It used to be that school board races were not that significant. But the enemy of civilization has found schools to be a prime place for indoctrination and control of the populous. I’m not really talking about a conspiracy theory, more of an alignment.
If you’re a would-be tyrant, what you need is a people that
are relatively easy to rule. You want them to be compliant and to not be deep,
independent thinkers. The best place to create such a people is the schools.
You do it with the cloak of good intentions. You convince people you care so
very much about the children—and therefore the people should trust you. And
then they leave you alone to do whatever it is you’re planning.
This has been a long-term plan, starting in the 1800s. The
frog has been brought to a boil slowly.
But lately things have gotten so obviously out of line with
what sensible people want, we are realizing that anything related to educating
our next generation is serious and requires our attention.
School board races in our district are theoretically non-partisan. There’s no primary, in which parties choose their candidates. There are just people who sign up to run and then try to convince people to vote for them. Multiple candidates can run for any given race, and the one getting the most votes wins. No runoff.
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| These are the four school board candidates I'm endorsing: from left, Todd LeCompte, George Edwards, Justin Ray, and Christine Kalmbach. Image from a candidate meet and greet in Jersey Village this week, found here on Christine Kalmbach's Facebook page |
That doesn’t mean that the candidates don’t align with one
party or the other—even if they say they don’t.
In this northwest corner of Harris County, outside Houston,
Texas, we have a generally conservative, Republican-voting population. But a
few years ago we found our school district run by all non-conservatives (not
necessarily registered Democrats, but aligning that way). Of the seven trustees
on the board, not a one could be considered more aligned with parents and the
community than a center-left-voting Democrat. And the schools were suffering in
ways that showed. Lower academic abilities, higher debt, unhappy teachers, and
very unsatisfied parents.
Add to the academic dissatisfaction, a quick look under the
surface revealed an agenda—being pushed by teachers’ unions, international
NGOs, and others “wretched hive of scum and villainy” types you might not have
expected to find in a public school—carrying out an agenda of critical race
theory, pro-LGBTQ, pro-transgenderism, and anti-parental responsibility.
Two years ago, as Republican precinct chairs in the
district, we identified three candidates we could get behind for the three open
seats that year. We won all three. They’ve been excellent. But they’re still a
minority. So, to make the changes we need, we need a majority. We need to win
at least one—preferably all four—of the races this year.
You’ll note that this is an off-year election. That means
low voter turnout. That means, for someone in a position of control, if they
can target certain demographics, such as teachers, whom they have cheap and
easy access to, then they can win. Unless—like last time—precinct chairs,
candidates, and volunteers knock on tens of thousands of doors and talk to
voters personally about what’s happening in our schools and what these
candidates can do about it.
So this year we started our efforts back in January, and
went through a process to identify the best conservative candidates. We
actually had eight applicants go through our vetting process, which consisted
of several candidate forums, of varying formats, where they could introduce
themselves and answer our questions. Of the eight, I thought seven were both
conservative and capable of doing the job. So it came down to who we precinct
chairs thought would be most electable.
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| fFyer for the four endorsed candidates for Cy-Fair school district board. |
Those four candidates—one for each of the seats—have since gotten
the endorsement of the Harris County Republican Party and the Republican Party
of Texas.
I attended a conservative candidate forum last Friday, which
included these four, plus the one who came in fifth place in our process but
decided to run anyway. So I’m going to share a bit of what they offered. The
order is the order in which they gave their opening statement.
Who Are
the Candidates
Justin Ray is running for position 3. He has
maybe the best name recognition. He spent four years as mayor of Jersey Village
(a suburb of Houston, toward the east end of the district, where Jersey Village
High School is). After that he ran for state rep, challenging the very leftist
Rep. Rosenthal of HD 135, and lost to the incumbent by only 300 votes, the
closest race in the state. (We could insert an entire post here about Harris
County election problems, but that’s a post for another day.)
He grew up there and has three kids in the district. In his
intro he talked about the Teas economic miracle—and how that depends on our
educating the next generation. He would push the basics, which are building blocks
for other learning. He talked about school safety (a common thread among
candidates) and pointed out that safety is not just about some angry guy with a
gun; it’s also about discipline in the classroom. He said, since we’re all
taxpayers, we need to make sure Cy-Fair ISD gives us a return on our
investment. He would work with parents, not against them. He would get teachers
and parents together, with an open conversation.
Todd LeCompte is running for position 1. He ran
two years ago, and then stepped down from a race where there was already a good
conservative candidate, to avoid taking votes from her. He has been preparing
to run now ever since. His message and everything about him is more refined
now. He has kids in the district, and he volunteers in the mentorship program.
Big issues for him are academics—getting back to basics;
school safety (he talked a bit about HB 13, which would train, test, and vet
teachers who would like to concealed carry firearms in schools); giving power
back to parents; and supporting teachers.
Christine Kalmbach is running for position 4.
