News From The Home Front

Nascent political action committee aims to get focus back on the big issues https://t.co/cXNaYCMn1k pic.twitter.com/lTXEN5JHm5

— Memorial Examiner (@MemorialNews) April 9, 2022

Per the PAC’s website, its “goals are the emphasis on education and inclusive community rather than allow fringe politics to adversely affect the success of SBISD students.” 

The PAC’s website lists equity and representation, education, and health and safety as its issues. 

 “The major issues we see are things like the COVID learning loss,” said Director Nathalie Herpin. “We see a lot of teachers that are leaving the district or leaving the profession entirely. Our goal is to improve the district by making sure everybody is having a conversation about the major issues, the real issues that can truly improve our district and not the hot button topic of the day.” Approximately 45 people attended the launch event on March 5, and the PAC raised nearly $10,000.

I mention this because I received something last week I’ve literally never seen before: a campaign e-mail for a school board candidate.

School board elections here (I’ve been here for 20 years now, but anywhere in Texas, actually) are usually so low key I wouldn’t know they were happening if I didn’t have connections to the district. A few yard signs usually appear, nothing more. This year I’ve seen banners you can read from the freeway.

There is a group that calls itself “The Pipeline.” No, I’m not making that up. They reportedly (grapevine reporting) have $300,000 to spend. The e-mail is probably part of that. Following that e-mail was a mailer for the same candidate, complete with endorsements from several Republican and right-wing local politicians. It’s very clear why she’s running. Whether she energizes voters for her or against her is the issue now. This may be heavy handed for such a traditionally non-partisan election. In a district that prides itself on the quality of its schools, this may alert more voters than it’s meant to.

As many of you know, I have launched my campaign for Spring Branch ISD Trustee, Pos. 5! Early voting begins April 25th and Election Day is May 7th.

Spring Branch ISD is known for delivering a quality public education for our children which prepares them for the next chapter of their lives. The school district is the reason that my husband, Bruce, and I chose to raise our children here more than 20 years ago.

Running for this race was a big decision. It is a contested race against a popular incumbent. By all accounts, things had been moving along well in Spring Branch ISD for a long time. But, over the last few years, I started to notice differences in my children's classes -- signs of a new and concerning direction. 

My three children are currently attending or graduated from SBISD schools. My oldest son graduated in 2020; my middle son is in the class of 2025; and, my daughter is in the class of 2026. I noticed changes in reading materials and curriculum between all of their scholastic experiences, so I started to ask questions about the direction of their studies. Then, my daughter brought home a book for a school reading assignment that was full of anti-police hate.

When I started talking with other parents, I discovered I wasn't alone. We were unified in bringing these issues to the administration's attention and expecting thoughtful resolution. I started chronicling these experiences on a blog (a Facebook page called “Lawyer Mom of 3 for SBISD”). Unfortunately, I found that the administration and parents were moving further apart, and the Board of Trustees was becoming less and less accessible.

Everything reached a fever pitch when the very foundation of SBISD was threatened with an agenda-driven lawsuit. SBISD is an At-Large District where all Trustees work for the best interests of all children. The lawsuit demanded to change our system to Single Member Districts (SMDs).

All the top performing school districts in Texas are At-Large while the lowest performing are SMDs. Our Board of Trustees was silent about their position on this lawsuit, except for Trustee Chris Earnest. Our Trustees almost settled the lawsuit against the community’s wishes last fall and agreed to delay our upcoming election to November, until a federal judge told them no.

Individuals who may have been the right choice six, eight, or ten years ago are no longer in touch with what is happening in our public schools here in SBISD and across the country. Additionally, they are growing increasingly out-of-touch with the parents in the carpool line and unwilling to listen. 

I decided it was time to run. Times have changed and so must SBISD. The political agenda led by paid educational consultants attempting to indoctrinate our kids is sweeping the nation -- and unfortunately SBISD is not immune. 

Here are the key commitments of my campaign:

-I will stand up for a curriculum that focuses on reading, math and student performance, not ideology.

-I will stand up for our At-Large District that makes SBISD the success that it is.

-I will be a leader that is accessible and transparent.

-I will embrace parent engagement.

We may not always agree, but you always will know where I stand. I will lead with conservative principles and not support a woke platform. I won't back down from what is in the best interests of this school district for the benefit of all of our kids' education and for the next generation of Houstonians.

I ask for your vote and your support. This is not an easy race, but it is a necessary race. Please consider a contribution today here and please sign up here to volunteer. Follow our campaign on social media. I need you, but more importantly SBISD needs you to engage for a change on the SBISD Board of Trustees. 

