Ryan Starling says there have been multiple concerning negative messages and even a threat. The family had to delay their recent family vacation to accommodate Taylor's safety for a trip to the state competition, as her parents didn't feel comfortable allowing her to travel alone.

"There was some negative stuff online, there was some threats of violence towards our girls, there was different stuff, and we just didn't feel comfortable leaving Taylor for a day and a half and having her fly out a day later so she could run at state, so we chose to stay all together as a family and support Taylor, and then we delayed our vacation to the first of the year," Ryan Starling said. 

The situation came to a potential turning point during a five-hour RUSD school board meeting on Dec. 19. Outside the office, there were competing protests between activists and parents wearing the "Save Girls Sports" t-shirts, and LGBTQ activists. 

Sources have told Fox News Digital that the LGBTQ activists at the event were harassing the protesters on the other side, and even disrupted a women's prayer group during a prayer circle prior to the meeting. 

Then inside the meeting, parents and opposing activists gave impassioned speeches on their thoughts on the situation, with multiple speakers yelling in hysterical tones. But Ryan Starling, who stayed for the whole meeting, got a glimmer of hope toward the end of the meeting. He says that after it was over, a newly-inducted board member spoke to the girls who were there to protest the trans athlete, and that the new board member suggested that their problem would be solved once President-elect Trump takes office on Jan. 20. 

"Don't worry girls, we have your back, wait till January 20th," the new board member said, according to Ryan Starling. 

Trump has pledged to ban trans athletes from women's and girls' sports, and the new Republican-controlled congress has indicated an intention to do so as well. 

The House rules package for the 119th Congress was posted this week, and the first step in its order of business is a bill that would bring about Title IX revisions that would only allow athletes to compete in the gender category that they were assigned at birth. 

However, California and Governor Gavin Newsom have vowed to resist the incoming Trump administration. 

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