We’re just a bit over two months out from an election—an
off-off-year election. It’s not a presidential election year. It’s not even a
congressional election year. This year is between even those. The only things
on our ballot will be school board positions and propositions (proposed
amendments to the state constitution, coming out of this year’s legislative
session, but we’re not getting to those in this post).
The
School Board Races
Four years ago we were among some of the first school
districts attempting to flip our board from woke to conservative—or, you
could say, to what parents and communities want, instead of what has been
forced down our throats.
We have seven school board trustees (board members). Three
positions come up the year after a presidential election, such as 2021 and this
year; four other positions come up two years later, such as 2023 and 2027.
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Cy-Fair Independent School District Board of Trustees, circled are incumbents Natalie Blasingame, Scott Henry, and Luke Scanlon, whose seats are on the ballot this November. Natalie and Scott are running again. Luke is not seeking reelection. Image found here |
These are supposedly nonpartisan positions. But, as we’ve
all learned the hard way, nonpartisan just means no information on the ballot
about the candidates’ actual partisanship. Somehow we’d found ourselves—in a
northwest section of Harris County, in one of the strongest conservative
senatorial districts in the state—stuck with a 7-0 non-conservative school
board. So we set out to change that.
We won three of three seats in 2021. That included an arch-enemy ringleader, who had essentially run the board for a
couple of decades. But it still left us with a 4-3 woke-majority board.
I’m sure some of those board members don’t call themselves
woke. They might say they’re all about what’s best for the kids—and they know
what’s best so much better than mere parents and community members. But what we
found, going door-to-door, was that people were fed up with what the schools
were doing. You’ll remember, 2021 was just a year into the COVID pandemic.
Schools had closed for a while, then did online learning (not very
successfully), then had kids wear masks in school—all the time except when
actually putting food in their mouths. It was during this time that parents
became more aware of what schools were saying to their children, and they
didn’t want it.
So we started pushing for legislative changes, to remove
DEI, CRT, and LGBTQ sexualizing materials. The community spoke pretty clearly
about that.
But it wasn’t until the second round, when we got three (out of four) more seats on the board, that we had the opportunity to make real progress.
It turns out, taking over the school board, while essential,
isn’t the end of the story. We got our majority at the same time that we got a
new superintendent—chosen by the previous, outgoing board, although they let
new board members participate in the vetting process. But there’s a whole “deep
state” of district administrators still left. And, with the new board and the
new superintendent—surprise!—there was a huge debt suddenly in need of being taken
care of. This is just a year after the opening of a new administration building
(named after the outgoing superintendent who caused so many of our problems,
including debt for this new building) along with a new performing arts center.
You can’t really go to the taxpayers—after that incredibly
expensive (and unnecessary?) infrastructure purchase and say, “We can’t
actually educate your kids unless you give us more money.”
So, the new conservative board was put in an impossible
position. Nevertheless, they did some of the things we asked for....
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