On April 10, 2026, the Conroe ISD Superintendent published an article on the Conroe ISD website titled “Change Isn’t a Bad Word.” In it, he walked through a number of structural changes the district is making heading into the 2026-2027 school year, including adjustments to instructional coach roles at both the campus and district levels.

The primary reason for these changes was apparently related to an $8 million budget deficit projected for the next school year, but this also appears to be part of an overall realignment of departments within Conroe ISD. After all, Dr. Vinson was only hired last September after the previous Superintendent abruptly left. It makes some sense if he is looking to prioritize the district based on his leadership experience.

We will likely get to the other major changes being made in Conroe ISD, but for now we will focus on instructional coaches. Here is how he framed the change specific for them:

“One example of this work is the adjustment to instructional coach roles at both the campus and district levels. These roles have been reassigned or shifted into a new model with the goal of ensuring that support is as close to the classroom as possible. We want to maximize the experience of our instructional staff and use those resources in the most effective way for students and teachers.”

“Most importantly, no employees are losing their jobs.”

The summary of the change is that instructional coaches are being moved from the district level back into campus-specific roles. This could mean that these coaches are being moved back into being classroom teachers or that they would coach at only one campus instead of at a district level. As we’ll find below, it could also mean a split of responsibilities between coaching and student intervention (i.e., coaching teachers versus pulling students from classrooms to assist with personal tutoring needs).

But the primary discussion we have been seeing is that if nobody is losing their job, what is there to talk about? Is this change really a big deal?

It certainly could be.

Moving instructional coaches from the district level to individual campuses is not a semantic shuffle. It is a real structural change that affects how teachers get supported, how new initiatives like Bluebonnet curriculum gets rolled out, how intervention is coordinated, and how institutional knowledge gets preserved (or doesn’t) over time. The reason this discussion is relevant is that the change could be high impact, the people doing the work are teaching veterans, and the tradeoffs need to be understood.

To understand these tradeoffs, I reached out to several instructional coaches to get their feedback. I wanted to understand what their jobs actually entailed and what they thought of these changes.

What follows walks through what they said, along with an honest look at the arguments for and against the direction the district is taking.

What do instructional coaches actually do?

Ask most parents what an instructional coach is and you’ll get some version of “someone who helps teachers teach better.” That’s not wrong, but it’s actually only one part of the job.

Here is a breakdown of what they do. Note that each role may be dependent on the subjects and grade levels that the coach supports:

Direct teacher support

• Coaching with new and returning teachers, including modeling lessons, co-teaching, observation, and feedback

• Weekly team plannings across multiple grade levels

• Curriculum and lesson internalization sessions (monthly and weekly); e.g., for Bluebonnet curriculum

• Post-observation follow-ups based on Conroe ISD’s Open Educational Resources (OER) transition plans

• Mentoring new teachers and supporting teacher needs for special education, intervention, or Life Skills1 classrooms

Data and assessment work

• Keep an ongoing record of how students are performing on state tests and in-school assessments, organized so teachers can see trends over time. Not just how a student did last week, but whether they’re improving, plateauing, or falling behind across the school year. This includes maintaining data dashboards tracking STAAR, NWEA MAP, and common assessment results.

• After each shared test, coaches run a structured meeting where teachers review the results together: what did students get wrong, why, and what does that mean for what gets taught next week.

• Create tests that all teachers in a grade level give at the same time, using the district’s assessment software, including making sure those tests are accessible to students in special education and students still learning English.

• Break down individual student test scores to find patterns in which students are struggling with which skills, then grouping students so teachers can target instruction at what each group actually needs instead of teaching to the middle.

Tiered support and response to intervention (RTI)

• Coordinating required intervention plans for struggling students, including tracking attendance, documenting progress, and communicating with families.

• Building the schedules for when and how students receive extra support, and running the meetings where those plans get made.

• Pulling small groups of students for targeted instruction, especially in the weeks leading up to state testing.

• Attending student support meetings and coaching the staff who deliver daily interventions.

Campus operations

• Building the master schedule for the campus, including special education and tutoring schedules.

• Serving on campus leadership teams and participating in teacher hiring committees.

• Running the logistics for state and district testing.

• Covering classrooms when teachers are absent.

• Providing daily support in specialized classrooms for students with significant disabilities.

Professional development and community

• Designing and leading teacher training sessions during planning periods, faculty meetings, and after school.

• Sponsoring student academic competitions including UIL events, Math Olympiad, and math clubs.

• Organizing family engagement events like math and literacy nights.

• At the district level: designing training on emerging topics like AI, running district-wide conferences, leading new teacher onboarding, and presenting at state conferences.

This is not an exhaustive list. It is what the handful of coaches provided me to help understand their job roles. Anyone who says “coaches just help teachers” hasn’t asked a coach what their week looks like.

Coaches are Teachers

Instructional coaches are essentially teachers who spent long enough in the classroom to elevate their role to where they could mentor and support other teachers. The coaches I spoke with had at least 11+ years of education experience, two of which had 21+ years. Almost all of them have been within Conroe ISD for over a decade.

This is not a group of entry-level staff being shuffled around. These are career educators with deep institutional knowledge of CISD’s curriculum, data systems, processes, and culture. Many of them are recognized through awards such as Teacher of the Year or even regional recognitions. Almost all of them have master's degrees.

Whatever you think of the restructure, the people absorbing it have invested serious time in this district.

Should coaches be moved from district to campus?

Let’s compare these different strategies:

The case for moving coaches closer to campuses

Proximity matters
A coach embedded at one campus knows that campus. They know the principal, the team leaders, the new teachers, the kids that are struggling, and those that are excelling. Relationships are the foundation of effective coaching, and relationships are built in the building, not in the district office.

Faster feedback loops
When a coach is on-site full time, they can observe a lesson, debrief it the same day, and be back in the room the next morning to see if the adjustment worked. A district coach splitting time across 3–5 campuses cannot move that fast.

Stronger accountability
Campus principals are directly responsible for their building’s performance. Putting coaching resources under their direct oversight aligns the people doing the work with the person accountable for the outcomes.

Budget reality
Conroe ISD’s CFO told the Board of Trustees in February that the district was facing a potential $8 million budget deficit for 2026-2027. Every district in Texas is navigating enrollment shifts and funding constraints, and consolidating support roles closer to where students actually are is a defensible cost move (more on this later).

Other districts do it
Campus-based coaching models are common and, in many cases, effective. CISD is not inventing a strange new structure. It is shifting toward a model that has precedent.

The case for keeping coaches at district

District coaches build what campus coaches deliver
One of the coaches I spoke with put it bluntly: Bluebonnet curriculum implementation in CISD depended on district coaches designing the rollout and campus coaches monitoring delivery. The positive trend for Bluebonnet (from beginning-of-year to middle-of-year) simply wouldn’t have happened without the current district instructional coaches.

Take the district layer out entirely and you still need someone to design district-wide rollouts. That work does not disappear. It either gets pushed onto campus coaches (who already have full plates) or gets absorbed by newly created coordinator, assistant director, or director positions.

You lose the train-the-trainer function
One coach I spoke with reported mentoring several instructional coaches annually and training many instructional coaches across the district on inquiry, modeling, and supporting new teachers. That is not a function a campus coach can also do on top of their campus duties. When that coach leaves, the capacity to train the next generation of coaches leaves with them.

Dilution of the coaching role
Multiple coaches described new roles that split their time 50/50 between coaching and pulling intervention groups or shifted them toward “lead interventionist” or “campus math specialist” titles with an unclear scope. A coach who is a half-time interventionist is not really a full coach. They are an interventionist who coaches when they can.

Consistency across 70+ campuses is harder without a district layer
Conroe ISD is a very large district. Curriculum adoption, assessment alignment, intervention documentation, and professional development quality are already uneven across campuses. Without a strong district coaching structure, the drift gets worse, not better. This means that work will fall on newly hired or shifted coordinators from other departments.

You lose people you can’t quickly replace
Veteran district coaches don’t just have skills. They have context. They know which campus is struggling with which standard, which principals are supportive or resistant to district initiatives, or has built the relationships to effectively drive alignment. That kind of institutional map takes a decade to build and about 20 minutes to lose when someone accepts a job elsewhere.

Where the evidence actually points

Both sides of this debate have legitimate arguments. The honest answer is that the campus-based model can work, and the district-level model can work, and the quality of execution matters more than the org chart. Perhaps it’s a mix of both.

What my understanding suggests is that CISD is not choosing cleanly between those two models. It is moving toward a hybrid where some coaching functions go to campuses, some get absorbed into new coordinator and director roles, and some appear to be quietly dropped. That is not inherently wrong, but it is a more complicated change than “closer to the classroom.” There are new questions we have to now ask. What happens to professional development design, curriculum writing, new-coach training, and cross-campus consistency?

What will coaches do if forced back into schools?

Most of the coaches I spoke with indicated they plan to stay in Conroe ISD if possible. One is actively looking elsewhere, who was one of the most experienced of the group.

Whether the district views that as an acceptable outcome of the restructure or not, it is an outcome. And it’s the kind of outcome that doesn’t show up in a headline count of “no employees are losing their jobs,” because technically, no one did.

There still appears to be confusion on if every instructional coach has a spot within Conroe ISD. Some indicated they have to apply for their new role. Others do not know if they will have a placement or if they have been placed that they know exactly what their role will look like.

My main question is if there are enough coaches to support every school at the local level.

How does moving coaches save money?

As mentioned above, this decision was primarily driven by a projected budget deficit. How does moving staff around fix that?

Essentially, instructional coaches are former classroom teachers that are staffed at the administrative level to coach other teachers. By offloading them from administration and back onto campus roles, you “eliminate” those staff because they are now under the individual school headcount.

By moving coaches back into schools, they take one of the spots that would normally be given to a classroom teacher. This means if those coaches actually remain coaches or interventionists, then you have one less classroom teacher in that school. This slightly increases the student to teacher ratio.

This means less admin headcount, but you keep the same teacher headcount, immediately removing a large chunk of labor from the general budget.

This part is still fuzzy to me. I welcome any corrections to this assessment.

Breaking it down

What we learned:

1. The scope of instructional coach work is significantly broader than most parents and community members realize. It spans direct teacher coaching, data analysis, intervention coordination, campus operations, testing administration, UIL and community events, district-wide professional development, and beyond.

2. The people doing that work are overwhelmingly veteran educators with a decade or more of experience, often with CISD specifically.

3. Coaches with the deepest district-level institutional knowledge appear to be the most likely to leave if forced back into the classroom.

The case for moving coaches closer to campuses is a strong one. Proximity, relationships, faster feedback, and budget discipline are all legitimate arguments. The case for keeping a strong district coaching layer is also a great one. Consistency across 70+ campuses, train-the-trainer capacity, and preserving institutional knowledge are not small considerations.

Reasonable people can land on different sides of that debate. What should not be controversial is that the debate deserves to be had in the open, with accurate information about what coaches actually do and clear communication to the people whose jobs are being restructured.

Thanks for reading.

You Got a Text. It Wasn’t What It Looked Like.

If you’re a Conroe ISD voter, there’s a good chance you’ve received a text message in recent weeks asking you to participate in a “survey” about the November 2026 school board election.

It opens innocuously enough. Do you plan to vote? What do you think of Donald Trump? Ken Paxton? Ted Cruz? Standard stuff, the kind of questions any legitimate pollster might ask to understand the electorate.

Then it pivots:

“Over 40% of Conroe ISD 3rd grade students were not performing at grade level in math or reading. In response, the new board of trustees implemented High Quality Institutional Materials (HQIM). The Texas Education Commissioner recently stated that ‘Conroe has seen a massive turnaround in their scores.’ Does knowing this make you more likely or less likely to re-elect members of the current board?”

And then it keeps going. Same structure, five more times:

• The current board removed “sexually illustrated materials” from classrooms. More or less likely to re-elect?

• The current board protects parental rights and believes parents should be in the driver’s seat. More or less likely to re-elect?

• The current board wants to restore traditional values and keep schools free from political agendas. More or less likely to re-elect?

• The current board is fighting back against woke ideologies threatening our children’s future. More or less likely to re-elect?

• The current board is focused on increasing funding for public education. More or less likely to re-elect?

That’s not a poll. That’s a pitch. And there’s a specific name for this tactic.

What Is a Push Poll, and Why Does It Matter?

A push poll is a political tool disguised as a survey. The goal isn’t to measure what voters think. The goal is to change what voters think, by feeding them curated, one-sided talking points under the cover of a question.

The technique works because most people drop their guard when they think they’re being surveyed. You’re answering questions, not being sold something. By the time the call or text is over, the messages have been delivered, and the respondent often doesn’t realize they were targets of a persuasion campaign, not participants in legitimate research.

Here’s how you spot one: it asks “does knowing this make you more or less likely...” Legitimate polls ask what you already think. Push polls tell you something first, then ask how you feel about it. They present only one side, and they’re deployed in the months before an election, not after.

