How to Retake the School Board

We’ve had some trouble here with our local school board. Among other things, the main current issue is the infiltration of Critical Race Theory into what’s being taught to our children. Last fall our entire school board signed a document that reaffirms their support of CRT.  It’s subtle. It says things like promoting “the tenet prescribed in the Declaration of Independence, being, ‘all men are created equal.’” We all agree with that.

CFISD's Resolution Condemning Racism

Then, it refers to recent events in the country that have revealed racism. Except that they’re referring to the George Floyd death and subsequent riots claiming his death was caused by racism—but the trials of the police officers involved do not include any charges of racism, nor do the prosecutors bring in any evidence of racism, because there wasn’t any. So that’s a problem. We can all agree with the statement that racism will not be tolerated in our schools. But we can’t agree that it’s suddenly an overwhelming, invasive problem. The Board doesn’t provide a single local incident as evidence of any problem here.

Then there’s a claim that, despite it being nearly 6 decades since the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, “racism, systemic racism, discrimination, prejudice, injustice and inequality continue to exist.” Do they? As though no progress had been made? Is there evidence of this actually being the case in our school district? Because otherwise this is just parroting the CRT mantra that racism is everywhere.

The Board members call for a change in the teaching of history in our schools. Based on the above, we can only assume they will be promoting some distorted version approved by Critical Race Theorists, rather than real history.

Most troubling is their call for an “equity audit.” Equity doesn’t mean equality. In CRT language it doesn’t mean “all men are created equal”; it means equal outcomes—and if you don’t have equal outcomes, that means you have a systemic racism problem. And who do you hire to do an equity audit? A promoter of CRT. There is no other option. The money for that audit is already spent, by the way; now they’re ready to spend money on implementing the recommendations of the auditors, all while telling us "There's no Critical Race Theory in Cy-Fair."

They add one more thing in the resolution:

FURTHER, we resolve to encourage our district to be a place for transparent dialogue among our board, staff, school personnel, students and parents on the issue of race and racism, and there be no retribution for individuals or groups for sharing what is perceived, believed or experienced.

So when we try to have “transparent dialogue” at a school board meeting, they relegate us to a small “community comment” part of the meeting, after the part of the meeting where board members tell us we’re wrong and they won’t be listening to us. And during our time, we get a total of ten people to speak for no longer than two minutes each. Any “dialogue” is quickly squelched with a threat of kicking us out of the meeting—while scolding us for not being nice little compliant citizens.

So we need a better school board. This is true in many places across the country. Parents and citizens need to take back control of school boards, to make them answer to us. Maybe it will be instructive to look at what we will need to accomplish here to make that happen.

The Plan 

Three board members are up for election this November. And they will be the only races on this ballot; the only other items will be propositions for state constitutional amendments that came out of the legislative session and must now go before the people of Texas.

That means we can concentrate all our efforts between now and November on these three races.

The group that got us together to attend that school board meeting in June, FACT—Freedom to Act—held a planning meeting last week that I attended. The main speaker was a woman running for State Board of Education in her area, who is a former school board member in the south end of the county and therefore knows what it takes to get elected. Her mentoring will be helpful. But it’s going to be a big challenge. A lot of it comes down to block walking and talking to parents.

Eventually we got to the details of our district. One of our people, Bill Ely (he’s on the board of our Tea Party with me, and is a precinct chair, working on a couple of committees for the Harris County Republican Party), had worked out the numbers, by looking at turnout and votes in school board races in 2019, 2017, 2015, and 2013.He dug through the numbers and figured out how many votes we need to accomplish this effort, based on the most challenging goal—the highest vote getter during those years. So we know how many voters we need to get out to the polls and what percentage we want of those voters.

There are 76 precincts in the school district, so that gives us a pretty good map of the territory to cover, and a logical way to divide it up. There’s a 51.89% Republican majority, which is narrower than you would expect for NW Harris County, but it’s better than the county as a whole. If every precinct gets their voters educated and out to vote, we can accomplish this feat.

We have data showing us what kinds of voters there are, coming from whether people vote in a primary or not. A person who never votes in a primary is called a swing voter, because we don’t know their affiliation from the voting record. A person moves up in tiers depending on how many times, and how consistently, they’ve voted Republican in primary elections. I have this information on every registered voter in my precinct. It’s public record, although I appreciate the help in making it easily accessible for me as a precinct chair.

