Beliefs clash among students, parents and teachers as the Ten Commandments go up in Texas classrooms

DALLAS (AP) — When it became clear to Texas high school theater teacher Gigi Cervantes that she couldn't ignore a new state law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in her Fort Worth classroom, she felt she had no choice. She resigned from the job she loved.

In the small city of Whitesboro, eighth grade U.S. history teacher Dustin Parsons welcomed the new poster on his classroom wall, saying the display helps him demonstrate the influence of Christianity on the country’s founding principles.

Across Texas, there are no shortage of strong opinions among teachers, parents and students as the state undertakes the nation’s largest attempt to hang the Ten Commandments in public schools. In the rush to navigate the Republican-led mandate that took effect in September, the rollout has forced some administrators, teachers and school boards to confront hard choices.

“I just was not going to be a part of forcing or imposing religious doctrine onto my students,” Cervantes said.

Federal courts have ordered more than two dozen of the state’s roughly 1,200 school districts to not hang the posters, including on Tuesday when a judge said the mandate violates First Amendment language guaranteeing religious liberty and forbidding government establishment of religion. Courts have also ruled against similar laws in Arkansas and Louisiana, and the issue is expected to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

But many Texas classrooms are far along in implementing a law that has animated school board meetings, spun up guidance about what to say when students ask questions, and led to boxes of donated posters being dropped on the doorsteps of campuses statewide. Some districts didn’t wait: In suburban Dallas, school officials in Frisco spent about $1,800 to print nearly 5,000 posters, even though the law only requires schools to hang the Ten Commandments if the displays are donated. Some schools have no posters to hang.

“I’m not evangelizing,” Parsons said. “I’m doing it more from a history source perspective in how they were building the Constitution.”

The law says schools must put donated posters “in a conspicuous place” and requires the writing to be a size and typeface that is visible from anywhere in a classroom to a person with “average vision.” The displays must also be 16 inches wide and 20 inches tall (40 centimeters wide and 50 centimeters tall).

South of Austin, the Hays Consolidated Independent School District posted copies of the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights — which includes the First Amendment — alongside the state-required Ten Commandments.

“Districts are in between a rock and a hard place,” said Elizabeth Beeton, a member of the Galveston Independent School District’s school board.

Judges blocked the posters in some schools, including some of Texas’ largest, after parents brought lawsuits. In Galveston, the school board voted not to post the commandments until the law’s constitutionality is decided in the courts, but then found themselves the target of a state lawsuit. This week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced lawsuits against two more districts he said were violating the law, though one, the Leander Independent School District said they are displaying donated posters.

Texas' law easily passed the GOP-controlled Legislature and Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have backed posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

In suburban Dallas, Lorne Liechty rallied his family to raise money for Ten Commandments posters to donate to the Rockwall Independent School District.

Liechty, an attorney and Rockwall County commissioner, sees the commandments as fundamental to his Christian faith, the country's legal system and the functioning of society.

“These are just really good guides for human behavior,” Liechty said. “For the life of me, I don’t know why people would object to any of these principles.”

Adriana Bonilla would like to see the posters in her son's kindergarten near San Antonio.

"It assists with moral foundations and it teaches respect and responsibility,” Bonilla said.

Julie Leahy, director of legal services for the nonprofit Texas Classroom Teachers Association, says teachers have been asking about the consequences of refusing to display the commandments and whether they can also display posters with tenets of other religions.

She said teachers also ask for guidance on how to handle students' questions.

“Generally speaking, the answer is going to be that the teacher should send them back to their family,” Leahy said.

While the Austin high school where Rachel Preston teaches has been barred by a court order from displaying the Ten Commandments, she said she and her colleagues are anxious all the same.

“We’re worried specifically about students who don’t identify as Christian feeling unease at the very least at the presence of this in our classrooms, and struggling as well with how do we contextualize this?” Preston said.

When the Ten Commandments were posted last month throughout 16-year-old Madison Creed’s high school in the small East Texas city of Carthage, she said it briefly became the “buzz of the school” as students debated whether the religious doctrine belonged there.

“Everybody had their opinion about it,” Creed said. “I know talking to a lot of my peers and my classmates that a lot of us don’t agree with it but there is the other portion of the school that does.”

Word also came that the high school band director had resigned over the law. Johnnie Cotton wrote on Facebook that he believed “very strongly that politics and religion have no place in the public schools.”

Creed, who plays in the band, said she understood and agreed with Cotton's stance, and admired that he stood up for his beliefs, even though his resignation two weeks before a big competition was badly timed.

Creed’s mother, Tiffany Meadows, said the posting of the commandments didn’t bother her because she and her children are Christians, but that she was worried about students of other religions.

“These are public schools, these aren’t Christian schools,” Meadows said.

Cervantes, who said she believed complying with the law breached her students' First Amendment rights, ended her career at the Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts this fall by leading her students through a production of Molière’s comedy “The Imaginary Invalid.” Her students presented her with a signed cast photograph and many said they respected her point of view.

“I kind of feel like we are living through a time where people who are in positions to be standing up for things are not standing up, not speaking out and there’s a climate of fear," Cervantes said. “And I don’t want to be any part of that.”