How Push Polls Actually Get Built and Deployed

What most people don’t realize is that running a push poll at scale is a professional operation with multiple layers of cost, and depending on how it’s funded, some of those costs may never appear in any public record.

Under the Texas Election Code, any money spent to influence a political campaign must be reported as a political expenditure with the Texas Ethics Commission. That includes polling and voter contact operations. If a candidate’s campaign directly pays a vendor to conduct a text-based push poll, that payment has to show up on a finance report with the vendor’s name, address, and the amount paid. Reports are filed on a set schedule: semiannually in January and July, and in the 30-day and 8-day windows before an election.

But here’s the gap: if the money flows through a privately funded PAC rather than a candidate’s campaign account, the disclosure requirements are different, and in some cases the true source of the funding never surfaces publicly at all. PACs funded by private donors with no public disclosure obligations can pay for voter contact operations, pass the results or services to a campaign as an in-kind contribution, and the candidate’s report only shows the in-kind value, not where the PAC got its money. This is the core of what critics mean when they use the term “dark money.” The spending shows up, but the original source doesn’t.

The mechanics of how these texts actually reach your phone are worth understanding, because every step in the process has a cost attached to it.

First, someone purchases a voter contact list from a data broker. These brokers aggregate personal information, including cell phone numbers, from sources ranging from public voter rolls to commercially harvested data: loyalty programs, app permissions, online forms, and dozens of other places where people have unknowingly shared their contact information. The list is then filtered by geography, party registration, voting history, and demographic profile to target likely voters in a specific race. That targeting is itself a paid service.

Next, the scripted message sequence is loaded into a campaign text blast platform, services like Hustle, Strive, or similar tools built specifically for political mass texting. These platforms charge per message sent, sometimes by the segment, sometimes by the contact, and can push thousands of texts in an hour.

Finally, a political consulting firm manages the whole operation: writing the script, managing the vendor relationships, analyzing the response data, and refining the targeting for future sends. Each layer, the data, the platform, the consulting, carries its own invoice. In the 2022 Conroe ISD races, finance records show payments to CAZ Consulting for line items explicitly described as “SMS Text Messaging,” “Online Advertising,” and “MMS,” and Texans for Educational Freedom separately provided a “Texting Service” valued at over $2,000 as an in-kind contribution directly to one candidate. That’s the same infrastructure, just documented.

What’s funding the 2026 operation may be structured to make sure it stays undocumented until it’s too late to matter.

Meet the Consultant: CAZ Consulting and Chris Zook Jr.

Christopher Zook Jr. is the president of CAZ Consulting, a political consulting firm he founded in December 2021, seven months after he founded Texans for Educational Freedom (TEF), a statewide PAC that has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on school board elections across Texas. Before starting CAZ, Zook worked as political director for Congressman Wesley Hunt, as a fellow in Ted Cruz’s Washington office, and as a field director for the Harris County Republican Party.

According to Texas Ethics Commission filings reviewed by the Texas Observer, CAZ Consulting and its subsidiary Tripple Threat Strategies have done campaign work almost exclusively for Texans for Educational Freedom, which had paid them more than $200,000 for school board consulting work as of October 2024.

CAZ operates from two Houston-area addresses: 5436 Holly Springs Dr (Houston, TX 77056) and 6255 Willers Way (Houston, TX 77057). A related entity, C3 Management, operates from the same Willers Way address and appears in multiple CISD candidate finance reports billing for bookkeeping and accounting services.

This isn’t a local parents group. It’s a professional political operation with a documented track record of deploying its agendas into Texas school districts.

They’ve Already Done This Here

Texans for Educational Freedom didn’t discover Conroe ISD in 2026. The finance records show they were here in force in 2022.

In November 2022, three candidates running as the “Mama Bear” slate, Melissa Dungan, Tiffany Nelson, and Misty Odenweller, won their elections and took seats on the Conroe ISD board. The candidates came together through a Facebook group called Mama Bears Rising, which according to reporting by The Nation (March 2024) was co-founded by Cassandra Crowe, who at the time and continues to work as a policy adviser to State Representative Steve Toth. Toth is well-known to support Mama Bear candidates, providing them resources and funding through donations, as well as access to his office for events such as this one:

Campaign finance records filed with the Texas Ethics Commission document exactly how the CAZ/TEF network was embedded in all three campaigns.

Misty Odenweller

Odenweller’s post-election finance report covering July through December 2022 shows payments directly to CAZ Consulting LLC (6255 Willers Way, Houston TX 77057) and CAZ Consulting Way LLC (same address) for the following services as described in her own filings:

Odenweller's campaign amendment, filed March 27, 2023 (months after the required reporting period), also revealed multiple in-kind1 contributions from TEF that were missing from her original reports:

Total documented campaign services from CAZ/TEF for Odenweller: $16,689.33.

Separately, on October 10, 2022, Odenweller’s campaign also made a $10,000 donation directly to Texans for Educational Freedom, Zook’s own PAC. Her finance report categorizes it plainly: “Donations made by Candidate/Donation.” This is a distinct transaction from campaign services received. It represents money flowing out of her campaign and into the PAC, not services rendered to her campaign. It is, however, a significant data point: at the same time she was receiving TEF in-kind support, she was also funding the organization providing it. She was simultaneously a client and a funder of the same operation.

Melissa Dungan

Dungan’s finance records show a different structure but the same network. Her 30-day pre-election report documents a $75 payment to CAZ Consulting, LLC (5436 Holly Springs Dr, Houston TX 77056) described as “Consulting Expense: Campaign.” Her post-election January 2023 report then shows three additional CAZ payments after election day:

Her 8-day pre-election report and subsequent amendment show TEF in-kind contributions across three categories:

And the most important fact is her amended report was made over a year and a half after the election:

Total CAZ/TEF involvement in the Dungan campaign: $13,219.97

Tiffany Nelson

Nelson’s records show the most extensive TEF involvement of all three candidates. Across her 30-day report, her amended 8-day report, and her January 2023 post-election report, CAZ Consulting and C3 Management (same Willers Way address) appear repeatedly:

Then there’s what TEF poured in directly as in-kind contributions:

The texting service TEF provided Nelson in October 2022 is the same category of service now being used to deliver the 2026 push poll to Conroe ISD voters.

And similar to the others, Tiffany also filed her amendment months after the election:

Total CAZ/C3/TEF involvement in the Nelson campaign: $14,370.46.

The Three-Candidate Tally

When you add it up across all three 2022 Mama Bear candidates:

Over $44,000 in documented CAZ/TEF money flowed through the three 2022 Mama Bear campaigns, from a single consultant who founded the PAC in early 2021 and then launched his consulting firm seven months later to service it.

This is not a grassroots operation. It never was.

Why Now? Why Conroe ISD?

Here’s the part that explains the urgency behind the push poll hitting phones in April 2026.

In November 2025, Cy-Fair ISD held its school board election. Cy-Fair is the third-largest school district in Texas. In 2023, Texans for Educational Freedom helped elect a conservative slate there, giving the board a 6-1 “conservative” supermajority. Over the next two years, that board implemented aggressive book bans, Bible-based curriculum, cut 50 librarian positions as part of sweeping budget reductions, and restricted classroom discussions of gender identity, vaccines, and climate change.

On November 4, 2025, voters threw them out.

A slate of three pro-public education candidates, Lesley Guilmart, Kendra Camarena, and Cleveland Lane Jr., swept all three contested seats, flipping the board from a 6-1 “conservative” majority to a 4-3 majority in the other direction. Board president Scott Henry and vice president Natalie Blasingame both lost their seats. Despite endorsements from the Harris County Republican Party and a visit from Governor Greg Abbott days before the vote, all three “conservative” candidates lost.

The same reversal had played out in Clear Creek ISD, Fort Bend ISD, and Katy ISD, where conservative slates won seats on culture-war messaging and then lost them when communities saw what the board actually did once in power.

Conroe ISD, the 7th largest school district in Texas with approximately 73,000 students, is the last major district in the Houston area still under full “conservative” board control, and the only large district in Texas with an all-”conservative” board. For the network that built this majority, Conroe is the last domino they cannot afford to lose.

There’s another variable: Tiffany Nelson, one of the three original 2022 Mama Bears, resigned her CISD trustee seat early to run for the Texas State Board of Education, a race she recently won the Republican primary for. The board subsequently appointed Aggie Gambino to fill her vacated seat. That appointment, combined with the upcoming November 2026 election cycle, raises the stakes for both sides.

That’s why a push poll is running in early April, eight months before the election. They’re not measuring opinion. They’re trying to build a floor before organized opposition gets started.

The stakes of getting this wrong are not abstract for Zook. When the Texas Observer began its investigation into his network’s school board operations, he responded on X:

“Thank you for the great coverage. Just a week ago, parents successfully flipped Cy-Fair ISD, the third largest district in the state. Let’s keep focusing on improving student outcomes, empowering parents, and supporting our teachers.”

He was celebrating the 2023 conservative wins in Cy-Fair at the time. In the next election, that “conservative” majority lost seats and the board flipped. The celebration was premature. The lesson for Conroe is that majorities built this way don’t hold forever, and Zook’s network knows it.

What This Costs, and Who’s Paying For It

Push polls aren’t free. A text campaign reaching a meaningful slice of Conroe ISD’s voter base, which spans fast-growing Montgomery County precincts, costs real money: vendor fees, voter list acquisition, platform costs, and the consulting firm behind the execution.

Campaign finance records filed with the Texas Ethics Commission will eventually show who funded this. When pre-election reports drop in the 30-day and 8-day windows before November 2026, those records will either confirm or reframe what we already know.

In the meantime, the push poll script is documented. Potentially thousands of Conroe ISD residents received it. The messaging is identical to the rhetorical framework the current board has used in its public communications.

The infrastructure is the same. The playbook is the same.

What You Should Take Away From This

The push poll you received is asking how you feel about the current Conroe ISD board, but only after it tells you what to think about the current board. That’s the mechanism. It’s not subtle once you see it.

The network operating behind this has real resources, a real track record, and over $44,000 in documented spending just on the three 2022 CISD candidates. That number doesn’t include the 2024 slate: Nicole May, Lindsay Dawson, Melissa Semmler, and Marianne Horton, whose records tell their own story.

That apparatus is already running for 2026. The question is whether Conroe ISD voters know it’s happening.

Here’s what you can do with this information:

Know the difference between a poll and a push poll. If a “survey” is telling you things and asking how you feel about them, it’s not measuring your opinion. It’s trying to change it.

Ask who’s funding the candidates. Local school board races should be funded by local people. When over $44,000 from a statewide PAC and a single consulting firm shows up in three local school board races, that’s worth knowing.

Watch the money. Texas Ethics Commission filings are public record at ethics.state.tx.us. When pre-election reports drop before November, look at who’s paying whom.

The November 2026 Conroe ISD election is months away. The political operation working to hold this board is already on the clock. Now you know.

Thanks for reading.

The author is a candidate for Conroe ISD Board of Trustees in the November 2026 election.

Finance data sourced directly from Texas Ethics Commission campaign finance reports filed by Misty Odenweller, Melissa Dungan, and Tiffany Nelson (2022 to 2023). Additional sourcing: Texas Observer (March 2025, May 2024), Texas Tribune/ProPublica (April 2024), Houston Public Media (November 2025), The Nation (March 2024).

If you are going to vote in a school board election, you should probably understand what a school board does. That sounds obvious, but most people show up to the ballot (or skip it entirely) without a clear picture of what board trustees actually control, what they don’t control, and why the distinction matters.

I have served on boards for nearly a decade now, including as President of a Municipal Utility District (MUD) that manages infrastructure and budgets for thousands of residents. I’ve seen firsthand how board governance works at the local level, and I can tell you that the mechanics of a school board are not that different from an HOA board or a MUD board in principle. The stakes, however, are significantly higher. For Conroe ISD, our local district, we are talking about the education of over 70,000 students, a budget of $760+ million, and the employment of 10,000 teachers and staff.

What Is a School Board?

A school board, formally called a Board of Trustees, is the elected governing body of an independent school district (ISD). In Texas, this authority comes from the Texas Education Code (TEC), which gives the board “the exclusive power and duty to govern and oversee the management of the public schools of the district”.1

The board is a corporate body, meaning it acts as a single legal entity. No individual trustee has authority on their own. A trustee cannot direct staff, make decisions, or take action independently. The board can only act when a quorum (a majority of members) is present at a properly posted meeting, and decisions are made by vote.

If you have ever been involved with an HOA or a MUD, this concept should feel familiar. The President of your HOA board does not have unilateral power to change the rules. The board must meet, discuss, and vote on pre-planned agenda items. A school board works the same way, just with much bigger consequences.

Structure

Our local school district, Conroe ISD, has seven trustees who are elected at-large by place. This means every voter in the district votes on every seat, but each trustee runs for a specific numbered position (Place 1 through Place 7). Your school district may have less or more trustee positions, and it may elect trustees by region instead of at-large.