We think we'll find many of the voters we need with the middle tier and up, who are likely to feel strongly against anti-Americanism and divisiveness being taught in our schools. So those are the people we need to get out to vote in this crucial election that so many people don’t bother with. And in addition we need to educate and recruit those Republicans who’ve only voted once in a primary, and identify some of the swing voters who agree with us. (We’d be glad to take Democrats who agree with us too, but with limited resources, we probably won’t spend our time searching for them.) The added bonus is, we can use the information we get now to bring those identified voters back to the polls in the 2022 midterm election.

So, what does it take to get these votes secured? There will be social media, yard signs, meet-and-greet events, etc., as you’d expect. We plan to have a candidate forum at our Tea Party meeting next month, for example. But the real nitty-gritty—the part I’m not good at—is block walking and phone banking.

We have an estimate of what will be needed for each week of the 11 weeks of campaigning between the end of signups (August 16^th) and the election (November 2^nd). A rough estimate for me, as a precinct chair, is to recruit one or two volunteers from my precinct every single week for 11 weeks. To me that sounds daunting, but not impossible.

I should note that school board trustee is a nonpartisan position—no party affiliation is shown on the ballot. We’re using Republican Party data, because that is more likely to get us the opposition to CRT that we need. It’s important to note that, of the three incumbents we’ll be campaigning against this November, two claim to be Republicans and call themselves conservative. Since this hasn’t translated into the representation we need, we’ll have to be very careful about who we support.

There's a recruitment effort underway. I understand some possible candidates are praying about it and making their decision. I hope we can find three candidates who are conservative anti-CRT, anti-LGBTQ-agenda (not to be confused with being against individuals and their citizen rights), and pro-parental rights, while having the skills in administration and accounting that are needed for the job, which is unpaid, by the way. So I don't know yet who the candidates will be.

At Saturday’s Tea Party there was a woman who announced herself as a candidate. She said, “I stand unequivocally against everything that we have been proposing. And so I ask for your support.” Um, maybe she meant she was against the things we were against—CRT and gender theory, mainly—but it doesn’t bode well that she couldn’t say that clearly. Unless she brings herself up to speed on the issues, and finds a way to express herself more clearly, she’s not going to be one we're inspired to block walk for.

Organize to Mobilize

Dr. Richard Johnson
at Cypress Texas Tea Party on July 24, 2021

At our Tea Party this past Saturday, our main speaker was Dr. Richard Johnson, Director of the Booker T. Washington Initiative at the Texas Public Policy Forum. His credentials are impeccable, and his experience both broad and deep. Oh, and he happens to be black. (The legacy media would be surprised how many conservative blacks join us regularly. There are quite a lot of them, and they have learned to be strong in expressing their beliefs. We love them.) I thought he would be getting into more detail about what CRT is, how to identify it, and why it needs to be rooted out. But he assumed we, in that very full room, already knew why it was bad.

He had come to inspire us to mobilize. He’s a military man. And a lot of us in that room were military or related to military. So he said, what we need to do is translate the things we learned in the military to fight this new battle. We need to "organize to mobilize."

What he does at the TPPF is to gather the information for us to use, and to work with lawmakers to create good policy. But we need to be a movement that holds our local school boards accountable—where we are connected to the results of the policy, and where we have the best chance of affecting policy. Near the end of his speech he quoted Martin Luther King, Jr.:

An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.—MLK

And then Dr. Johnson finished with this call to all of us, because this is an American movement:

To you my fellow Texans, and my fellow Americans, we have a responsibility to every man and woman who have laid down their lives, their convenience, their comfort for the ideas of the American flag. And we cannot tolerate individuals or groups who tarnish the blood-stained banner of the American flag.

It’s a call to arms—not munitions in this fight, but ideas spread person-to-person, to effect the change we need in order to preserve our nation and our civilization.

I don’t mean to be alarmist. But the dangerous materials are already in our schools and have buy-in from our current school board—most of them elected by telling us they were conservative. Now is the time to fight, because waiting any longer is way too late.

If you’re in Cy-Fair ISD and want to volunteer for this campaign, sign up with freedomtoact.org. If you’re in another school district, know that you’ve got this problem already, so find the people taking action—or become the people taking action.

