There will still be HISD Trustee elections this fall

Just a reminder, in case you needed it.

Although the state is preparing to appoint a board of managers this summer, local elections for Houston ISD trustees will still be held as scheduled in November.

The Texas Education Agency announced plans to replace the district’s top leadership following chronic low academic achievement at a Fifth Ward high school and prior school board mismanagement.

It’s unclear what the elected-trustees’ roles will look like once the board of managers is appointed, but they will likely serve in an advisory position, although they will have not voting power.

After about two years of the board of managers running the district, a transition timeline may be announced if HISD reaches certain goals, and elected-trustees will be phased back into the board over the course of at least two years.

Four of the nine Houston ISD school board trustees are up for re-election in November and confirmed the plan to run again.

Trustees must file their candidate application by Aug. 21.

The rest of the story is about those four incumbents – Kathy Blueford-Daniels in II, Dani Hernandez in III, Patricia Allen in IV, and Judith Cruz in VIII – and their reasons for running again in spite of it all, which mostly amount to “someone needs to represent our district” and “I know what’s going on”. I will remind everyone that Hernandez and Cruz ousted two of the former Trustees who had been involved in that Open Meetings Act issue.

What I wonder about at this point is whether anyone will file to run against any of them. Anyone can make a case for themselves as being the better alternative, but who would want the job? It’s just going to be a placeholder for some number of years, and there’s an excellent chance that future voters will hold you responsible for anything unpopular that the Board of Managers does. It’s easy enough to see why the incumbents want to stay. It’s not at all clear to me why someone else would want in right now. We’ll see.

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