This is a
simple, mostly non-partisan, off-year election. And yet we couldn’t get through
the ballot in a single post. Sorry about that. Anyway, yesterday we covered
Texas state propositions and Harris County propositions. What’s left on my
local ballot are school board trustee elections.
School
Board
There are
four positions on the ballot for Cy-Fair Independent School District. Sometimes
they’re called trustees, sometimes board members. CFISD had a “board candidate forum,” which is about two hours with the candidates, if you’d like to see for
yourself. But on the ballot they are “trustee candidates.” It’s a “board of
trustees,” so that includes it all, I guess.
To begin, I’m
not a fan of our school board. I’m not a fan of public education, so add that
in. But here we are, in one of the most conservative counties, in one of the
most conservative states, in a section of the county that is among the most
conservative sections. But our school board is notoriously tied to liberal
policies, educational associations (not a good thing), and cronyism. Most of
the board has been supported by a PAC, with rather large money, considering
that school board positions are unpaid.
The other
side will point out that they get awards—they are the most efficient; they are
best liked by administrators. They are efficient because CFISD gets a lower per
student allotment from the state than other school districts nearby and across
the state, and they are required by law to balance the budget. So they are
forced to be efficient. But let’s give props for that. If administrators like
them, it might be just that they’re giving them everything they want, but that
may not reflect at all on the classroom outcome.
In the forum,
these six candidates appeared: Thomas Jackson, Christine Hartley, Darcy Mingoia
(all current board members), Natalie Blasingame, Debbie Blackshear, and Pam
Redd. There are four positions. Incumbents Thomas Jackson and Christin Hartley
run unopposed for positions 1 and 2 respectively. Darcy Mingoia is running
again for position 3 and is challenged by Dr. Natalie Blasingame. And the position
4 trustee is not running again, so the new candidates are Debbie Blackshear and
Pam Redd. Positions 5, 6, and 7—John Ogletree, Don Ryan, and Bob Covey—are not
up for re-election this year.
The easy
way is to go in order. But I won’t; I’m starting with position 3. In addition
to the forum, which I watched online after the fact, I saw them both in person
at the most recent Tea Party meeting. I wrote about Darcy Mingoia last time she ran, in 2012. She was not my choice. She seems to be a decent person, more
interested in the business end than the details of the classroom.
 |
| Darcy Mingoia, CFISD candidate, position 4 photo from Cypress Tea Party Facebook page |
Last time
around I was bothered that she (and nearly every candidate) got the order of
priorities wrong. I think you’re accountable to the taxpayers and parents. The
job is to get the best education possible for the money budgeted. You will want
a good environment and good teachers in order to accomplish that. But doing the
bidding of a teachers’ organization is the wrong approach. This time that
question didn’t seem very relevant. She said, “Obviously we’re accountable to
the taxpayers. But…” She’s certain they’re doing a very good job, and this is
one of the best school districts around.
You lose
me there. We looked at the school district info when we moved here and decided
where to live. It was highly rated. But two years in, we found it so
intolerable we pulled our kids out to homeschool for the duration (ten years).
I haven’t been that tuned in to schools since, but we have a granddaughter in
the local elementary school right now. It’s a new school, but it was built like all the others with
open classrooms—even though that has been discredited everywhere for decades
and has been proven painfully troublesome here in this district. It’s cheaper
to build large rooms without walls. No matter that children have to remain
quiet at all times, to avoid disturbing the other classes within earshot.
Having a teacher or guest read a book aloud is iffy (I know from experience).
Also, the
elementary school still tells teachers whether a student is performing at grade
level or below grade level. But if your child came in performing two grades
above grade level, you don’t get any kind of grade to let you know they’re
still progressing. I found the program for gifted students sub-par for high
school, middle school, and elementary school. It appears that is still the
case. (
 |
| Natalie Blasingame, CFISD candidate, position 4 photo from Cypress Tea Party Facebook page |
Natalie
Blasingame at least addressed the gifted challenge. She is in favor of adding options. Her big
thing is dual-language schools—not to be confused with bilingual education,
which is a way of teaching non-English students until they learn enough English
to be more mainstreamed. Dual-language is an immersion program for teaching
additional languages to English-speaking students. Her daughter attends a
dual-language program, but it was not available in our district, so she goes elsewhere. (We’re
watching a friend try this out in another state.)