Sampling the Ballot, Part II

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. (I want to add here that we're quite pleased with our granddaughter's main teacher; I haven't met her other teacher, but the parents have, and teachers are not a problem for us this year.)

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 11^th and 12^th 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.

The Priorities Question: School Board Part II

This is part II of information about a local school board election. I hope the thought process is valuable beyond the very local area.

I left off part I with this question for school board trustee candidates, about priorities: You have three constituencies in your elected position as school board trustee: taxpayers, students, and teachers. How do you prioritize these constituencies, and why?

I’ll introduce each of the three candidates, along with their order of priorities. I do think there’s a right answer, but almost no one ever gives it. I’ll cover my reasoning below.

Darcy Mingoia is the PAC candidate, running in tandem with Kevin Hoffman for the other open position (we didn’t hear from candidates for that position yet). She sees herself as conservative. She works in fundraising for the community college system, and even worked with the local chamber of commerce some years back to start the community college system. She has lived in the district for 34 years. She has been a small business owner, and served as president of the chamber of commerce for ten years. She went through school on scholarship (from a private foundation) and believes the community needs to help students get through school. Her kids went into engineering. She worked as a PTO and library volunteer, and then stayed connected as a volunteer representing the business community. She was instrumental in getting the access channel on cable so the community could view school board meetings.

She has a good resume. However, reaction to questions about the PAC showed her bristling, feeling adversarial to us Tea Partiers. I learned more about the PAC at this meeting, and I feel less knee-jerk rejection of anyone they put forward. Still, what I see is that the PAC has been detrimental to our district, regardless of their possibly well-meant intentions.

·         She answers the priorities question in this order: students first, then teachers, then taxpayers.

Bill Morris is the incumbent, and is probably best known for his vote against that big pay raise (discussed in part I). He’s been targeted for removal based simply on that vote, but he has fairly frequently stood alone or nearly alone against the rest of the board. He says he frequently puts forward ideas, but they do not get brought up for discussion, let alone for vote. It’s a tough position to be in. For a while, he was undecided about whether to run again, but in the end decided that he needed to keep standing firm; we needed someone who would.

He works for food services in HISD (Houston Independent School District), so his work lets him handle large portions of school budget, but without a conflict of interest within our district.

He is a man of few words. I would have liked to hear more details from him, more positive. He seems frustrated by the situation and mentioned a number of negatives. For example, a controversial issue has been the use and upkeep of a huge facility the district built (pretty much against the will of the people), with a football stadium, basketball arena, and theater areas. It is shared by various high schools in the district, but the rest of the time should be rented out to the community to mitigate costs. Some of that does happen, but there has been discussion about “thinking outside the box.” Renting out for events that would like to serve alcohol, such as weddings or some conventions, have been prohibited. Bill Morris is against that particular type of use; it is, after all, a high school facility. If alcohol were allowed, even under these specific circumstances, it would be the only such facility in the state to allow it. Not a good precedent to set. So, whether you agree or not, he is clear and firm in his position.

He pointed out that the head of the PAC had a school named after her, after the PAC got a particular candidate elected to the board. There’s an appearance of cronyism. Again, an apparent complaint. But, as a positive, he did give us an update on the efforts to push for parity among funding per student. Nearby Tomball district, for example, gets several hundred more per student than CFISD students. There has been pressure on the legislature, without effect. So now there is hope that pressure through the courts will have success. That case is coming up October 22^nd.

·         He answers the priorities question in this order: students first, then taxpayers, then teachers.

Lillian Wanjagi is a young mom, involved in higher education for 16 years, previously at Rice, and now at University of Houston Clear Lake. She has a third grade daughter at a school not far from me, who is her inspiration to get involved. She is working on her PhD, and her research topic is related to student success. I probably learned most from her during the Tea Party meeting (and conversation afterward). She grew up in Kenya, going through a British school system, so she at least has views beyond what has always been done here. I have seen school function better than here, so I like that there’s an outside view.

Her main points included giving choice to parents, who are “the main stakeholders in a child’s education,” and in setting priorities within a budget that will best affect quality for the student. She brought some interesting data. For example, of the $5000 per student spent in this district, $403 goes to ESL (English as a second language). That is the highest per student cost for a program. (Making sure you understand, this isn’t $403 per ESL student; it is $403 per student in the district in order to have an ESL program for those that need it.) For comparison, $82 per student goes to having sports programs; $55 goes to gifted and talented programs. (I can attest that the GT program is sub-par, as you’d expect if you’re spending seven-to-eight times more for ESL.)