Trustees typically serve four-year terms on a staggered schedule. In Conroe ISD, Positions 1, 2, and 3 are elected in one cycle and Positions 4, 5, 6, and 7 are elected two years later.

This staggered approach is common in Texas school districts and is designed to maintain continuity on the board. With this schedule, you rarely have a situation where all seven seats turn over at once.

There are no geographic districts or wards in Conroe ISD. A trustee in Place 1 represents the entire district, not a specific neighborhood or area. This is different from some larger Texas districts that use single-member districts, where each trustee represents a defined geographic area. CISD has historically used the at-large model, but there has been interest lately by constituents to consider single-member districts.

School board trustees in Texas are unpaid volunteers. They receive no salary for this role. This is worth noting because it means your trustees are people who decided to put themselves through the election process and commit significant time to governance without financial compensation. That can attract genuinely passionate people, but it also limits who can realistically afford to serve.

What the Board Actually Does

People often assume school board members are involved in the day-to-day operations of the district. They are not, or at least not meant to be. Under Texas law, the board’s role is governance, not management.

Here’s what a school board’s role looks like in practice:

Hires and evaluates one employee: the Superintendent
This is arguably the single most important thing a school board does. The superintendent is the board’s only direct employee, and the superintendent runs the district. Every other employee, from principals to teachers to custodians, works for the superintendent and the administrative team, not the board. The board sets expectations, evaluates performance, and can choose to renew or not renew the superintendent’s contract.

If you think of it like a company, the board is the Board of Directors and the superintendent is the CEO.

Adopts the vision, goals, and strategic direction of the district
The board sets the long-term vision and monitors progress toward district goals, including academic performance, financial health, and other priorities. This is the most visible and important factor for a school district, as the school district’s primary goal is to improve student outcomes. We touched on this briefly in a previous post:

From AJ Crabill’s Great On Their Behalf:

“School systems exist to improve student outcomes. That is the only reason for which school systems exist. School systems do not exist to have great buildings, have happy parents, have balanced budgets, have satisfied teachers, provide student lunches, provide employment in the county/city, or anything else. Those are all means -- and incredibly important and valuable means at that -- but none of them are the ends; none of those are why we have school systems. They are all inputs, not outcomes. None of those are measures of what students know or are able to do. School systems exist for one reason and one reason only: to improve student outcomes.”

Sets district policy
The board creates policy, and the superintendent implements that policy on a day-to-day basis. Think of policy as the "rules" for how the school district is run and operated. Policies specify things like how purchasing is done, how teachers are evaluated, how student discipline is handled, what the dress code looks like, how complaints are filed, or how the district manages everything from field trips to facility rentals.

Most Texas school districts use the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) policy framework, which organizes policies into two categories: "legal" policies that reflect what state or federal law requires, and "local" policies where the board exercises its own judgment. The local policies are where the board's priorities and values show up most clearly, because that is where they have discretion. These policies are public and available on the district's website, and if you have never looked at them, it is worth browsing to see just how much of the district's operations are shaped by what the board has approved.

Note that TASB is not the only player in town that provides policy framework. Texans for Excellence in Education (TEE) has been making news over the last few years as an “alternative” service to TASB. They are currently embroiled in a lawsuit with TASB regarding their policy services. You can read more about TEE here.

Adopts the annual budget
The board approves the district’s budget each year. This includes the Maintenance & Operations (M&O) budget that pays for salaries, utilities, and daily operations, as well as the Interest & Sinking (I&S) budget that covers bond debt. As I covered in a previous write-up on teacher compensation, the M&O budget is heavily constrained by state funding formulas, tax compression, and recapture. The board has less flexibility here than most people assume.

Makes personnel decisions on contract employees
The board votes on hiring and termination decisions for employees on TEC Chapter 21 contracts, but the superintendent has sole authority to make those recommendations. The board can accept or reject a recommendation, but it cannot independently select or remove personnel. If the board rejects a recommendation, the superintendent must bring alternatives until the board approves one.

Sets the tax rate
The board adopts the district’s property tax rate each year for both M&O and I&S. However, this is not a blank check. The state’s tax compression system limits how high the M&O rate can go, and voters must approve any rate above the compressed ceiling through a Voter-Approved Tax Rate Election (VATRE). The I&S rate is tied directly to voter-approved bond debt.

Approves bonds and calls elections
When the district needs money for new schools, renovations, or major capital projects, the board places bond propositions on the ballot for voters to decide. The board determines the size and scope of the bond, but voters have the final say.

In larger school districts, bond committees are often formed by the board and filled with appointed public constituents to help build a bond package that is more likely to be supported by voters.

What the Board Does NOT Do

This is where misconceptions live. Understanding what the board cannot or should not do is just as important as knowing what it does.

The board does not manage daily operations. The board does not decide bell schedules, assign students to classrooms, choose which textbook a teacher uses on a given day, or determine staffing at individual campuses. That is the superintendent’s job and the job of the administrative team the superintendent has built.

The board does not hire or fire teachers directly. Teachers are hired and managed by campus and district administrators. The board may see personnel recommendations in the aggregate at meetings, but individual staffing decisions happen below the board level. The exception is contract non-renewals or terminations for Chapter 21 employees, which do come to the board. You may see these as matters posted in executive session during public board meetings.

Individual trustees do not have authority. This is worth repeating. A single trustee cannot direct the superintendent to do something. A single trustee cannot order staff to change a policy or practice. The board acts as a body through formal votes at properly noticed meetings. If a trustee is calling the superintendent to push for changes outside of a board meeting, they are operating outside their authority.

The board does not set curriculum in detail. The state of Texas sets curriculum standards through the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). The board may adopt instructional materials and approve curriculum frameworks, but the specific content taught in classrooms is driven by state standards and the professional decisions of educators. However, the board can vote to exclude specific content from instructional materials. In May 2024, the Conroe ISD board voted 4-3 to remove sections from a biology textbook, including content on primate evolution and material some trustees considered politically biased, while still requiring the underlying state standards to be taught.

Board Meetings

School board meetings are governed by the Texas Open Meetings Act (TOMA), found in Chapter 551 of the Texas Government Code. This law requires that all meetings of the board be open to the public, with limited exceptions for closed (executive) sessions.

Here is how this works in practice:

Notice requirements: The district must post a meeting notice and agenda at least 72 hours before a regular or special meeting. The agenda must list the specific topics to be discussed. If something is not on the agenda, the board cannot take action on it. This is the law and an important one.

Public comment: Most school board meetings include a period for public comment, where community members can address the board. The board typically listens but does not engage in back-and-forth discussion during public comment. This is standard practice, not a sign of disrespect, as the board does not typically have the time or context to engage every public commenter.

Executive sessions: The board can go into a closed session (also called executive session) for a limited set of reasons defined by law. These include discussions about personnel, real estate transactions, security matters, and consultation with their attorney on legal issues. No votes can be taken in executive session. Any action resulting from an executive session discussion must happen in open session.

Voting: Board votes happen in open session and are part of the public record. The vote of each individual trustee is recorded. You can (and should) look at how your trustees vote on the issues that matter to you.

If you have attended a MUD board meeting or an HOA annual meeting, the general flow is similar: there is an agenda, there is discussion, there are votes, and there may be a closed session for certain topics. The main difference is scale and the additional legal requirements that come with governing a public school district.

Why This Matters

You might be reading this and thinking, “Why does any of this matter to me? I just want my kids to go to a good school.”

That’s fair, but here is why school boards matter:

The board sets the tone.
Even though the board does not manage daily operations, it sets the culture and priorities of the district through the policies it adopts, the superintendent it hires, and the direction it sets. A board that prioritizes teacher support will push for policies and budgets that reflect that. A board that prioritizes transparency will demand financial reporting and public engagement. A board that is disengaged or driven by personal agendas will produce a district that reflects those qualities.

The board controls the money.
The annual budget, the tax rate, and bond elections all flow through the board. How the board allocates resources determines class sizes, teacher compensation (within state constraints), facility maintenance, and whether programs like fine arts, special education, or career and technical education get the support they need.

The board holds the superintendent accountable.
If the superintendent is doing a great job, the board renews their contract and provides support. If the superintendent is failing, the board has the responsibility to address it. This is the single most impactful personnel decision the board makes, and it directly affects every school in the district.

You elect these people.
School board elections historically have some of the lowest voter turnout of any election. This means a relatively small number of voters decide who governs a multi-million-dollar organization that educates tens of thousands of children. Your vote carries more weight here than in almost any other election.

Closing / TLDR

If you read this entire thing, you now have a better understanding of how a school board works than most voters. If you skipped down here, don’t worry, here is a quick summary:

• A school board is the elected governing body of a school district. It normally consists of trustees elected to staggered terms.

• The board is a corporate body. No individual trustee has authority to act alone. Decisions require a quorum and a formal vote at a properly posted meeting.

• The board’s most important job is hiring and evaluating the superintendent. The superintendent runs the district. Every other employee reports to the superintendent, not the board.

• The board adopts the budget, sets the tax rate, approves bonds, and creates policy. These are its primary tools for shaping the direction of the district.

• The board does not manage daily operations, does not hire or fire individual teachers, and does not set detailed curriculum. Those are administration responsibilities, although certain decisions must be approved by the board before proceeding.

• All board meetings must comply with the Texas Open Meetings Act. Meetings are public, agendas must be posted 72 hours in advance, and no votes can be taken in closed session.

• School board elections have low turnout, which means your vote has outsized influence on who governs these large organizations that can impact tens of thousands of students and their families.

Thanks for reading.

The teaching profession may be a dying one. Fewer people are looking to enter a career as an educator as the pipeline of new teachers is slowing. The reasons are simple to articulate but difficult to resolve. We need to be paying attention.

In Part 1 of our breakdown focusing on why Texas is losing its teacher pipeline, we reviewed how school finance works, how teacher compensation is managed, and why school board leadership matters in influencing the culture and direction that directly impacts teachers.

Today, we’re going to expand this topic to discuss changes in student learning gaps, behavior, and why local leadership makes a huge difference in teacher wellness and retention.

Before we begin, I am going to reshare data from the Texas Education Agency and our previous notes:

In short, people going into the teaching profession directly have dropped by 41% over the last 10 years, and use of uncertified teachers has risen by 403%.

A large portion of new hires are former teachers coming back to the profession. Districts are aggressively recruiting them as the direct pipeline dries up, and many returnees are motivated by TRS pension incentives, burnout cycles that ran their course, or the realization that the private sector did not offer the opportunities they expected.

What we highlighted was that starting from the basic employment of teachers, such as how they are compensated, Texas has fundamental issues that are both driving teachers away from the profession and preventing others from entering it.

Let’s now talk about the work environment.

Pandemic Learning Gaps

One thing you may hear often from teachers is how much the COVID pandemic impacted student learning, in that there is an obvious gap that spawned from students who were forced to learn from home over Zoom meetings.

In December 2025, the Brookings Institution published research that studied these gaps:

Learning curves: Post-COVID learning trajectories differ by the grade a student was in when the pandemic hit

Here is a breakdown of their findings with my comments:

The oldest students took the hardest hit and have the least time to recover. Students who were in middle school when COVID hit are now in high school. The Brookings study tracked foundational math gaps persisting through 8th grade with no sign of closing for older cohorts, and there’s every reason to believe those gaps followed them into high school. Teachers are increasingly being handed a remediation problem with no realistic runway left to fix it.

The gaps are not uniform. A 7th grader in 2025 has different COVID gaps than a 4th grader, and teachers are expected to close both, often with the same resources. There’s no one-size-fits-all fix, which can burn out even the most dedicated teachers.

Math recovery for older students has stalled. The study found that students who were in 4th through 7th grade during COVID still show proficiency gaps of 10 or more percentage points (depending on the cohort) below pre-pandemic levels, and older cohorts have recovered far less ground than younger ones. Teachers are being measured on outcomes they can’t fully control.

Reading recovery has essentially flatlined nationally. Unlike math, which is showing slow improvement in younger grades, English proficiency has shown no meaningful progress since 2022 according to national assessment data. Teachers are dealing with students who are behind in literacy and math simultaneously.

Asking teachers to solve a structural problem without structural support contributes to their reasons for leaving the profession. The research makes clear this is a systemic, multi-year failure that will take systemic intervention to fix. Instead, the burden keeps landing on individual classroom teachers.

This is where decisions on curriculum and adding support structure (e.g., paraprofessionals) in the classroom becomes critical. We need our school boards to be making informed decisions that will work to resolve these issues rather than push untested instructional materials or cutting staff positions where they’re needed most.

Bad Behavior

Anyone who is connected to a teacher knows that the primary struggle with their classrooms is around having to manage bad behavior. Every ‘teacher transition’ trend you find will have teachers lamenting about how they spend a considerable amount of their day managing student behavior. What this means is that time they spend dealing with disruptive students is not spent teaching students.