She
answered my question about gifted students by saying, the way it happens is by
dealing with each student individually. Now, that is something that the schools
truly need. I don’t know how they get there. But Dr. Blasingame has been an
educator—a teacher, assistant principal, principal, and assistant
superintendent. She at least knows the challenges from the trenches, and has
looked at options. I think she would be the only board member with an education background, and I believe they said the first board member ever to have been an educator in the district.
So, in the
Position 3 race, I’m voting for Natalie Blasingame.
Now, for
the others. The short answer is, I’m not voting for anyone else.
Of course
unopposed positions will get in without my vote. But they will do it without my
feeling forced to say, “What a great job you’re doing!”
You may
want to disagree. When Thomas Jackson first ran, it was with PAC money, and in
connection with Mr. Ogletree, whom I see as the enemy of parents and taxpayers
on the board. So I did not favor him. However, he presented himself well at the
forum that year—and again in this year’s forum. He’s data oriented and very
reasonable. I was leaning toward giving him my vote, but I was reminded that he was
instrumental in pushing for the $1.2 Billion bond last year. That’s an
incredibly sized bond, and was going to building more open classroom schools,
and for a great many things that aren’t capital expenditures. I voted against it.
It passed nevertheless (they almost always do).
Christine
Hartley also ran with PAC money, and attached herself to other PAC candidates.
I wasn’t convinced then that she was what our schools needed, and I’m sticking
with that impression. I think she must make an incredible PTO president or Band
Mom. She’s a pleasant person with a lot of energy. But she resents anything
that challenges the god that is public schools: school choice, charter schools,
private schools, homeschools. So, she may not be aware she declared me an
enemy, but I recognized the categorization. So, again, she’s not getting my
vote.
The Position
4 race has two newcomers. These are non-partisan positions. But I have been told that
Pam Redd is considered a weak Democrat (has voted in at least one Democrat
primary, but not a long steady record of doing so). Debbie Blackshear votes Republican. She spoke at a Tea Party meeting last month (which I missed). Pam
Redd didn’t show; she later told our Tea Party president that she’d had a
previous commitment. But that’s not what she’d said when she was scheduled to
speak, and she didn’t get back to him to let him know she wouldn't make it. Since the main ways of
reaching the public in person are at the forum and at our Tea Party, she blew
off an important opportunity.
So Debbie
Blackshear ought to be an obvious choice. But I found her unimpressive at the
forum. And a friend suggested that some other business connections make her
suspicious. I don’t know enough to be certain. It may turn out, if she wins, I
will know her better upon re-election. But for now I’m not willing to give her
a vote.
Here’s a
little additional impression from the forum. School choice is important to
pretty much any parent who has a slightly non-standard child: smart, shy, slow,
active, reading challenged, etc. A parent can’t wait through a bad year in
hopes the next year will be better. A parent has to get the child out of
something that isn’t working and into something that might be a better fit.
There is
one small “choice” option in this huge district: Windfern High School of Choice.
They talked about it a lot. Two of the candidates (Christine Hartley and Pam
Redd, I believe) have had a child go there.
There are
three Windfern schools. Two of them are alternative schools—where students get
sent as an option other than dropping out. Fighting, or other major
infractions, or failure to do the work—students get sent to Windfern. It’s not
their choice. But that is not the same Windfern—which is 1500 feet away from
the other two.
This “choice”
school is for 11th and 12th grade students who are
struggling to keep up and graduate, and might do better in smaller classes with
more personal attention; or it’s for accelerated graduates, those who want to
graduate early. The emphasis is on getting graduated. The set-up is more like a
community college (according to the website). A student has to be recommended
to the school by a faculty member from their assigned school. It is unlikely
that any child that isn’t trying to graduate early would know about it or ask
for it; they get directed there.
There are
250-400 students in this school of choice. There are 113,689 students in the
district this year. So, that’s .2-.3.5% of the students. There’s a “choice” for
2 or 3 students out of a thousand. So, almost no one has any “choice.” And what
there is doesn’t compare to my homeschool, for example.
If that is
this board’s idea of plenty of choice, we need people who think differently.
No comments:
Post a Comment