Someone asked if we know how much of our budget goes to paying to educate and provide food and other services for children of illegal immigrants; we don’t have that data, although there were efforts in the last legislative session to try and obtain the data. The ESL program is, in theory, intended as a way to give a start to new immigrants (and schools don’t ask if the immigrants are legal or not) to get educated while learning the language. Many of these are certainly legal. But all the children of illegals will fall in this group as well. As Wanjagi said, we are required to educate all students, including illegals, but we’re not required to spend more on them than on our own students. So it’s about how you prioritize the spending per child, so that you get the quality we all want.

·        She answers the priorities question in this order: students first, then teachers, then taxpayers. However, more than once she said, “Parents are the most important stakeholders.” That comes very close to being a better answer.

In reality, the school board is hired for a specific purpose by the taxpayers and are not accountable to either the students or the teachers. But people hear a different question than I’m asking: “Who is most important to you?” Anyone involved in education who doesn’t answer that the students are most important is in the wrong place. But believing you’re accountable to students isn’t helpful. Students are likely want easy grades and fun classes—not necessarily things we know will lead to the outcome of best educated students. So saying you’re “for the children” isn’t very informative. So sometimes you have to look at the priority order between teachers and taxpayers.

In very fact, the trustees’ job is to carry out the mission of educating our children to the level we taxpayers request and expect, for the money we have contracted to provide. If they can’t do the job to the satisfaction of the taxpayers, they should be replaced with someone who can. What the students and teachers think of the trustees is irrelevant.  If they are faithful in their stewardship to the taxpaying community, the students will receive a good education—better than we’re seeing. And I don’t mean to imply that teachers are irrelevant. It is important to hire, retain, and compensate the best teachers we can get, in order to meet the mission. If trustees are being accountable to the taxpaying community that hires them, they will do what it takes to meet the mission. Teacher skill and satisfaction will be the result.

When a trustee mistakenly bows to the will of teachers (teacher unions/organizations), they may be betraying the taxpayers who hired them. That we have such resistance to merit-based pay and other performance related issues means someone is protecting ineffective teachers—which benefits neither the students nor the good teachers, and certainly not the taxpayers in their educational mission.

All three of our candidates were glad Texas has refused to accept federal money that came with strings attached. Texas is a rarity in this decision. But we believe we’re better off without submitting to yet more federal mandates.

All three of our candidates said they were in favor of keeping control as local as possible.

The priorities question is an indicator to me about how a person will decide issues. I’d have to look at my past notes, but I believe every PAC member has placed teachers ahead of taxpayers.

Which means we have to rule out Darcy Mingoia, even though she would probably not be a disastrous choice. But we have two candidates who seem to understand better than she does about the commitments being made to the people doing the hiring. It is parents, and broader than that, all taxpayers, who are paying for a particular outcome. We don’t want loyalties to some other constituency standing between us and the people we’ve hired.

Between Bill Morris and Lillian Wanjagi, I’ll let you choose. If I’m valuing fresh ideas, I’d probably go with Ms. Wanjagi. If I’m looking for ability to stand strong against difficult opposition, I’d go with Bill Morris. While I’m technically still undecided, I think I’m leaning toward the incumbent, because we need a guarantee right now that this one position on the board will stand firm.

School Board Recommendations

I have never previously blogged here about something specifically local. But today, while the topic still involves the interrelationships of the political, economic, and social spheres, the application is  local. I have been asked to post my recommendations for the two positions on the ballot for Cy-Fair Independent School District Board Trustees. 

The information below is the same that I have sent out to my local Cypress Tea Party, and have posted in the notes section of my Facebook page. But placing it here provides a link for easier sharing. I hope this is useful to readers.  

If you’re interested, check back tomorrow, and I’ll have my recommendations for ballot propositions for amending the Texas State Constitution.

My Recommendations for Cy-Fair ISD on November 2011 Ballot 

Below is my summary of Cy-Fair School Board Trustee Candidates, as well as additional resources for helping you make your decision. 

There are two positions on the ballot. Position 1 has two candidates to replace Larry Youngblood, who is not running for re-election. These two are Kelly Horsley and Thomas Jackson. Position 2 has three candidates: incumbent Ethel Wolfe, as well as Christine Hartley and James Hardin. 