It’s like a comedian on-stage dealing with constant heckling. They can’t kick out the hecklers without interrupting the bit, and they have to be well-seasoned to manage the interaction so they can continue with their show. This is difficult for both new teachers and veteran educators alike. New teachers have to learn to harden themselves quickly, and veteran teachers have to steel their mental health as constant conflict management can lead to burnout.

When teachers go to school to become an educator, they learn all kinds of things specific to effective instruction, which includes classroom and behavior management. However, classroom management best practices that have worked for decades are not as effective today because of increasing classroom sizes, a decrease of certified professionals (who do not get the same training), and more children seemingly not as responsive to authority.

This is why it has become vital for school districts to consider how it supports teachers through local administrators, behavior interventionists, counselors, and of course, collaboration with parents.

Changes in the relationship between parents and teachers may be the most important issue to understand. Mind you, it is not that support for teachers by parents, PTOs, or other support mechanisms has decreased. The issue is that the number of disruptive children and parents that enable them has increased.

In the past, a teacher may only need to deal with 1-2 disruptive children per class, which could be mitigated by contact with their admin (e.g., principal or assistant principals) or calling home. They could also be managed by a paraprofessional in the room if related to a child with special needs.

Today, that number of disruptive students is now 9-10 children, which has been enabled by the parents who either refuse to discipline their child or actively work against their teacher. If the class includes children with special needs, not having staff support directly impacts their ability to teach the class altogether.

20-30 years ago, if a teacher called home, it was a serious moment for that child. Today, there is a higher chance the parent may ask what the teacher did to make their child act the way they did.

Dr. Brad Johnson, an education consultant, put it well:

“Classroom management hasn’t changed.

The cultural contract around it has.

There used to be a basic understanding in society that adults, teachers included, deserved a baseline level of respect.

Schools operated under the legal principle of in loco parentis.

It literally means “in the place of the parent.”

For generations courts recognized that when students were at school, teachers carried the authority of the parent.

That did not mean blind obedience or unquestioned authority.

But it did mean something simple.

When an adult enforced expectations, the starting point was dignity and respect. They weren’t optional.

In fact, when many of us were in school, we worried far more about getting in trouble when we got home than what might happen at school.

Home and school were aligned.

There was an expectation that adults would support each other in holding boundaries.

That expectation does not seem as clear anymore.

Not all, but some parents now approach schools more like attorneys than partners, questioning every decision instead of reinforcing expectations.

The focus shifts from helping a child grow to challenging the adult who set the boundary.

Students watch that dynamic play out and quickly learn that expectations can be debated.

When that baseline disappears, every expectation becomes a negotiation.

That does not remove adult responsibility.

Some teachers absolutely benefit from stronger classroom management skills. That has always been true.

But that is not the overriding issue.

The larger problem is that classroom management now operates in a culture where limits are routinely challenged, authority is treated with suspicion, and enforcing expectations can carry real personal risk.

Now a teacher can be cursed at, threatened, or even assaulted for taking up a phone.

For enforcing a rule that existed ten years ago.

For doing the job they were hired to do.

That is not a classroom management issue.

That is a cultural failure.

Teachers did not create a culture where enforcing expectations is treated as aggression or where accountability is optional.

But they are expected to manage the fallout.

So when burnout, turnover, and silence are blamed on “better classroom management,” it misses the point.

This is not about skill. It is about risk.

Teachers should not have to fear retaliation for enforcing the very rules they were hired to uphold.

Classroom management was never meant to include worrying about personal safety or public backlash for holding a boundary.

Classroom management did not fail.

The social contract did.”

Dr. Brad Johnson

Simply put, teachers are burdened with problems they were never meant to manage, and the support process from home is breaking down.

That dynamic puts even more weight on local school leadership to either absorb the fallout or make it worse. This brings us to the next important topic.

Local Leadership Matters

When the school district hires principals and assistant principals, it can drastically impact the culture of our schools.

Principals are essentially facility managers. They oversee local operations for a staff that can be from 20-100 people, including managing teacher support, student discipline, and countless other priorities. It is an immense responsibility and is often itself not a well-supported position. They can delegate tasks to assistant principals, secretaries, or front desk staff, but at the end of the day they are responsible for each day of successful instruction at schools that could have thousands of students.

As any corporate worker knows, managers can vary in their style and effectiveness. They have various backgrounds, are often long removed from the positions that they oversee, can make-or-break the cohesiveness of staff, and some may need to retire. Principals are no different.

As an example, if you read our write-up about why Denise left teaching, you’ll see that a significant reason she left was related to local leadership. She worked at the same school for 10 years, two years of which she won Teacher of the Year, and yet it was one of the most challenging environments to work in due to how staff were treated.

The principal was not supportive of teachers’ needs, often making rules and changes that made life more miserable than productive. Teachers would get emotional during meetings as they were publicly reprimanded, and there were more than a few occasions where teachers' spouses wanted to have a word with the principal to discuss the situation.

When a new school in the same grade level opened down the street, nearly half of the staff transferred out. The new school quickly became known as “the happiest place on earth.” Denise followed a few years later, and it was a complete 180 in work satisfaction. The principal was supportive, worked the hallways, and is by far one of the most capable leaders I’ve seen in the school district. They cared deeply for staff, and it showed.

Although her support network immediately improved, the toll of the previous 10 years on Denise's mental health could not be undone. Student behavior was also still a rampant issue, and so she left the teaching profession. She wrote a follow-up on the process one year later.

Denise’s Substack

One Year Later, How I Left Teaching

In March 2023, I made the decision to leave teaching. My husband and I planned out my exit. I would finish the school year, and in June we would hit the ground running looking at new careers for a 5th grade Science and Social Studies teacher. I would have the entire summer to find work while still getting paid until August, and we had an emergency fund …

Read more

2 years ago · 5 likes · 2 comments · Denise Tsamouris

Local leadership matters, and the culture that these leaders build comes from the top down. From the school board, superintendent, and district support staff - how principals support staff is built through shared understanding and responsibility to make sure educators are given all the resources and care they need to do their jobs well. This directly impacts student outcomes, and it can drastically improve teacher wellness and retention.

Closing

The spotlight on these issues has been shining for years, and none of the ideas presented in this post are new. They simply get overlooked or forgotten, but the experience that teachers have in our schools continues to be a real problem. Our educators may be resilient, and our veteran teachers are able to manage as usual, but these issues within our public schools have impacted the pipeline for new teachers to enter the profession.

Prospective teachers realize that they can work in more supportive environments elsewhere, and they can make a living wage in the process. Our community needs to recognize this and apply pressure to improve these conditions, whether with the school board or the Texas Legislature.

The time to pay attention is now, and the time for action is in the voting booth.

Thanks for reading.

One concept I believe your average parent should understand is how your public schools are funded and your child’s teachers are paid. After all, as parents we trust our children to be managed and educated by these professionals 7-8 hours a day, five days a week. We want our children to excel and be prepared to build a life for themselves one day, and teachers are direct contributors to that mission.

Let’s first level with what teachers do. They are more than “lesson guides” or babysitters, as is often portrayed online. They almost all have four-year college degrees; many have a master’s degree or a PhD if they plan to move into leadership positions.

Teachers plan lessons, build and implement curriculum, educate students individually and in groups, build relationships, and accommodate each student’s needs, all while managing a classroom of 25+ kids.

They are also required to know school district policy, classroom management strategies, the Texas Essential Knowledge & Skills (TEKS), mandatory reporting laws, active shooter procedures, and basic first aid. They do all of this while physically at school, with no remote work option, very limited sick days, and the expectation that any absence comes with a substitute plan ready to go.

They can’t even go to the bathroom without making sure someone covers their class.

Teaching can be a rewarding profession, but it can also be a high-stress, low-support environment where your experience is heavily dependent on which students, parents, or administrator you get for the year.

Recognizing this is important. It helps explain both the value teachers bring and the 5-alarm fire we are heading toward as fewer people choose to enter the profession.

Quick Data

Before we begin, let’s look at the data for teachers entering or leaving the profession as part of the compensation discussion. Looking at the graph above, we see the following trends between 2015-2025:

• Fewer teachers are entering the profession directly, showing the pipeline of new teachers is drastically slowing.

• Certification gaps are widening, meaning more hires lack formal Texas credentials.

• Alternative pathways (interns, emergency permits) are shrinking, possibly due to policy changes or program limitations.

• Teacher ‘re-entry’ is a major source of “new” hires, meaning much of our new teachers are actually those coming back to the profession rather than actual new teachers.

• Out-of-state hiring is declining, hinting at barriers or reduced mobility.

Here’s the raw data:

In short, people going into the teaching profession directly have dropped by 41% over the last 10 years, and use of uncertified teachers has risen by 403%.

A large portion of new hires are former teachers coming back to the profession. Districts are aggressively recruiting them as the direct pipeline dries up, and many returnees are motivated by TRS pension incentives, burnout cycles that ran their course, or the realization that the private sector did not offer the opportunities they expected.

For today’s write-up we are going to focus on public school teacher compensation, but obviously there are many, many factors to consider when reviewing topics like teacher retention or the decline in people entering the teaching profession altogether.

Salary Schedule for Teachers

Teachers in Texas are paid based on annual contracts, which renew or can expire yearly, and that contract requires a certain number of work days. For example, for the 2025-2026 school year our local school district requires 187 days of work for teachers. Here is the hiring schedule for 2025-2026:

Looking at this, understand that a teacher with 30+ years of experience is only getting paid $15,000 more per year than a brand-new teacher. Can you imagine any other profession where this would be acceptable for someone with a college degree and 30+ years of experience?

Additional Pay

Teachers can earn additional pay based on the following (from the Hiring Schedule referenced):

Master’s or Doctorate Degree: Stipend of +$1,800 per year (either, not both)

Bilingual Certification: +$4,500 per year

Team Leader: About +$1,170 per year

National Board Certification: This enables the teacher to earn extra money we will discuss in a moment. For a teacher to achieve this certification they must spend about $1,900 and 1-3 years depending on certain factors. This cost can be reimbursed or handled up-front by the school district.

These are all pre-tax numbers.

Take-Home Pay

As reference, a teacher with 10 years of experience, a master’s degree, and is a team leader, is making $72,720/year before taxes.

Converting salary to hourly, a teacher making $72,720/year, working 187 days, is making roughly $51.85/hr.1 Taking out federal taxes, retirement, and health insurance, this plummets down to $37.64/hr in take-home pay.2

Again, that’s a best case where the teacher has worked 10 years, has a master’s degree, and is working as a team leader (your high performer).

As a side note, when people debate these numbers, they often compare teachers to other public servants like police officers or firefighters, or with an EMT. The truth is that these conversations incorrectly compare these professions against each other, when in reality it means that they are all very much underpaid.

Neighbor School Districts

If nearby school districts have better or worse salary schedules, then know they operate on similar yet different budgets. Each school district has its own demographics, student populations, assessed value (total value of homes that pay taxes in the district), and priorities.

A school district that is actively growing is issuing bonds, building new schools, expanding existing facilities, and hiring teachers. A district that is in a fully developed area and maintaining status quo likely has less debt to pay and can use those extra funds for higher teacher salaries or have more special education teachers, paraprofessionals to assist in classrooms, or other priorities they can afford.

Some school districts have 2,000 teachers rather than 5,000; this makes discussions around teacher raises very different when you need to find $2M versus $5M just to give each teacher a $1,000/year raise.

This is also why some school districts can afford to give a $15,000 signing bonus whereas others cannot. A school that has a higher population of special education students will have to spend more money for those services as compared to a district with fewer special needs students.

And yes, some districts are within very wealthy areas, while others are in areas with high poverty rates, which directly impact funding sources.

Other Pay Opportunities

Over the last several years there has been a great deal of discussion with the expansion of the Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA), where teachers can earn six figure salaries.

The TIA is a write-up for another day as it is complex. It is not supported at every school (even within the same school district), is a multi-year process that requires a teacher get evaluated by an appraiser, a ratings distribution system based similar to performance ratings (Recognized, Exemplary, Master), and the appraisal is based on measurable student growth, which is itself complex.

National Board Certified teachers automatically qualify as ‘Recognized’ for their TIA rating.3

It sounds great in theory, but it is a slow-moving process that requires a persistent administration to implement and oversee, and in our school district in 2025, only 384 teachers out of 5,000 have qualified.

The bottom line is that TIA is a real pathway to better pay, but it is not a solution for the broader compensation problem. It reaches too few teachers, too slowly.

Here’s a quick video on how it works:

Who Pays Teachers

Schools pay teachers, but the money comes from a budget that is heavily restricted by the state of Texas. You can read a previous write-up on school finance here.

Here’s the gist of it:

Texas schools are funded through a mix of state dollars and local property taxes.

State funding is tied heavily to Average Daily Attendance (ADA), meaning districts are funded based on how many students attend school each day.

Local funding comes from property taxes, with rates set by the elected school board and paid by local taxpayers based on the value of their property.

These funding mechanisms are combined within general operating budgets for school districts.

