Four out of nine school board seats in the Houston Independent School District (HISD) are up for election on November 5. Fourteen candidates are running:
– District II (open seat): Katherine Blueford-Daniels, Jevon German, John Gibbs Sr., Cristin Moses, and Chloe Veal are running.
– District III: Incumbent Sergio Lira and Daniela Hernandez are running.
– District IV (open seat): Patricia Allen, Matthew Barnes, Ashley Butler, Reagan Flowers, and Larry McKinzie are running.
– District VIII: Incumbent and board president Diana Davila and Judith Cruz are running.
Heading into the election, the HISD school board faces the possibility of being replaced by a state-appointed board. If that happened, elected school board members would not have any power until the board was reinstated, although they would be able to participate as non-voting representatives. The state’s commissioner of education could decide to replace the HISD school board for two reasons: either as a result of a Texas Education Agency investigation into the board’s governance or as a result of poor academic performance ratings at a high school in the district.
Candidates running in 2019 Texas school board elections were required to file two campaign finance reports ahead of the election: one covering activity through September 26 and a second covering activity through October 26. As of October 29, the latter had not yet been made available by the district.
Ten of the 14 candidates reported campaign contributions through September 26.
– In District II, Blueford-Daniels received around $17,700 in campaign contributions, German received $250, and Moses received around $800. Gibbs and Veal had not reported any campaign contributions.
– In District III, Hernandez reported around $26,600 in campaign contributions, and Lira reported around $6,600.
– In District IV, Allen reported around $3,800 in contributions, Barnes reported around $61,000, and Flowers reported around $31,100. Butler and McKinzie have not reported any campaign contributions.
– In District VIII, Cruz reported around $60,000 in campaign contributions, and Davila reported $2,500.
As of the 2018-2019 school year, HISD was the largest school district in Texas and the seventh-largest school district in the United States, serving 209,772 students in 280 schools with a budget of $2.04 billion.
Early voting began on October 21 and will run through November 1.
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