The day after the e-mail she boiled it all down to a text message:

Hi, I'm [     ], candidate for SBISD Trustee, Pos. 5. My husband, [My husband] and I are 20-year SBISD residents and parents of three SBISD students. I am running to improve student performance, get basics back in our schools and woke policies out, provide transparency and support our At-Large District system. 

The Board of Trustees has nothing to do with any of that, except spending money on lawyers to "support our At-Large District system."  The Board can't direct curriculum; it can't tell teachers what to say (the state does that job, thank you very much), and even on the single-member district issue she'd be just one vote among many.  "Woke policies"?  What the huh?  Except that's clearly aimed at squelching anything the non-white parents have to say (also a reason to be against single-member districts). "Improving student performance"?  How, by shifting funds to the "right" schools in the district?

You’ll notice the e-mail extends a local race most locals don’t know about into a national concern ("paid educational consultants attempting to indoctrinate our kids is sweeping the nation"). Welcome to the internet age. Before you get outraged, let me point out I gave some small contributions to Beto when he ran against Cruz, and I’ve been on mailing lists ever since. Every Democratic candidate in America asks me for money on a regular basis, all of them for local races far, far from me. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander. But local school boards have nothing to do with national politics (although, yes, it's a very old trope that "outsiders" are coming to "corrupt" our youth with "dangerous ideas." .

There’s a couple of blatantly false statements in that e-mail. Yes, there is a suit to force the district to set up single member board districts. As it stands the board is largely residents from the wealthier half of the district. They have the time for the volunteer job, and the money to buy yard signs (that’s about all the campaigning usually done, as I said). A candidate from the north side of the freeway that divides the district lost to someone from the south (wealthy) side. She sued, quite reasonably, because for most of the 75 years of the district the wealthier half has dominated the Board, always voting for their “kind.” (“Half” is a misnomer. More people live on the north than south side.)

Is it a coincidence the candidate behind this e-mail is white, the plaintiff is Hispanic? No. “The Pipeline” is all about fear of a brown planet.

The first lie is that the current Board asked the Court to move the Board election from May to November. This is false. The plaintiff did that. The Board did change the date to November during Covid, and nobody complained. Why would they complain now? Voter suppression, pure and simple. More voters vote at the general election. Turnout for the Board election in May is always dismal. A small but determined group can take advantage of that; and they know it.

The other lie is that the Board can do anything about curriculum. Textbooks and curricula in Texas are established by the state. School boards have no say in the matter. Nor can they regulate books in the classroom or the library. Library books have been challenged in the district. The complaints were handled by the Administration, per District policy. The Board had nothing to do with it.

The complaint that the Board is not listening to the parents is the complaint that the Board is not doing what a handful of people demand. The Board of Trustees is wildly accessible:  it holds a public meeting at least once a month, and sometimes holds meetings between the regular meetings.  Under the Texas Open Meetings Act, any gathering of more than 3 members is considered a public meeting which must be announced, with an agenda posted, at least 3 days prior to the meeting.  The meetings are taped and available on the district website, on-demand.  The problem is not that the Board is not accessible.  The problem is that the people whinging never come to the Board meetings. "Accessible" doesn't mean they don't know what the Board is doing; "accessible" means the Board won't do what this handful of whingers wants done.

Trustees have traditionally been people heavily involved in service to the district:  volunteering for committees, groups, any effort to improve the schools or engage the opinions of the parents of children.  Those people tend to run for school board because enough people in the district know them from this activity to vote for them, and they take their (wholly volunteer) position as Trustees as a responsibility.  They have a great deal of responsibility and precious little authority.  The Board supervises the School Supervisor; approves the annual budget; and approves bond elections.  All of its other duties are ceremonial, like going to graduation ceremonies and recognizing outstanding students.  It's not a position of power, it's literraly a position of trust.  Unless the Board fires a Superintendent, most of the district is barely aware the Board exists.  Short of firing a Superintendent, the Board has no direct authority over the district.  It can't reach down into the Administration and fire employees, teachers, or decide curriculum or even school hours. 

The people complaining about "access" don't understand any of this. They recently threatened to boycott the bond election if the Board election date was changed to November.  That decision was up to the federal judge hearing the redistricting case, not the Board.  Those people didn't care; they would hold the Board responsible by punishing the students and the entire district which needs renovated or replaced school buildings. These people don't volunteer in the district, they don't do anything beyond attending PTA meetings; and they think they should be in charge when they have no idea what the larger district is about.  These are the people who show up at Board meetings, complain, and then leave. What does the Board do? They don’t know and don’t care. They don’t even know what the Board has done or not done. They just know they’re angry and nobody is making them feel better. The people who elected MTG, in other words.

So they show up, they yell, they go home. Somebody tells them nothing has changed, so they come yell some more. If they were to be told all is well, they’d stay home and yell on Facebook.