By way of comparison, last year there were three seats open, all with incumbents running. In each case I thought the challenger (or both challengers in one case) were better than the incumbents. The incumbent who least embodied my point of view on just about any issue got more votes than anyone. That is disconcerting. 

These positions are non-partisan; that is, they don’t run on a party ticket. You can sometimes get a feel for their politics in other ways, which may or may not be helpful. It may be that they all belong to the same party this time; I’m not sure. But I do know that on a couple of issues I have disagreements. My guess is that teacher organizations are more likely to get out the vote and have sway in endorsements than anyone else. And I am likely to vote for someone the teachers organizations are least likely to endorse. 

During the forum on October 18, I found position 1 something of a toss-up. Kelly Horsley did not show herself particularly well during the debate. She isn’t polished at figuring out what kind of information is being sought. For example, she volunteers almost full-time, while homeschooling her children, and her husband runs a family business. I learned later she stepped down from running the Katy Tea Party—no small task—to run for this office. But when asked how she had volunteered in Cy-Fair, instead of making sure we knew she had been a volunteer, she said she didn’t volunteer anywhere in the district. Technically, she doesn’t volunteer for Cy-Fair ISD, but she does volunteer in the district—which should be adequate, even though it wasn’t the question. While the others did volunteer for Cy-Fair ISD, many of the volunteer positions were elsewhere in the community. She did list some, but I think she underplayed her contributions. 

Her opponent, Thomas Jackson, is something of a technocrat. He’s a CPA, among other things, and had a great many facts and figures he could quote off the top of his head. While not warm, I found him impressive. But when it came to the issue of tax waivers (vouchers) for use in non-public schools, he absolutely wouldn’t consider such an idea. He lost my vote there, because my tax money is used to educate Texans—not merely to publicly educate Texans (a point made well by James Hardin on that question). I wish Kelly Horsley had appeared more seasoned, more confident, more ready to face public questions, because philosophically I probably have more in common with her. I plan to vote for her, but I will not be surprised if Jackson wins. 

For position 2, I’d say the incumbent, Ethel Wolfe, appeared to be the least impressive. She often waffled in answering questions, and seemed a bit uninformed for someone who has been on the job for three years. Christine Hartley seemed confident and capable as volunteers go. She has been in the trenches, most recently as a PTO president. Her credentials are probably adequate as well. But, again, she lost me on the voucher question. Her reason was that she’s a strong believer in public schools. I happen to strongly believe that public schools are a failing system, and the best we can do is try to use our tax money as wisely as we can in a system that will never match private tutoring or many good private and parochial schools. But she favors public school as if it’s a team against an opponent (of which I am apparently one). She is running as a team with Thomas Jackson, which might give them both momentum. 

The most impressive candidate of all five was James Hardin. I agree with him philosophically. He was capable of expressing his philosophy in a positive way, bringing to the table a number of out-of-the-box ideas for raising revenue without the two options of raising local property taxes or removing the homestead exemption. And he doesn’t seem to be pandering to the teachers organizations. Still, he offered good suggestions for improving life for teachers, for recognizing them and compensating them better. Teachers would be better off trusting someone who has run a business and solved problems, instead of following who their organizations tell them to vote for. In my opinion. 

James Hardin has vowed to keep the homestead exemption. I am told that Kelly Horsley also makes that promise, even though she wasn’t declarative on that during the debate. The others could probably all be pressed to remove it, claiming they were forced into the decision by the state.  

So my endorsements go to Kelly Horsley for position 1 and James Hardin for position 2. In a questionnaire by the Conservative Coalition of Harris County NW, these two candidates got a 100% rating—you can see the voter guide below. 

For additional info on these candidates:

http://kellyhorsley.com/Home.html

http://jamesroyhardin.com/Welcome.html

http://www.cfisdcitizens4jacksonandhartley.com/

http://www.ethelwolfe.org/

http://www.conservativecoalitionhc.org/voterguide.pdf

http://www.cfisd.net/newsmedia/inside/2011/inside0911.htm 

In addition to what I’ve written above, I became aware of an article, from the local section of the Houston Chronicle, that might add more insight into the political dynamics than I knew as a regular not-too-political resident: http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/cyfair-news/article/Creation-of-PAC-heats-up-board-race-in-Cy-Fair-ISD-2236139.php.