She worked with me on the Education Committee for our District Platform in 2022.
She grew up in this district (graduated 1985), and so did her kids. She has
volunteered here for 26 years. She says she feels called to make a difference
in Cy-Fair ISD.
She also talked about improving basic academics in the
district. Our scores have been going down recently. When 55% of third graders are
reading at expected level for their grade (third grade is a critical point in
testing for the districts, because it’s a critical point by which kids need to
learn how to read), that means 45% are not reading at grade level. The district
has utterly failed 45% of students. And stats show that, if a kid read and do
basic math by third grade, they’re on a pipeline to prison.
She quoted the current (retiring) board chair as saying
things are OK in Cy-Fair. But they’re not OK. Three classes in a CFISD high
school have no teacher—no adult, not even a substitute in the room. That’s not
acceptable. We have a teacher shortage. We also need bus drivers, but she knows
several people who have applied and can’t get so much as a response saying
their application was received. She is a real estate agent, and had more to say
about changing demographics in the district (later, in answer to a question
about school boundaries), which she is very clear on. She does say we have a
great opportunity here, to make important changes, if we have seven of seven
school board positions held by people like we had in that room, representing
the community.
Ayse Indemaio is running for position 2. (You
pronounce her name I-shay In-de-mayo.) She’s been a fixture at school board
meetings for several years now—essentially since the COVID shutdown. She has
called our attention to a lot of the problems in the district. She has three
kids in the district. And she says she’s determined to put parents in charge.
She has done FOIA requests, and helped get HB
18 passed in the 2023 legislative regular session, which, if I understand
correctly, is intended to keep people (schools, tech companies, anyone) from using
and storing data on students based on the use of their school-issued devices.
She called to the school board’s attention the possibility of accessing the
dark web from the chrome books the students were issued—which were then changed
to be unable to access the internet.
She has done a lot of verifiable good. That said, you might
note she is not one of the four endorsed candidates. As you’ll recall, we had
more than enough candidates who had the right beliefs and skills to do the job,
so the precinct chairs were making decisions about electability. She has
created a fair amount of opposition from, well, the opposition. They label her,
and apply whatever labels to everyone else who is among us. Personally, I found
that, as the process went along, her message was less about angrily attacking
the school district and more about what she has successfully done. As that
happened, she moved from a lower tier of candidates up closer to the top tier.
She never quite got there. But she had worked to put together $25,000 of her
own money to put into a campaign and decided to run anyway. There had been an
understanding (an agreement going in) that any candidate who wasn’t among the
top four choices of the precinct chairs would drop out—so that we did not split
the conservative vote, giving an advantage to the “liberal/progressive”
candidate.
In this case, the “liberal/progressive” candidate is the
only incumbent. Julie Hinaman is deceptively harmless looking. She’s small,
cute, claims to be conservative (came to our Tea Party some years ago to claim
that), but has been pro-LGBTQ and pro-transgenderism, and pro-porn in the
libraries, and pro-social engineering without telling the parents. She has been
very aligned with the now-outgoing superintendent, whom they’re trying to
replace before the new board can be elected. She has been terse and unkind to
community that speaks out about issues at meetings, while appearing to be sympathetic,
especially to teachers and kids. She is going to be a formidable opponent.
There were a handful of precinct chairs who insisted on
supporting Ayse in running, despite her failure to reach the top four in any of
multiple polls. She’s a force to be reckoned with. But the fact is, we have
another conservative candidate in that race, so she is indeed going to split
the conservative vote.
George Edwards is also running for position 2.
George has been one of our Cypress Texas Tea Party board members, so I’ve known
him a while. [Note: I recently stepped down from the board, and stopped writing
the weekly newsletter, but I still attend and support the group.] He has an
impressive resume. He was a CFISD school board member from 1995-1998. A couple
of his accomplishments during that time were getting rid of year-round school
and writing the document Portrait of a Cy-Fair Graduate. He spoke at a school
board meeting on this last spring, because the current school board has been
rewriting it—watering it down, he would say. Instead of emphasizing academic
excellence, they think all graduates should show “curiosity.” Whatever they
mean by that, it’s no replacement for actual standards.
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| The original Portrait of a CFISD Graduate, from George's 1990s time on the board. |
He has a number of other boards on his resume. Besides
Cy-Fair ISD’s board, he has chaired the board of Energy Capital Credit Union, been
a board member and Investment Committee Chair of the Texas Bar Foundation, and
was given the Patron Award by the Texas Bar Foundation. He has also received a
Leadership Houston Award. And he was given an Exxon Mobile national leadership
award. He is a CPA, which means he also has the financial skills the board
needs. He’s soft-spoken and unassuming, but his experience shows he’s pretty
high-powered and certainly knows how to get a school board on the right track.
What Would They Do on Issues
The Q&A was taking a few questions from the audience and
letting any or all of the candidates answer. My guess is, if these are issues
here in Texas, chances are there are similar issues in your school district.