"Parent engagement" is code for "Do what we want!," we being people who think like the candidate. Her 

Facebook site (I assume; I've never seen it) indicates she wants people of "like mind" running the district, and what she clearly doesn't want is change on the Board of Trustees.  That's why she's running, in fact: to oppose change, by creating change.

This is a very small "c" conservative district. I  don't mean politically, though it's hardly Berkeley, but in terms of change coming to the Board.  The Board is largely fair and equitable in how it treats the schools (the divide is between rich and poor, between large single-family residential neighborhoods, and large blocks of low-rent apartments.)  I think single-member districts would improve that situation, but what this candidate stands for is altering that situation in favor of the schools her neighborhood feeds (it ain't the apartment side). Just injecting this much politics (the mailer lists endorsements from local politicians who have been turfed out of the local city council district after one term (one was a "Tea Party" candidate; remember them?), for example; politics here has shifted, and some people don't like it. Campaigning via e-mail and flyer is so radical in this kind of election it may well alert people to what's going on, and cause them to find out who the incumbent is, just to vote for him.

“We see a lot of teachers that are leaving the district or leaving the profession entirely. Our goal is to improve the district by making sure everybody is having a conversation about the major issues, the real issues that can truly improve our district and not the hot button topic of the day.” 

Three pieces of campaign communication, and the word "teachers" doesn't appear in any of them.  The major issues of this district are re-districting (and why it needs to be done), as well as equitable treatment of all students in the district (the wealthy white board members think they are looking out for the poorest students in the district, but input from people from those communities on the board would not be a bad thing, and most of the incumbent school board knows that).  Improving the district is an incremental process.  Screaming about "woke" pratices is pushing a hot button just to get people to respond; with anger.

Anger really doesn't have a place in governance, or in education.   I'll just drag this out a bit further in order to prove that point:

McKinney became involved in the broader Republican-led effort to review books in Texas schools in February, when parents Paul and Rachel Elliott challenged the district to remove from campuses 282 books they deemed inappropriate.

The parents told Channel 8 (WFAA-TV) that “the majority of books that they have an issue with are sexually explicit.”

McKinney ISD spokesman Cody Cunningham said the Elliotts “did not complete the process to challenge the books and have not pursued any additional book challenges.”

Yeah; ain't that the shit?

The district, he said, is “responsible for over 500,000 books stored in both physical and online circulations.”

“Over the past decade, only five books have been challenged in McKinney ISD, and currently the district has no requests for reconsideration,” Cunningham said. “Despite the fact that school library books are being used to advance political agendas, our librarians take great measures to ensure that library resources are safe and appropriate for students.”

Tell me again how many people are clamoring for "accountability" and even censorship. The loudest voices are usually only interested in being loud.

On Monday, the Texas Education Agency recommended that school districts retool policies for acquiring, reviewing and banning books.

"Recommended" is the keyword there.  TEA has no authority to make demands in this area.  Nor does Abbott; not on the schools themselves.

Gov. Greg Abbott had called on the agency last fall to develop standards to prevent the presence of “pornography and other obscene content” in schools after state Rep. Matt Krause (R-Fort Worth) asked Texas superintendents to disclose whether their districts had any of the 800-plus books about race, gender and sexuality on his list.

[McKinney Mayor George] Fuller said Wednesday that the GOP is using the issue as a “battle cry, a political tactic, a partisan tactic,” that comes at the expense of children and teachers. He likened the effort to school controversies surrounding critical race theory, an academic framework that probes the way policies and laws uphold systemic racism.

And yes, this has something to do with school board trustees:

The Elliotts have an ally in McKinney ISD school board member Chad Green, who was elected to Place 3 last year, Fuller said.

“Chad Green is a disgusting individual with an agenda that has nothing to do with our children,” Fuller told The News, adding that Green is concerned about his political aspirations, not the well-being of McKinney ISD students.

Green did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

“My suggestion to Chad Green, is stop sitting in a lawn chair with a sign on the corner of a protest, and prepare for the school board meetings, show up equipped to have intelligent and constructive conversation,” Fuller wrote in his Facebook post. “Actually read the books you are criticizing, and follow the procedure of the school board you ran to serve on.”

I would point out that e-mail I received included a picture of the candidate with her children and she mentions them in her reasons for being on the board.  But her reasons are to protect them from ideas that disturb her; which is precisely what education should do: expose you to ideas that might well be disturbing.  It's a big world; get ready to live in it.  

As for what the Mayor of McKinney says, it underscores my point:  the board has no authority over these matters, and there are procedures in place for them.  Complaining about "accessibility" is just a demand to be in control. The school board isn't, and it shouldn't be. No one person, especially, should be. If these crazies get on the Board, they’re going to find that out.