Debbie Leimbach displays one of the hundreds of Ten Commandments posters she was preparing to deliver to local public schools in New Braunfels, Texas, Monday, Nov. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Students work under Ten Commandments and Bill of Rights posters on display in a classroom at Lehman High School, in Kyle, Texas, Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Ten Commandments and Bill of Rights posters are displayed in a classroom at Lehman High School, in Kyle, Texas, Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Gigi Cervantes, who resigned from her position as a theater teacher at a Fort Worth school rather than teach in a classroom where the Ten Commandments are hung, poses for a photo at her home, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025, in Fort Worth, Texas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

Debbie Leimback displays one of the hundreds of Ten Commandments posters she was preparing to deliver to local public schools in New Braunfels, Texas, Monday, Nov. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Gigi Cervantes, who resigned from her position as a theater teacher at a Fort Worth school rather than teach in a classroom where the Ten Commandments are hung, poses for a photo at her home, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025, in Fort Worth, Texas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran responded to U.S. President Donald Trump’s address to Americans on the war with new missile attacks targeting Israel and the Gulf Arab states Thursday, underlining Tehran’s insistence that it rejected Washington’s outreach for a ceasefire while maintaining its grip on the Strait of Hormuz.

Britain planned to hold a call Thursday with nearly three dozen countries about how to reopen the strait, through which 20% of all oil and natural gas traded passes in peacetime. The 35 countries, including all G7 industrialized democracies except the U.S., as well as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, signed a declaration last month demanding Iran stop blocking the strait. The call will discuss “diplomatic and political measures” that could restore shipping once the fighting is over.

Washington has insisted that Iran allow ships to freely transit the strait, but Trump this week has said it is not up to the U.S. to force it, and in his address encouraged countries that receive oil through Hormuz to “build some delayed courage” and go “take it.”

In his address, Trump said the U.S. would hit Iran “extremely hard over the next two to three weeks,” while also insisting American “core strategic objectives are nearing completion.”

Iran's military said defiantly on Thursday that its armament facilities are hidden and will never be reached by Israeli or American attacks.

“The centers you think you have targeted are insignificant,” said Lt. Col. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesman for the Iranian military’s Khatam Al-Anbiya Central Headquarters.

Just before Trump began his nearly 20-minute address on Wednesday, explosions were heard in Dubai as air defenses worked to intercept an Iranian missile barrage. Less than a half hour after the president was done, Israel said its military was working to intercept incoming missiles.

Sirens sounded in Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, immediately after the speech.

Following a joint statement in March condemning Iranian attacks on unarmed commercial vessels that called upon Iran to “cease immediately its threats, laying of mines, drone and missile attacks and other attempts to block the strait,” the 35 signatories were to hold a virtual meeting Thursday hosted by British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper.

Though the oil and gas that typically transits the Strait of Hormuz primarily is sold to Asian nations, Japan and South Korea were the only two countries from the region that were joining.

“Trump’s message was that the United States can sustain its own economic and energy ecosystem, while countries dependent on regional exports will either have to buy from the United States or manage the Strait themselves,” the New York-based Soufan Center think tank wrote after the address.

“While Trump explicitly thanked U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf for their cooperation and allyship, an expedited U.S. withdrawal without securing the strait will leave many of these countries, whose economies are dependent on energy exports, in the lurch.”

No country appears willing to try and open the strait by force while the war is raging. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the group “will assess all viable diplomatic and political measures we can take to restore freedom of navigation, guarantee the safety of trapped ships and seafarers and to resume the movement of vital commodities.”

Bahrain, which now holds the presidency of the United Nations Security Council, has been working to get the world body to address the crisis as well.

Though Iran has allowed a trickle of ships through the strait, it remains largely closed. Iran has also been repeatedly attacking Gulf Arab energy infrastructure, sending oil prices skyrocketing and giving rise to broader economic problems worldwide.

Following Trump's speech, Brent crude, the international standard, rose again and was at $108 in early spot trading, up nearly 50% from Feb. 28 when Israel and the U.S. started the war with their attacks on Iran.

The rising energy prices and stock market jitters have been putting increasing domestic pressure on Trump, who used his address to offer a defense of the war while also suggesting it was close to winding down.

He acknowledged American service members who had been killed and said: “We are going to finish the job, and we’re going to finish it very fast. We’re getting very close.”

The U.S. has presented Iran with a 15-point plan for a ceasefire, but Trump didn’t say anything about the diplomatic efforts or bring up his April 6 deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face severe retaliation from the U.S.

More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran during the war, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel. More than two dozen people have died in Gulf states and the occupied West Bank, while 13 U.S. service members have been killed.

More than 1,200 people have been killed in Lebanon and more than 1 million displaced, according to authorities. Ten Israeli soldiers have also died there.

Weissert reported from Washington and Rising reported from Bangkok.

The Indian flagged LPG carrier Jag Vasant transporting liquefied petroleum gas, is seen at the Mumbai Port in Mumbai, India, after it arrived clearing the Strait of Hormuz, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

President Donald Trump speaks about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)

President Donald Trump walks from the Blue Room to speak about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)

President Donald Trump speaks about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)

President Donald Trump speaks about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)