The first was, acknowledging that teaching CRT (critical
race theory) in Texas is against the law, what is the plan for making sure
it doesn’t get taught? And similar questions would apply to the LGBTQ agenda
as well.
All candidates acknowledge that it exists in our schools. They
all would emphasize teaching basics, instead of those things. But there’s also
setting the standard and agenda for a board-led district, in which the superintendent
follows their direction. And they would have accountability checks to make sure
that was happening. George was especially emphatic about this; if they don’t
like the newly hired superintendent, they don’t have to keep him. There would
also be plenty of transparency and conversation with parents and community
members. Ayse asserted that shedding light on the problems is the right thing
to do—as a parent, and as a school board member.
Another question related to the closing of schools, the
masks, and the vaccine mandates. What guarantees do we have that those
things will never happen again?
All agree that we definitely know better now. Justin called
the damage done to our kids almost insurmountable. That’s why we have to
emphasize teaching the basics to catch kids up. Todd mentioned that, one of his
sons couldn’t breathe in the masks, so Todd went to the superintendent to ask for
an exemption, which he was denied—even though it was only a couple of months
before a scheduled removal of the masking policy. What difference would it make
to wear masks in April but not in June? So much nonsense from this district.
Todd pulled his sons out for that time period, because doing what’s right for
your child is the priority.
In a follow-up question, someone mentioned that County Judge
Hidalgo is trying to bring vaccines into school clinics. Justin pointed out
that, anything Hidalgo recommends, he’s probably going to do the opposite.
There was strong agreement that health and mental health clinics do not belong
in schools. And they acknowledged this has been a way of getting to children
behind their parents’ backs. George added that absolutely anything that tries
to keep information from parents will be against policy in this district.
Christine and Ayse both mentioned that they have signed the Texans for Vaccine
Choice pledge.
One questioner brought up the need for more trade classes.
And the candidates agree. Christine gave herself as an example of benefiting
from those classes. The questioner told his story that it was in shop class
that he came to understand fractions. He’d been failing math, but he totally
understood it once he had to physically measure things. Those classes put the
basics to use. We need them.
One issue in our district has been contentious this year: rezoning.
The western part of the district is growing, although Christine points out that
the rate of growth even in that area has slowed. The eastern end of the
district is shrinking. We actually have schools not being fully utilized, while
we’re building new schools elsewhere in the district—based on outdated
assumptions of a growing tax base. That can’t continue. What especially bothers
families is changing schools, sometimes multiple times. One family complained
about having had six school changes imposed on them. That sounds like the
result of bad planning. Christine suggests a better demographic study, keeping
in mind that we have $4 billion in bonds outstanding.
One suggestion got huge cheers and applause: renaming the
Mark Henry Administration Building. Mark Henry (no relation to board member
Scott Henry, one of our three elected last time) is the retiring
superintendent, who has pushed so many of the bad policies in the district. The
new administration building must have been budgeted several board cycles ago,
so we can’t blame the current board—just those who have been there too long. It’s
a huge, extravagant place, with a big electronic sign along the freeway for
everyone to notice. We were told that Mark Henry (I don’t know if it’s his
fault) had the wrong kind of glass installed, which had to all be removed and
replaced—at our expense, of course, not his.
The huge building can hold more employees—that do not work in schools—than I can imagine any district ever needing. And the very month they opened up this building, they worked on the budget, with the same old complaint that they don’t have enough money for decent teacher raises.
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| Yard signs are showing up, image found here on Christine Kalmbach's Facebook page. |
Conclusion
The four candidates chosen by the precinct chairs get my
endorsement. That is not to say Ayse couldn’t do the job. But she is young, and
is likely to have a future opportunity. I really hope she keeps doing the work
she’s been doing, finding out what needs to change in the district. The
difficulty right now is that we are likely to get more conservative votes for
position 2 than the incumbent we most want to remove (and yes, I would say Hinaman
needs to be gone even more than the 3 who are retiring), and could still lose,
since the conservative vote will be split. The purpose of going through the
process was to prevent this very scenario. George, by the way, was well up in
the top 3; the candidates then chose which race to run in.
I haven’t said anything here about the non-conservatives in
the race, other than the one incumbent. I only know that, if they aligned with
our pro-parent, pro-family conservatism, we would know that. They’ll say they’re
for the teachers, and the children. And they’ll say our side is some extremist
group of religious bigots (Christian nationalists I think is the term one
candidate has labeled us).
So the school board races are the most important thing on
the ballot this November, here and all over the country. We have an actual
opportunity to improve our schools, or to allow them to sink further into the
mire.
After hearing our candidates, I felt hopeful for the first time in a very long time that there might be actual, real improvement in our schools. But it will take the votes of every good community member we know. Spread the word. (Use the QR code in the image below to get more information about these candidates and how you can help.)
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| Image found here on Christine Kalmbach's Facebook page, use the QR code to get more information and learn how you can help. |
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