For the school district, staff are paid via its Maintenance & Operations (M&O) budget, which covers teacher and staff salaries, benefits, utilities, transportation, and other day-to-day operations. Here’s a breakdown of how each dollar is spent in our local school district:

If a school district wanted to increase pay for teachers, they would be up against several roadblocks. The school district cannot simply raise the tax rates to pay staff more money. This is because Texas implemented a mandatory tax-rate compression system (a.k.a., “SB2”). This means that when property values rise, the state forces districts to lower their M&O tax rate.

Even if the district did raise the tax rate (or not adopt a parity rate), the state has two other mechanisms that reduces its contribution to the school district:

1. Recapture (“Robin Hood”): If a district raises more local revenue than the state formula says it needs, the state takes the excess.

2. State funding formulas adjust downward: Even for non‑recapture districts, the Foundation School Program reduces state aid when local revenue increases.

Either way, the district does not get to keep extra money it raises through taxes, which basically forces every school district (and special districts across Texas, like MUDs) to continue lowering their tax rates each year. We could add in the complexity of how rising home valuation has impacted state school funding formulas, but let’s save that for another day.

How do school districts find extra money for teachers?

Each year the school district sets a budget, which is based on all the factors listed above, with the added complexity of understanding how the Average Daily Attendance (ADA) works.4 There are also multiple tiers of funding and other funding allotments available that we will not get into today.

The important factor is that school districts rely almost entirely on the Texas legislature to provide raises for teachers. This is largely based on the per-student funding that the legislature has resisted making major increases to in the last 7 years, which is problematic considering the amount of inflation and high costs of living that have worsened since the 2020 pandemic.

In the last session, the Texas legislature raised the per-student allotment by $55. That’s not a typo. This is compared to when they raised it in 2019 by nearly $1000/student. There are many other factors to consider around total per-student spending, including both state allotments and federal dollars (e.g., ESSER funds), but let’s move on.

One of the only sources available for school districts to increase teacher compensation themselves is to provide retention bonuses or to improve benefits such as healthcare plans.

Where does that extra money primarily come from? Investments.

On occasion Texas will offer retention bonuses to districts through specific allotments, or if the school district is under budget by a significant amount they can turn that around into teacher bonuses. However, the most reliable method to earn extra money is for the school district to make sure it has a healthy reserve fund that is being invested into public fund investment pools.

Those investments have returns.

School districts, like any other good stewards of money, typically keep a healthy reserve fund for emergencies or unexpected costs. Our local school district has a 2025-2026 budget of $760M and a current reserve fund of about $170M. That is slightly over the recommended 20% reserve fund.

If the reserve fund remains healthy and the budget is on target, then extra money collected can be used for signing bonuses for new teachers or retention bonuses for current teachers or staff.

Program Cuts

Lastly, we should mention that school districts could find other money by cutting services, closing schools, reducing staff, or other creative ways to lower costs.

The truth is that cutting staff is the only real way to save large sums of money, as labor is the largest part of the budget by far.

These are worst case scenarios, and unfortunately these scenarios are playing out all over Texas.

VATREs

I wanted to mention one interesting option, which is a Voter-Approved Tax Rate Election (VATRE). These are a mechanism Texas districts can use to exceed the compressed M&O tax rate cap. It allows money to be added to the budget specifically for things like staff raises.

For example, if the school district needed to increase pay for bus drivers, it could go to the voters directly and ask for help. They put an item on the ballot during a major election, similar to a bond proposition, and they ask voters to approve a small tax increase (max of $0.17 above the compressed rate) that would be specifically used for that purpose.

You could do the same thing for yearly teacher supplies, or yes, teacher raises.

Here’s some quick math on what this could look like. Let’s say the district proposes a VATRE tax increase of $0.02 to M&O budget to raise money for transportation:

Conroe ISD taxable value * tax rate increase = Money generated

$56.5B × ($0.02 ÷ $100) = $11.3M per year

Homeowner impact on a $400K home: ~$52/year or $4.33/month.

This would be politically unpopular in a conservative district like our local Conroe ISD, but it is good to know that these tools are there if needed.

Benefits

Teachers and district staff also need other benefits, such as a retirement fund, health insurance, dental, vision, life insurance, disability insurance, FSA/HSA options, or employee assistance programs.

You could of course include other benefits such as paid conference days, small class sizes, longer summers, or other common options.

These all factor into how competitive a school district is for educators or other district staff.

One key item most people do not know is that most Texas teachers do not pay into Social Security and thus do not pull from it in retirement. In its place is the Teacher Retirement System (TRS), which is a giant can of worms we cannot let loose here.

All of these items factor into total compensation for teachers.

Cost of Living

Numbers on paper only tell part of the story. The other part is what those dollars actually buy you in the Houston area.

Median home prices in the greater Houston area hover around $300,000. With a conventional mortgage at current rates, that’s a monthly payment somewhere around $1,800 to $2,000 after taxes and insurance. Add groceries, utilities, childcare, and a car payment, and a teacher taking home $37.64/hr on a 187-day contract is not living comfortably. They are managing.

It has also been getting worse. Since the last major allotment increase in 2019, inflation has eroded purchasing power by nearly 20%. Teacher salaries did not keep pace. We are asking people with college degrees to do one of the most important jobs in our community and paying them less in real terms than we did a decade ago.

This is not sustainable, and it is a big reason why the pipeline data we looked at earlier should concern every parent in this district.

Closing / TLDR

When someone runs as a candidate for your school board, they will likely talk a big game about supporting teachers (I am one of them). The truth is that there is very little a school board can do to pay teachers more money, BUT they absolutely do have the ability to find money for retention bonuses and improve benefits such as providing resources (e.g., adding paraprofessionals), choosing instructional materials they love, or reducing bureaucratic policies that stifle their ability to do their jobs.

However, the most important thing a school board does is provide leadership that builds a culture of support within the district, and that is honestly the most important benefit that teachers and district staff need today.

If you read this entire thing then consider yourself more informed about how teachers are paid. If you skipped down here, don’t worry, here is a quick summary:

• Teachers are skilled professionals with college degrees doing one of the most important jobs in the community, and they are being paid less in real terms than they were a decade ago.

• Their contracts are based on working a certain number of days per year, although that contract is not always guaranteed to be renewed the following school year.

• Teacher pay is set by a salary schedule. The gap between a brand-new teacher and one with 30+ years of experience is only $15,000 per year.

• Teachers with advanced credentials and years of experience are still taking home modest hourly wages after taxes, retirement, and insurance.

• The teacher pipeline is drying up. Direct entry into teaching has dropped 41% over 10 years, and use of uncertified teachers has risen 403%.

• School districts have almost no independent ability to raise teacher pay. They are boxed in by state tax compression, recapture, and a per-student allotment the legislature raised by just $55 in the last session.

• The main levers a district does control are retention bonuses funded through reserves and investments, improved benefits, and the culture leadership creates inside the district.

• If you want teachers to be paid more, the pressure needs to go to the Texas Legislature, not just your local school board.

Stay tuned for Part 2 in this series: Why Texas is Losing its Teacher Pipeline

Thanks for reading.

If there is one topic about public schools that seems to unite everyone, it is that of proper student discipline. Although there may be a difference in opinions of how to resolve discipline issues, everyone appears to recognize that there is a problem. Whether it is with bullying, fighting, disrupting classrooms, destroying bathrooms, or wild kids on the bus, we can see that issues are persistent and difficult to resolve year to year.

A common perception is that schools are not doing enough to protect children, and blame often lands upon teachers, administrators, and ultimately school boards.

“Why will the school district not do anything about my child being bullied?!

Why is the child that attacked my student back in class the next day?!

Why is my child being targeted when other children get a free pass?!

This perception can even be different from school to school, as you may have stronger teachers or more experienced administrators able to work through the most difficult challenges.

“My child never had these issues at elementary school, but in middle school they have this other principal, and they do not care about my child.”

Ultimately, we all need to recognize that these little humans are often emotional rollercoasters, and as they grow their personalities can often develop to occasionally surprise us. Sometimes they just make mistakes and need a little direction.

However, when it is your child receiving the negative end of bullying or physical attacks, the issue can quickly become very personal, demanding immediate action by the school.

In this post we are going to break down why discipline is seemingly difficult for our Texas public schools to manage, as well as strategies we could look to for improving them at the district level (where possible).

Before we proceed, let’s first discuss the human factors related to schools disciplining children from the parent’s perspective.

No, not my kid?!

I had a chance to speak with a few school administrators, both former and current. There were a few common themes on this topic.

As it relates to discipline, schools must frequently walk a fine line of being open and fair, while also protecting children that require extra care. As in, all the rules must apply fairly to students based on the code of conduct, but a certain population of students are protected by state and federal law that prevents the school from taking certain actions (e.g., You can’t kick certain children out of school for misbehaving).

Discipline options are restricted by law.

Further, some parents may not believe that their child is the one being disruptive or the bully making another child miserable. Perhaps these parents do not trust teachers or administrators (or the school system itself), or they simply have never seen their child act in disruptive ways. We should also admit that some parents refuse to see fault in their children, perhaps because it reflects negatively upon them as a parent. In rare cases parents may simply not care about their child’s behavior and see it as a problem for the school district to resolve.

Discipline is personal to those impacted, to those being disruptive and those being disrupted in classrooms.

Lastly, when a student is impacted physically or mentally by another student, a parent may feel they are not heard or treated fairly because the school will not divulge to them which punishment the other student is facing. When the other student shows up to school three days later, it reinforces that belief.

Discipline can appear to not be enforced, even though the school is likely following the law and local policy.

As usual, these write-ups are long. If needed, there is a TLDR summary at the bottom if you need to maintain your sanity.

The Education Legal Maze

In researching for this post, I went down several rabbit holes on which federal and state laws are related to student discipline. Here is a quick list, which is most definitely incomplete. Each one has a summary of how they impact student discipline.

Federal

In chronological order

• Title VI of the Civil Rights Act - 1964

  • Prohibited discipline policies that have disparate impact on protected groups

  • Schools must ensure discipline policies don't discriminate based on race/national origin

  • Requires documentation showing discipline is administered fairly

• Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) - 1965

  • Equal access to education through funding school districts with higher percentages of low-income families

  • Added support through funding professional development

• Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) - 1965, 2001, 2015

  • Original federal laws governing K-12 education, reauthorized in 2001 as ‘No Child Left Behind’, then again as ESSA in 2015

  • Requires states to collect/report school discipline data

  • Encourages states to support schools in reducing disciplinary removals

  • Includes provisions about school climate and safety

• Title IX of the Education Amendments - 1972

  • Requires specific procedures for handling sexual harassment/assault allegations

  • Mandates equal treatment regardless of sex/gender in discipline

  • Recent updates have changed how schools must handle Title IX investigations and disciplinary proceedings

• Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act - 1973

  • Protects students with disabilities from discrimination

  • Requires schools to provide accommodations and evaluate if behavior issues stem from disabilities

  • Similar protections to IDEA but for students who don't qualify for special education

• Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) - 1974

  • Governs how schools can share disciplinary records

  • Affects how schools can notify parents/community about incidents

  • Limits information sharing between schools about student discipline history

• Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) - 1975

  • Originally called Education for All Handicapped Children Act

  • Requires schools to determine if misbehavior is a manifestation of a student's disability

  • If behavior is disability-related, the school generally cannot remove the student for more than 10 days without providing services

  • Schools must continue providing education services even if student is removed

  • Requires positive behavioral interventions before more restrictive discipline

• McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act - 1987, 2001

  • Provides additional protections for homeless students

  • Schools must consider impact of homelessness on behavior

  • Requires transportation and educational continuity even during disciplinary periods

• Gun-Free Schools Act - 1994

  • Requires one-year expulsion for students bringing firearms to school

  • Affects how schools handle weapons-related incidents

Texas State Law

• Texas Education Code

  • Chapter 25: Admission, attendance, and school safety

  • Chapter 26: Parental rights in discipline

  • Chapter 37: Student Discipline and School Safety ← The most relevant1

  • Chapter 38: Health and safety requirements impacting discipline

• Texas Penal Code

  • Chapter 22: Defines assault and related offenses that require mandatory DAEP/expulsion

  • Chapter 37: Details weapons violations that impact school discipline

  • Chapter 48: Covers conduct constituting disruption of classes/activities

• Texas Family Code

  • Chapter 51-54: Outlines juvenile justice system interaction with schools

  • Chapter 65: Covers truancy proceedings and requirements

  • Sets requirements for parent notification/involvement in discipline

• Texas Administrative Code (TAC)

  • Chapter 89: Special education requirements including discipline

  • Chapter 103: Safe schools requirements

  • Chapter 129: Student attendance and truancy standards

• Texas Health & Safety Code

  • Chapter 161: Tobacco/vaping restrictions and discipline

  • Chapter 481: Drug-free zones and related discipline requirements

  • Chapter 485: Inhalant abuse provisions affecting schools

• Texas Government Code

  • Chapter 411: School safety requirements

  • Chapter 772: School safety funding/requirements

At the core of all of these laws, they generally require schools to do the following:

1. Use student removals as a last resort

2. Implement progressive discipline approaches first

3. Maintain educational access even during disciplinary periods

4. Follow detailed procedures, especially for students with disabilities

Discipline Escalation

Understanding there are many laws around student discipline, let’s now break down the most common steps for how discipline is applied in schools.

