The Humble ISD board unanimously appointed former trustee Ken Kirchhofer to fill a vacant board seat after an extended executive session Tuesday night.
Kirchhofer, who abstained from the vote, lost a reelection bid on May 3 after having served on the board of the northeastern Harris County school district since 2021.
While the board, with new members Elizabeth Shaw and Oscar Silva, unanimously approved Kirchhofer’s appointment, trustee Robert Scarfo said there would be a caveat that Kirchhofer could not run again for the seat in May 2027, the district’s next regularly scheduled board election.
Kirchhofer had run for re-election on May 3, but he was successfully challenged by Brittnai Brown who won the race by just over 4,000 votes, and Tracy Shannon, a third challenger, who ended up with about 40 more votes than Kirchhofer.
Despite Brown’s win, she was declared ineligible as a candidate shortly after the results were announced when Shannon filed a lawsuit challenging Brown’s voter registration records. After a review, the district found that Brown was ineligible because she did not register to vote with her new Humble ISD address 30 days before the deadline to file for local office. In a statement previously emailed to the Houston Chronicle, Brown said she had changed her voter registration a few hours before she submitted her application for a place on the ballot under the assumption that if she changed her voter registration online, it would be immediately valid. In reality, it takes 30 days for changes to voter registration to be reflected in the record.
Since the seat was declared vacant, Kirchhofer was chosen to remain on the board under the holdover position of the Texas Constitution, said Humble ISD spokesperson Jamie Mount.
Kirchhofer said in a statement Tuesday that he was humbled by the appointment, and said it reflected the board’s “confidence and trust” in his candidacy.
However Shannon said that the move was a “slap in the face.”
“Other candidates who ran for school board also hoped to apply for the appointment or run in a special election, including Scott Ford and Natalie Carter. I think the community deserved for these candidates to also have a shot at it,” Shannon said.
“Voters made it clear that there was a call for accountability in this district,” she continued, “It appears as though it is going to business as usual for Humble ISD, and this is not a good thing for our district.”
See here and here for the background. I don’t have a problem with the Board making this choice. At least you know he’s qualified for the role. I can understand Shannon’s being upset about it, but she also has an interest in the outcome. If I were to quibble with this, it would be to say that the appointment should only be through the end of the year, and there should be a November election to fill out the rest of the term for this position. That would allow both Tracy Shannon and Brittnai Brown to run again, with Brown now qualifying for the election. Maybe Humble ISD didn’t have the option of a short-term appointment, and maybe they just didn’t want to incur the expense of another election, I don’t know. But that to me would have been the fairest option.