The Book-Loving Texan's Guide to the November 2023 Elections is Now Live!
Some Highlights & Key Points
Please check out and share the newest edition of the Book-Loving Texan’s Guides to Texas School Board Elections. You can use it to inform voters and to decide where to allocate your time and donations for these very important races.
There are not a ton of school board elections in Texas this November, but that doesn’t mean this is an off cycle. Three districts in particular will both set the table for 2024’s much more busy election season and shape the school systems where hundreds of thousands of Texas students learn: Cy-Fair ISD, Granbury ISD, and Houston ISD.
I’ll have previews, profiles, and updates from the guide in the coming weeks but, in keeping with Anger & Clarity tradition, for now I’ll give you a few highlights from the doc.
Bad Campaign Pitch #1: Ayse Indemaio (Cy-Fair ISD)
A slate of four book-banning candidates is hoping to take control of the board in Cy-Fair ISD. The stakes there are real and frightening, but I had to chuckle at this campaign talking point from the candidate for Position 4, Ayse Indemaio.
On the Texas Messengers website she runs, Indemaio posted passages from The Bluest Eye and The Glass Castle. “There are only 2 ways to get this away from your children,” she writes. “You can vote for me, Ayse Indemaio, in the Cy-Fair ISD School Board Election on November 7th, 2023 against the incumbent that supports these types of books—or you can send an email to your child’s principal, librarian, and teachers stating that you want to opt your child out of sexually explicit books.”
Hey. At least she’s honest. If you don’t want your kids to read certain books in school, you can just opt out of them. So maybe it’s not necessary to elect book banners to the board?
It’s one of several questionable choices Indemaio has made in her campaign. In addition to her book-banning bonafides, Indemaio is also running on her opposition to the district’s attempt to initiate a “No Place for Hate” anti-bullying, anti-bias initiative. Cy-Fair ISD is one of the state’s largest, most diverse districts. “Cy-Fair ISD: Some Hate is Okay” is not the message I’d choose for my campaign.
Bad Campaign Pitch #2: FeLiza (Fe) Bencosme (Houston ISD)
Who needs an elected board, anyway?
When Greg Abbott forced a takeover of Houston ISD, district’s Board of Trustees had its powers removed. The board still exists in an “advisory” role and presumably will regain its power when the takeover eventually ends. Most of the candidates running for the board, understandably, have expressed reservations if not outright opposition to the takeover. But not FeLiza (Fe) Bencosme.
In an interview with the wildly bigoted Houston talk show host Angela Box this summer, Bencosme said, “There were a lot of changes that needed to be made that never would have been made with an elected board.”
Bencosme went on to praise some of the takeover’s most controversial results, such as new superintendent Mike Miles’ decision to fire librarians in 28 struggling schools and rebrand their libraries as “discipline centers.” And when Box argued that resistance to the takeover is coming from “ghetto-ass parents,” Bencosme agreed.
Bencosme is clearly a bad fit for Houston ISD. As I said in the guide, my concern is that voters won’t turn out to elect a board with no current power. If they don’t it could send an awful message.
Granbury ISD: Where Extremism Is Never Enough
In 2021 and 2022, trustees Paula McDonald and Courtney Gore and superintendent Jeremy Glenn were icons of extremism in Granbury ISD, southwest of Fort Worth. They oversaw the removal of hundreds of books, hosted railed against “CRT,” and argued that any school employee not “very, very conservative” had “better hide it.” Now they’re being called RINOs, and the new Christian Nationalist darlings are anti-gay trustee Melanie Graft and Karen Lowery, who was just censured for spying on a darkened school library with a cell-phone flashlight. The district’s rabid extremists will surely turn on those two soon, but for now they’re hoping to add Rhonda Rogers Williams and Alejandra Muñoz to the board. Those two are opposed by conservative but sane candidates Mike Moore (an incumbent) and Nancy Alana (a former trustee).
Who’s Not on the List? Klein & (so far) Aldine ISD.
There is good news, too, and it’s about what isn’t on the list. I’ve been expecting extremists to make a push in Klein ISD, especially after a dramatic and well-publicized school board meeting in which a family tearfully and angrily chided the board for allowing a teacher in a dual-credit, college-level course to assign The Bluest Eye. One of the attendees at that meeting was former board candidate Kristin Cobb, who ran unsuccessfully in 2022. And that drama was then followed up by a wild meeting of book banners from across Houston’s suburbs in Tomball in July. But the challenge never materialized, and two good candidates, Dustin Qualls and Doug James, will take seats on the Klein board unopposed.
Similarly, I’ve been expecting fireworks in Aldine ISD, where trustee Dr. Viola Garcia is up for re-election. In 2021, Garcia was president of the National School Board Association, and in that role she wrote a letter to the Biden administration asking for help dealing with the increasing number of violent threats toward school boards and violent incidents at board meetings. Because the letter argued that the violence and threats could rise to the level of domestic terrorism, right-wing media deceptively claimed that the NSBA was calling parents domestic terrorists for speaking up at school board meetings. Garcia, a respected educator and longtime board member, was singled out in particular. At one Aldine ISD board meeting, a public commenter accused Garcia of “spreading socialism and the woke agenda.”
Garcia has drawn three challengers for November, but none have obvious red flags that I’ve seen. I’m keeping my eye on this district, and will add it to the doc if censorship, LGBTQ rights, or “parental rights” become issues in the election. But for now, it seems like the election is focused on other issues. Which is great.
Please share the document, especially to people in and around battlefield districts. And if you’re able, please support the great groups on the ground—like Cypress Families for Public Schools and Houston Community Voices for Public Education—who are fighting as hard as they can against the forces threatening public education. And please check back. I’ll update frequently.