We need to note that although schools must follow Texas and federal laws, not every school district utilizes all the tools at their disposal due to lack of support staff, facilities, or other factors that may impact their ability to handle certain behavioral incidents. Some districts may simply not have a great discipline management plan.

Classroom Discipline

Discipline typically begins in the classroom where teachers apply interventions for disruptive behavior. Those familiar with this may understand the Multi-tiered System of Supports (MTSS), which is a “framework that encompasses supports for the whole child, including academics, behavior, mental health and wellness.” There are multiple tiers within the MTSS, which is notable but not important for our discussion here.

Common steps for teachers can include the following when a student is disruptive:

• Redirection and verbal warnings

• Parent contact (email, phone call, or conference)

• Classroom consequences (seat changes, loss of privileges, reteaching expectations)

• Teacher documentation of behavior patterns

• Behavior contracts or improvement plans

Once these options have been exhausted by the teacher, it then means a discipline referral is typically made. This means the issue moves from the teacher’s domain and to the local campus administration (i.e., Assistant Principals, Principal).

Note that certain types of behavior or incidents go directly to administrators, and in serious situations, law enforcement.

Local Admin Discipline

Through a referral, administrators then have their process, which generally includes the following:

• Review the referral and any evidence

• Interview the student and witnesses/teacher

• (Where applicable) Determine the discipline level (e.g., Level 1-4)2

• Apply consequences consistent with the Student Code of Conduct

• Notify parents as required

Note that by Texas law, teachers also have the right to request a student be removed from a class under the following options:

• Informal removal — student cool-down, brief administrative intervention

• Formal removal — triggers a Placement Review Committee if the teacher requests the student not return

Suspension

Based on all of these factors, if the behavior continues, the next step is for In-School Suspension (ISS). This is where a student remains on campus but is isolated from their peers. Their teachers must still provide their coursework for them to complete, parents are sent a notice, and ISS can last indefinitely with review every 10 days (based on latest Texas HB6 2025).

If ISS is not productive and results in repeated misconduct, there is then Out-of-School Suspension (OSS). This is where the student must serve their suspension at a separate location other than the school, and there is a maximum of three days per incident. The teacher still provides the coursework, and OSS can only be enforced if a due process conference is held beforehand with the parent/guardian.

OSS generally means the student is sent home or to a district-designated off-campus location.

Alternative Education Programs

If all else fails, one of the last-ditch efforts to correct behavior is to place a student into a Disciplinary Alternative Education Program (DAEP). There are two types of DAEP placements:

• Mandatory — required by law for certain offenses (e.g., drug possession, assault causing bodily injury, terroristic threat)

• Permissive — allowed for persistent misbehavior or serious violations not requiring expulsion

DAEP also has several requirements. This includes a formal conference with a notice to parents, a defined length of placement, periodic reviews for long-term assignments, and their original teachers must still send coursework to the student.

The latest Texas law changes allow DAEP to be enforced remotely via virtual school.

Expulsion and JJAEP

When serious offenses occur, these can require expulsion from the district and assignment to a Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program (JJAEP). This can include offenses such as possessing a firearm at school, aggravated assault, certain felony offenses, or serious drug or weapons violations.

JJAEP adds a different level of complexity we won’t expand upon here, but it requires the school district to still perform certain administrative actions or meet academic responsibilities for the student, even as they are now under the supervision of the county.

Thoughts on Process

After reading through all the different ways students can face disciplinary actions, we can see how long or difficult these processes can take. Now keep in mind that all of these actions must be well documented by school staff, that they must all follow strict due process aligned with law and local policy, that certain actions have legal thresholds that must be met before serious consequences be delivered, and that none of these are quick or immediate.

Also consider that students with disabilities have further protections. For example, if you have an autistic child in a classroom, and they are continuously disrupting class, there are limited options for staff to use for resolution. This is when having extra staff resources, such as paraprofessionals or behavioral coaches, becomes vital, as they can assist with outbursts or when these students need special care.

Lastly, all of these actions are kept confidential to the student and parents specific to the child being disciplined. For example, if your child is being bullied in school, and the school puts the bullying student through the discipline process, the school is not allowed to give you the information related to their discipline. It may leave you in the dark, but it does not mean the school is not doing what it is required to.

Now that we are familiar with relevant laws and processes, let’s move on to understanding the different methods of discipline.

Punitive vs Alternative Discipline

This is often the most hotly debated topic - is it better to punish children directly (e.g., suspension, corporal punishment, expulsion, etc.) to resolve short-term compliance and act as future deterrent? Or is it better to use alternative methods that includes behavioral intervention, social-emotional learning, trauma-informed approaches, or restorative justice?3 Should it be a mix?

I will start with my own anecdotal experience, growing up in the 90s in a small East Texas town that practiced corporal punishment.

Corporal Punishment

It may seem odd to discuss this in 2026, but I figure everyone should know how it works. Even if you see corporal punishment as child abuse, there are many others, especially in Texas, that see it is a valid form of discipline.

On occasion, I received the bad end of the coach’s paddle at school (there’s no good end either). If you’re not sure what these paddles are, jump on YouTube and search for “Dazed and Confused paddle scene” to get an idea. You don’t forget them.

Essentially, certain discipline levels required corporal punishment that included getting “a lick” or two from the paddle, often distributed by coaches or the Ag teacher.

The truth is that corporal punishment seems to have an interesting history in Texas schools, and as far as I’m aware there are still school districts that practice it today. It still requires permission from parents, and those that sign the form likely do so gladly because of their own upbringing.

Texas is one of 20 states that still allows the practice in general, and school districts that allow corporal punishment by policy are typically found in rural areas. You can find your local school district’s policy by looking for local policy code FO (Student Discipline).4

I can say two things about corporal punishment: It was somewhat effective for me as a young man, but it was also a rite of passage that had us laughing at receiving a paddling more than worrying about it. Sending me to ISS would have been more effective, as I would not have been able to laugh about it with my friends.

Corporal punishment comes with all kinds of legal risks for schools and is generally seen as an archaic form of punishment. Yet there are still those who support it, including certain current school board trustees.

I would never support such an idea in our public schools.

Suspension & Expulsion

The benefit of using suspension or expulsion is that it removes the offending student out of disrupting classrooms. The downside is that the student being disciplined loses instructional time, which they’ll rarely recover, which can lead to lower grades, more struggles to catch-up, social & emotional effects, and a much higher risk of dropout.

Removing students may also not teach replacement behaviors, so when they return from suspension they may return with the same or worse behavior because the root cause was not addressed. We could debate whose responsibility it is to correct these behaviors, the parents versus schools, but let’s skip that for now.

One key item is that suspension and expulsion are documented as part of the student’s record, which can impact future college admission, scholarship eligibility, or even future employment.

However, if school suspension is kept within the school (i.e. ISS), and the student is kept within a structured environment where they can continue learning, then it lowers the negative impacts. This coupled with increased behavioral interventions and counseling can address the underlying social-emotional challenges or help build conflict resolution skills.

This is where success or failure of school discipline policy is directly impacted by the number of professionals available. Having fewer counselors not only impacts mental health support in schools, but also student discipline resolution.

All of this is coupled with engagement of the student’s parents or guardians. Without positive reinforcement from home, changing behaviors at schools becomes very difficult.

Intervention

The other option, as compared to punitive disciplinary actions, is that of intervention. This can include the following:

Behavior Contracts or Agreements – Formal agreements outlining expected behavior with support and accountability.
Example: A student struggling with attendance signs a contract with teachers and counselors to meet weekly goals for class participation, which can be accompanied with rewards.

Counseling or Social-Emotional Support – Individual or group sessions to address underlying issues.
Example: A student with anger management challenges meets with a school counselor weekly.

Peer Mediation / Conflict Resolution Programs – Students are trained to help resolve disputes constructively.
Example: Two students involved in a fight participate in a mediation session guided by trained peer mediators.

Mentoring Programs – Pairing students with adult or peer mentors for guidance and support.
Example: A student with repeated behavioral issues is paired with a teacher or mentor who checks in daily and helps set goals.

In-School Intervention Programs – Structured settings where students remain in school while addressing behavior. This is different than In-School Suspension, which is focused on consequence rather than growth.
Example: Students removed from regular classes attend a support room for reflection, tutoring, and skills-building.

Local Implementation

Our local school district, Conroe ISD, has been discussing student discipline off and on for many years (as do all districts). Many of the public conversations happen in Facebook group posts, but on occasion school boards such as ours discuss discipline and any changes that should be made to policies that impact how discipline is applied to students.

In April 2023, a presentation was given on student discipline within the district; the audio is terrible so turn it up:

You can scroll through the slide deck here: Student Behavior, Student Discipline, and Multi-Tiered Systems of Support

Added to the challenges of discipline, Conroe ISD has also experienced an incredible amount of district growth within a short amount of time. We reviewed this growth during the Community Collaborative meetings, which you can save for later:

This increase in students has forced the district to expand by building new schools, requiring a near $2 billion bond in 2023.5 The number of teachers and resources needed has skyrocketed, during a time when teachers are leaving the profession in droves, partly because of a lack of support in areas like discipline.

This means our schools are at overcapacity while new schools get built, understaffed when teachers continue to call it quits, underfunded as Texas restricts funds we desperately need to pay for teachers and resources, all which can contribute to an increasingly dangerous place for staff and students.

Everything we have reviewed so far barely scratches the surface of how complicated discipline is in practice. Every teacher and administrator can tell you how difficult it can be to correct a child’s behavior, especially when there is limited support at the child’s home or a disincentive to write referrals.

We could spend another 4,000 words on going through how discipline does or does not work depending on the circumstances of the child. Instead, let’s move on to where there may be opportunities to improve.

Opportunities to Improve

With everything we have reviewed so far, how can we improve student discipline to be more effective?

The obvious answer is to get more staff into classrooms and schools. We need more behavioral coaches and related paraprofessionals, more counselors, and more teachers to offload the sizes of classrooms.

That increase in labor obviously requires more funding, which for Texas means more priority from legislature. We are still waiting on comprehensive reforms in this area, unfortunately.

In 2025, the 89th Texas Legislature did pass House Bill 6, which enacted significant changes to school discipline including allowing teachers to remove students for unruly behavior, altering special education disciplinary rules, and prohibiting certain TEA funding penalties for when removing students.

That bill also added funding to expand telehealth service access for schools via the Texas Child Health Access through Telemedicine (TCHATT), allowing schools to provide rapid, free teletherapy and psychiatric services to students with parental consent.

They did not, however, add funding to hire more counselors.

Training & Professional Development

Another common option is to make sure there are enough training or professional developments available for staff to earn Continuing Professional Education (CPE) credits, which can focus on classroom management, intervention strategies, and policy reinforcement.

These are already available to teachers across all school districts, but there is always opportunity to spotlight and prioritize these CPEs by the district administration or school board.

Data Collection

In Conroe ISD, each school has a Foundations team that focuses on data collection, local policies, and student engagement (to name a few tasks). Improving or aligning successful Foundation programs could be driven from a higher level to make sure all schools are working towards good discipline practices that follow the law and policy:

• Identify patterns and root causes – Track when, where, and how incidents occur to address environmental triggers like unsupervised areas or schedule pressures

• Enable early intervention – Flag students with repeated incidents so schools can implement counseling, mentoring, or behavior plans before problems escalate

• Ensure consistency and fairness – Compare disciplinary actions across campuses and staff to confirm similar behaviors receive similar responses

• Evaluate what actually works – Measure whether interventions, programs, or policy changes reduce behavioral incidents over time

• Guide resource and policy decisions – Use discipline trends to justify staffing needs (counselors, paraprofessionals) and refine district discipline policies

These obviously require staff to commit to data entry in order for the data analysis to occur. We already know staff time is very limited so this type of data collection may be difficult to achieve month to month and year to year. However, this type of data is extremely valuable for the district and school board to review and make decisions for where resources could be focused or advocated for.

Discipline Management Plan

One clear opportunity I see for our school district is to implement a proper Discipline Management Plan (DMP) as part of our Student Code of Conduct.

I like how Katy ISD incorporated their DMP as core to their Code of Conduct. They created ‘levels’ with specific discipline actions that occur based on what the student actually did, and they then provide disciplinary options based on those levels. It takes the guesswork out of how severe a particular behavior is and standardizes the consequences.

For example, bullying or cyberbullying can be in Level 2 or 3 based on how many times that activity occurred, which then determines the administrator directed options:

Here are the discipline options turned for easier reading (read from bottom up):

As I am not a school administrator, I cannot give a professional opinion on how well incorporating ‘levels’ into the DMP would work. What I can say is that as a parent I like that actions are defined and organized in a way that gives administrators options for carrying out discipline in schools. It should act more as a guidebook as well as a reference for parents to understand how serious certain behaviors are.

Early Intervention

With data collection and a discipline management plan in place, we can enable faster early intervention to make sure issues are addressed before they escalate. It would improve the already existing workflows such as:

• Behavior intervention teams that review repeat discipline referrals and coordinate support

• Behavior contracts or improvement plans for students showing early warning signs

• Counseling and social-emotional support to address underlying issues like stress, conflict, or trauma

• Mentoring or check-in/check-out programs where staff regularly monitor at-risk students

Opportunities Summary

To summarize these opportunities for improvement of student discipline in our school district:

Training and professional development equips teachers with the knowledge they need to do their jobs.

Data collection identifies problems to spotlight where issues are found.

A District Management Plan can set the rules clearly for school staff to follow and parents to understand how discipline is applied.

Early intervention is the mechanism that actually prevents escalation and improves safety.

Closing / TLDR

This was a long deep dive, and it only scratches the surface of how complex student discipline is in public schools. Teachers, administrators, counselors, and other staff have to manage these activities every day, and the students change each year. This means the work is literally never done, which may seem difficult to comprehend for those of us who do not work in schools.

The truth is that maintaining discipline so that students can learn requires a cohesive unit of staff at each campus. School culture is vital to this discussion, even though we did not discuss it here. This culture is built and developed from the top down, which includes both district administration and the school board itself.

AI Summary:

• Complex Legal Landscape: School discipline is governed by a dense web of federal laws (like IDEA, FERPA, and Title IX) and state codes that prioritize student rights, privacy, and keeping children in the classroom whenever possible.

• The Discipline Process: Misbehavior typically escalates from classroom interventions (redirection, parent contact) to campus administration (ISS, OSS) and, in serious cases, Alternative Education Programs like DAEP or JJAEP.

• Challenges in Conroe ISD: Rapid district growth, staffing shortages, and limited state funding create a difficult environment for maintaining consistent discipline while supporting teacher retention.

• Punitive vs. Interventionist: While traditional punishments like suspension remove disruptions, they can lead to learning gaps. Modern strategies focus on interventions such as restorative practices, behavior contracts, and mental health support to address root causes.

• Pathways to Improvement: Key opportunities for the district include adopting a standardized Discipline Management Plan (similar to Katy ISD’s level system), improving data collection to identify trends, and prioritizing early intervention and professional development.

Thanks for reading.

This article is part of a series connected to my run for the Conroe ISD Board of Trustees. I welcome you to follow me in this blog or at www.ryanforcisd.com.

As corporate America continues to grapple with how to handle the hype cycle around Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is both high hype and rapid cycle, there is an immediate need for public schools to implement policy and programs to support what will likely be a drastically different work environment in the next 10 years.

There are many, many articles and opinions on the path of AI and the future of humanity, but I have seen very few deep dives into how we prepare kids to utilize AI in a way that both supports their wellbeing and their prospects for a successful career.

In February 2026, Microsoft testified before the U.S. House Education & Workforce Subcommittee and provided interesting ideas that we will break down and expand in this post:

“Today, I will share insights we have gathered from teachers about their experiences, challenges, and needs as they integrate AI in education; outline the steps Microsoft and other organizations are taking to facilitate this transition; and recommend legislative approaches to help policymakers strengthen these efforts. These legislative approaches include supporting professional development for teachers; encouraging public-private partnerships; promoting AI literacy; providing guidance on responsible AI use; and supporting innovation.”

- Allyson Knox, Senior Director of Education and Workforce Policy at Microsoft

Building an AI-Ready America: Teaching in the AI age

Initial Thoughts

Before we get into the meat of how we incorporate AI learning into our public schools, there are some thoughts to consider.

Many people have tried to equate the birth of AI technology to the dotcom boom of the 90s or other major transformative technologies throughout history, but AI brings about a revolution of not just changing how we do work, but who is doing the work itself. We are essentially handing the keys to systems to be driven and managed by…other systems. White-collar jobs are being automated by AI agents (we’ll discuss these), and blue-collar jobs are in the crosshairs of robotics manufacturers.

Although it will be a very long time, if at all, before a robot will replace a pipeliner, plumber, or electrician, they will certainly be added into areas to augment repeated physical activities such as moving boxes, transporting packages, etc. Similarly, the counter at McDonald’s may be automated, but the burger-flipping messiness of the line cooks (and cleaning) seems nearly impossible to program into a robot - but don’t quote me on that.

The hard-to-grasp truth is that as parents we do not have the skillsets or foresight to help our kids understand just how different their jobs may be from ours.

In some ways, we’re flying blind on knowing the prospects for our kid’s future.

This is why we need to have these discussions now and begin implementing new AI education programs in our public schools as soon as possible, because the urgency is here.

In this article we will focus on where AI will impact the most, which is the common entry-level job roles that require computers and any common office roles or processes that AI will likely compete with.

We will not include the topics of art, music, or other areas that are now being dominated by AI. It is an entirely different discussion regarding human authenticity and originality in the arts, as compared to us worrying about how we make sure our kids will be able to find purposeful work that enables them to be productive members of society (and support themselves financially).1

The Impact of AI in Education

“Generative AI has become the fastest-spreading technology in human history, adopted at a pace that even the most seasoned technologists could scarcely imagine. This speed is breathtaking, but it also compels us to pause and ask, “Are we ready for what comes next?” AI’s promise is extraordinary. It can help solve problems that have challenged humanity for decades—improving health outcomes, advancing education, and unlocking new opportunities for economic growth. But, like every transformative technology before it, AI brings new questions and new responsibilities.”

Brad Smith, Microsoft Vice-Chair & President

In Microsoft’s testimony, they reported that daily use of AI by K-12 teachers increased by 58% within the last year, with 80% of teachers using AI in their daily roles or for school-related purposes.

However, one in three teachers reported a lack of confidence when using AI effectively and responsibly. The challenges focus in three main areas:

• AI literacy – Teachers want the skills, knowledge, and support to build AI literacy and critical thinking in their students;

• AI guardrails – Teachers want students to use AI responsibly and safely; and

• AI tools – Teachers want classroom-ready AI tools and opportunities to provide feedback that improve them.

Breaking this down for a public school district, there are quick items we can introduce to begin supporting these needs:

1. Implement AI support programs for teachers, such as Microsoft Elevate or Grow with Google’s AI for Educators. These courses should be utilized as continuing education courses to support teacher growth, learning, and confidence with AI systems.

2. Introduction of the National Academy for AI Instruction, a partnership between the major AI companies such as OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic with the American Federation of Teachers and the United Federation of Teachers. These are “train the trainer” model courses that would support tech coaches or teachers strong in AI to provide professional developments to other teachers, which they do every summer and throughout the school year.

These programs also have support for special education teachers.

Any AI-based training should include hours towards Continuing Professional Education (CPE) credits.

AI Literacy

As with other subjects in K-12 education, you need a good framework to support development of the subject. A framework for AI literacy is no different, which should support both teachers and students.

Luckily, there are already resources available for lawmakers and local policymakers like school boards to begin implementing proper AI literacy frameworks within their district:

• The AI Literacy Framework: Defines the “knowledge, skills, and attitudes students and educators need to understand, use, and critically evaluate AI in K-12 education.” You can download the framework directly here.

1. Teach AI Toolkit: Supports “education authorities, school leaders, and teachers in creating thoughtful guidance to help their communities realize the potential benefits of incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) in primary and secondary education while understanding and mitigating the potential risks.”

An obvious item of importance is to align any AI lessons with the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). This would be a task for school districts to manage but it is clear there are already appropriate TEKS where AI could be integrated. This includes the Technology Applications TEKS as a primer, but you could certainly use several others within English Language Arts and Reading (ELAR), Math, or Science. Similarly, the Digital Citizenship framework is appropriate in this space as well.

Let’s move on to looking at how AI is impacting the workforce and then where we can help students be prepared for a future in this new environment.

The Impact of AI in the Workforce

Apologies as I will be using tech jargon here.

I have worked in technology for nearly 20 years, and my primary roles have been more jack-of-all trades IT work. This includes everything from IT project management work to highly technical architecture roles. I have never been tied down to one IT specialty for too long as I have pushed for my career to break into new roles to expand my skills and provide value to my employer by being able to pivot where needed.

In comparison, many IT people get stuck in certain roles that they end up staying for too long, like being a Database Administrator, a Cloud Engineer, or your basic Business Analyst. There is nothing wrong with working in these roles, but my general career advice would be to diversify your knowledge so that you could perform any of those jobs. With the introduction of AI, these roles are now being automated or outsourced. This is because static IT roles eventually all change because of the evolution of technology, and AI is accelerating that change.

This is enabling companies to downsize their IT departments as one person can perform the work of an entire team when using AI, which has become the golden age for your small business IT worker.

There are many other specialties that have been impacted as well. For example, basic business analysis is becoming much easier to streamline. You can now open an Excel spreadsheet, add an AI plug-in, and give it a task like, “Analyze the last 10 years of crude oil feedstock pricing and estimate trends for the next two years.” It will then create the spreadsheet for you. You can then use AI to build a PowerPoint using that data.

Business analysis and presentation building are already being automated.

The next stage of this technology is to now build it at scale, which is why I need to introduce you to AI agents.

AI Agents

I want you to imagine that there are 100 people that work in a finance department, and their role is to process invoices and payments (AR/AP) and perform basic data entry. They work in an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system like SAP. Their daily work consists of clicking buttons, using their business knowledge and context to make decisions on how invoices and payments are processed.

This is an obvious target for an AI agent, which is a purpose-built AI service. This AI agent/service has one job or many, depending on how you build it.

It runs by itself.

You instruct the AI agent that once a day you want it to process pending invoices or payments and then email a report once completed. You provide it with context for what its purpose is, referencing your internal processes and procedures, and give it the steps it needs to follow to complete its tasks.

You now have an AI “worker” that can use the context you have given it to process invoices.

As AI is known to be wrong on occasion, it requires checks and balances. Although this is where a human could fit, the method of thought is that you can create another AI agent to audit the first worker.

You can then build a third AI agent to handle special transactions, to verify financial institutions, to handle customer calls or other support needs, or to create reports to send to managers.

In theory, you can essentially build as many agents as you need. Your 100-person department can essentially be performed by 10 people and a dozen AI agents.

So where do humans fit in this scenario?

We still need people to provide oversight, governance, error handling, and management of other risks where AI agents can go wrong. In our invoice processing example, this could be human verification to validate changes to banking information or other legal requirements. But the reason I am explaining this is to help you understand how AI enables you to do much, much more with far fewer humans.

The other major downside here is that some of these roles, such as entry-level analyst or data entry jobs, are now moving towards being fully automated. That first job into corporate America may no longer be available for young adults graduating high school or college.

To close on this topic, this shift applies across almost any other industry, impacting professions like lawyers, doctors, sales, marketing, customer service, bookkeepers, and so on. If your job includes using a computer, your role could be impacted by AI.

Side note:
I want to be clear for those reading this and work in these types of job roles - I am not trying to alarm you, but I truly hope you are paying attention. Large companies are already moving towards these models, and small to medium businesses will eventually have cost models to support this transition as well. You need to learn how these things work, and soon.

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Preparing Students for Working with AI

How do we prepare students to enter a workforce where entry-level jobs are being automated, blocking them from learning on the job and gaining work experience?

There are still many opportunities in the service and hospitality industries, the trades, and other roles that still require hands-on activities where robots or AI may not (yet) be appropriate. Those industries may still require heavy us of AI tools, meaning that at a minimum students should learn how to interact with AI.

But if a career requires use of a computer where AI must be used or as a major part of their daily work, then how do we train them to use it to its full potential?

We first begin by supporting teachers, giving them the resources they need to understand AI such as the toolkits and continuing education reviewed earlier. Strong teachers enable strong student growth.

We then need our school district, through our Board of Trustees, to adopt Board policies regarding AI, which could include, but not limited to, the following areas:

• Acceptable Use and Academic Integrity - Defines appropriate AI use versus academic dishonesty, expectations, and other disclosures.

• Data Privacy and Student Protection - Ensures AI tools comply with FERPA and any other federal or state laws required for protecting student data. This may include maintaining an approved vendor list and requiring data privacy assessments before certain AI tools are adopted.

• Equity and Access - Addresses the risk-related opportunity gaps introduced by AI, especially for those who lack home internet or devices. This is not unlike general equity and access concerns related to educational content provided via digital devices or over the internet.

• Use of AI with Consequential Decisions - AI should not be used as the sole basis in decision making that significantly affects students, such as academic placement, disciplinary action, special ed eligibility, etc.

• Curriculum and Staff Development - Requires that AI literacy be integrated across subjects and offers ongoing professional development for teachers.

Other policy items could include cybersecurity, parental transparency or notifications, and general governance and accountability. There is a lot to consider with an AI policy in a public school district.

One of the difficult areas will be deciding which AI products to adopt within the school district. Whereas many companies are adopting Microsoft Copilot or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, it may make more sense for schools to adopt Google Gemini as they can already be incorporated into the school’s existing Google account management and licensing.

It may also be necessary for the school to attempt to block all other AI apps so that school data is only shared with the primary AI tool and not others like China’s DeepSeek or other potentially malicious AI apps.2

Classroom Learning

Now to the most important piece, which is how to support student growth with AI. It is vital that they learn to work with AI rather than using it as a simple question/response app, like a common search engine.

The workforce doesn’t just need people who can use AI tools; it needs people who can recognize when AI is wrong, when it is biased or “hallucinating”, and when a human decision is still required. Schools that build those habits early are giving students a genuine advantage, in my opinion.

Here are ideas where teachers can incorporate AI into their lessons, understanding that they will need to work through trial and error on which strategies are the most effective when using their AI framework and toolkits:

• Writing - Students draft an essay on their own and then paste it into AI to suggest improvements. The assignment isn’t the essay; it’s the reflecting and explanation of how their essay can be better. It’s a task to teach revision skills and critical thinking, getting direct feedback on their work for improvement.

• Reading - Students read a novel or short story and then ask AI to give them a summary of a scene or character from that story. The goal is to compare the AI version to what the student would have written and discuss with the class what AI missed about the theme, tone, or character motivation. It helps them understand AI’s responses may not always reflect truth or understanding, but the exercise of discussing something with AI is a great reflection tool. It can also reveal other perspectives they may have not considered. The goal is for them to bounce ideas off the AI rather than ask for a definitive answer.

• Math - When students get an answer wrong on a math problem, they ask AI to explain the concept behind it rather than giving them the correct answer. They then have to write the solution in their own words. Generally, we want AI to act more like a tutor than a problem solver. Teaching students how to properly ask (i.e., prompt) the AI for the “how” rather than the “what” is key for their learning.

There are numerous other ideas for science, social studies, or other topics where AI can be used in all kinds of ways other than “give me the answer”, and that is what we are needing students to learn.

Career & Technical Education (CTE)

CTE programs are very popular within Texas school districts today, and our local district already has Cybersecurity, Web Development, and Programming courses. It could absolutely use an AI-specific course that could teach various AI concepts:

• Data science and how Large Language Models (LLMs) function

• Building your own GPTs using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) methods

• AI agent management

These concepts may sound complex for your average teacher, but they can certainly be broken down for easier learning, or they could be supported through partnerships with local organizations.

Local Programs

There are local student-focused programs, such as the Education for Tomorrow Alliance (EfTA), that provides career, leadership, and STEM learning opportunities via student events, science fairs and competitions, in-person career panel interviews, or online webinars.

These types of programs are perfect for sharing real-world knowledge of how AI is being used within the workforce today and how students can begin learning to use it now.

Closing

We reviewed where AI is having an impact on education and how school districts can begin the introduction of frameworks and toolkits to enable teachers to learn and responsibly use AI in their classrooms. We then looked at how AI is impacting workers and entry-level positions in corporate America, and then using that knowledge, ended with strategies for incorporating AI learning into schools.

These tasks are not simple, nor are they quick to implement. It will take dedicated people who are willing to put in the work to help grow these programs within our public schools.

As a candidate for a position on the Conroe ISD school board, I welcome your engagement on this topic, whether in support or against. You can follow my campaign at www.ryanforcisd.com.

Thanks for reading.

Those who follow me know my writing has focused on our local school district for several years now. My articles have had 20,000 reads over the last year, which have spanned topics around HOA, MUDs, and school boards, but those about the school district have received the most interest by far.

People care about public education.

In Texas, we have seen a hard shift in policy around public schools, both at the state and local school district levels. Our school district, Conroe ISD, is within the “reddest” county in Texas, and has been a front-row seat to many of the major changes seen in the news.

This includes implementation of gender policies before it was mandated by Texas law or more recent changes that punish teachers for making “unpatriotic or anti-American sentiments”, something not defined in law.1

As a parent of three kids in this school district, these types of changes have concerned me deeply. Not necessarily because of the changes themselves,2 but the insertion of political party platforms within our public schools that do not prioritize student success or wellbeing. Although this is nothing new, as we know through history with Texas icons like the Gabler Family, the impact of these recent policy changes, both existing and potential, cannot be overstated:

These shifts are not abstract. They are shaping the daily experience of our students, teachers, and families.

Prologue

One thing I truly enjoy is trying to understand how things work. It is probably why my career in IT has been a successful one, in that I focus very hard to get to the core of an issue and then work towards rapidly solving it. I have also been an effective project manager, running large-scale technical projects across the globe to deploy systems and controls, many times doing both the project and technical work together.3

I also have a rather odd attention to detail, and mixed with being able to type 120 words per minute, I can translate ideas to a keyboard rather quickly. The wife (Denise), who taught 5th and 6th grade for 12 years, thinks I missed an important diagnosis somewhere. I think it’s my superpower.

After we had children and built our first home, I stumbled into our neighborhood’s HOA to work as the IT & Communications guy. 12 years later and I’ve built up a decent resume of Board leadership experience.

I have been on our Municipal Utility District (MUD) board for eight years, and I am currently President of the board. I have also been on two different HOA boards over the last 10 years, currently (also) President of our HOA. Yes, I am President of two boards at the moment.

Along the way, Denise left the teaching profession to save her mental health, and this, in a way, broke something in both my heart and brain. The person I loved the most was giving up something she was always meant to do.

The question then presented itself, “Why did this happen, and can we fix it?”

Thus began my venture down the rabbit hole of Texas school districts, and namely Conroe ISD. It has now been five years since I first began volunteering, writing, and paying attention to our school district in a meaningful way. It has not been pretty.

School districts are complex, and most people have no idea how they work behind the scenes.

Who can blame them?

Parents rarely have the time to keep up with their kid’s classroom, much less the technical policy changes implemented across the entire school district.

Writing is Thinking

With years of being involved in our HOA and MUD boards, I already had an understanding of public finance, open meetings, Robert’s Rules, and much of Texas law related to MUDs or topics like homeowner’s rights.

Laws around public schools takes that complexity to 100.

The only way I could consume these topics was to begin writing about them, as writing is a great way to think about issues at a deeper level. It forces you to research how things work, and if you go back far enough you can get a general understanding of why things are the way they are.

If you are then able to explain a topic to lay person on their level, then you have succeeded in understanding and sharing that knowledge. We do this all the time in IT, and it is often a common saying for IT workers that “much of my job is explaining technical systems to non-technical people.”

Through the course of my writing and volunteering, I have spent hundreds of hours consuming school district policy and history. I had multiple sit-downs and phone calls with our school district’s previous Superintendent, Dr. Null. He would breakdown certain topics with me, explaining where core issues began from, and he even let me borrow a few books to dive deeper.

I spent hours talking with district administrators, peppering them with questions via email and on the phone, trying to get to the core reasoning behind why common challenges remain in public schools, even across decades.

Progression

This ultimately led me to a troubling conclusion: There are real solutions to solve core problems in our school districts, but there are not enough people in positions of power who are willing to implement them.

Mind you, these positions of power are often at the state and federal levels rather than the local school board, as funding mechanisms for public schools was taken away from local taxpayers and instead put in a fund managed by politicians repeatedly seeking reelection.

Yet, school boards are key drivers of local priorities and school culture, and instead too many board trustees today are focused on one thing: themselves.

They want to make an impact in a public way. They want to be liked, to be praised, to drive a cause they are part of, or (as we’ve seen recently) launch their political career. They fail to understand the core reason we have school boards in the first place, which is to improve student outcomes.

Student outcomes are what kids know and what they can do.

Please forgive me, I need to rant for a moment.

Implementing a policy on gender identity does not improve student outcomes. Telling teachers they can’t use pronouns or have “unpatriotic sentiments” isn’t going to elevate test scores.

Everything a school board does based around its fiduciary duty are all in support of improving student outcomes. Approving the budget, setting curriculum, hiring the Superintendent, policy governance - these are all parts of the core mission that is to improve what students know and can do.

From AJ Crabill’s Great On Their Behalf:

“School systems exist to improve student outcomes. That is the only reason for which school systems exist. School systems do not exist to have great buildings, have happy parents, have balanced budgets, have satisfied teachers, provide student lunches, provide employment in the county/city, or anything else. Those are all means -- and incredibly important and valuable means at that -- but none of them are the ends; none of those are why we have school systems. They are all inputs, not outcomes. None of those are measures of what students know or are able to do. School systems exist for one reason and one reason only: to improve student outcomes.”

We can clearly see where the opportunities are. Now we just need to find the focus. But how?

If you go watch the last several months of Conroe ISD school board meetings, what will you see? Everything except updates on the district’s goals or reporting on student outcomes.

You might find a few workshops scattered throughout the year where the district admin briefs the board on their progress, but that’s it.

If you need your eyes to glaze over, I want you to go deep dive the CISD District Improvement Plan, which is published every year. If you want to see where the actual work is done, go give that a read. Here is an example:

Here are that goal’s strategies:

This is my main complaint with school boards today. As they spend hours on construction updates, curriculum debates, or creating policy based on political party platforms, they are completely ignoring the detailed level of planning that our district staff are working on every day.

Literally every single board meeting should have an update regarding progress towards the district meeting its goals to improve student outcomes, and they simply do not.

Their priorities are platitudes.

“Protect our kids”

Many school board campaigns run on slogans like, “We will fight for our kids”, “We will get bad books out of libraries”, or “We will rid indoctrination out of classrooms.” Okay…how?

Every time a campaign tells you they want to do something, I want you to ask them, “How?” Because this is where the rubber meets the road.

You want to protect children? Great! Are you going to overhaul the student discipline policy? Are you going to spend the hours it will take offline to review process and procedure with district staff to find a way to make sure children are safe at schools? Are you going to collaborate with the district attorney to make sure everything falls within the law?

You want to improve test scores? Awesome! Which ones? Are you going to look at introducing after-school tutoring programs or expand dual-language immersion that has proven results in other districts?

You want kids to have real-world skills when they graduate? Amazing! Are you going to deep dive the requirements for expanding CTE programs across high schools or enable high schoolers to earn more college credits before graduation?

You believe AI is the future and we need to prepare? Let’s go! Are you going to research and partner with support organizations to implement AI ethics & literacy initiatives? Are you going to prioritize creating policy and supporting both student’s and teacher’s needs regarding development of programs that train our students on AI concepts?

The list goes on and on, but it requires board trustees to actually do work and not waste hours of public meetings on meaningless changes that have little to no impact on student outcomes.

I’m done ranting; sorry about that.

Running for Board

With my previous board experience, volunteer efforts, extensive writing on the issues, and realization that our district’s focus is clearly not on a positive trajectory, I decided that I would give it a go to run for school board.

I created a website, went through the process to obtain an IRS EIN, submitted my Treasurer Appointment to the school district and had it returned with a stamp, opened a small business account with a local bank, setup my donation account, then posted my announcement on Facebook.4

Here are the hard truths for a campaign such as ours:

I am not part of any political party. In an era when being on a MOCO (Montgomery County) conservative voting guide is a make-or-break scenario for winning, it becomes difficult to imagine a scenario where we can win without a significant movement behind us by the time October gets here.

We will be going up against two slates of candidates, plus others that join in. As the Tea Party vs non-Tea Party MOCO “war” rages on, we will likely see the three “Mama Bear” candidates (backed by the Tea Party), the three “Protect CISD” candidates (backed by non-Tea Party Republicans), myself, and a few others I believe will join in. It’s going to be crowded.

We also will not have large political PAC dollars funding a consulting group to manage our campaign.

This means everything we do will be driven by local support.

Our Campaign

Within the first week of announcing our campaign we received $500 in donations, about 20 volunteers, and countless comments of support online. This may be small, but not bad for February.

I also met with other candidates, various supporters, and I spoke at the February Board Meeting during public comment.

We launched a Jira board and have built out an extensive project plan, and we are mapping out our content schedule for the months ahead.

Our campaign will focus on the following key items:

• Student outcomes, improving teacher wellness and retention, rebuilding trust through transparent governance, and introducing modern technology strategies (i.e., AI) as opportunities for success.

• We will not get into flame wars with people online, nor will we be pulled into the MOCO “war” raging in the local party.

• Almost all of our content will be created to inform voters of how things work and where we see opportunities for improvement. Although I did air grievances in this post, all future activity will be geared towards education and spotlighting opportunities.

Future posts will also focus on how we are progressing through the campaign, and we will be sharing lessons learned along with next steps. Feedback is always welcome!

I welcome you to visit www.ryanforcisd.com for more info, or follow our socials:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ryanforcisd/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryantforcisd/

Thanks for reading.

In October 2025, the Conroe ISD Board of Trustees passed expansive changes to several Board policies, one of which was Local Board Policy EMB, Miscellaneous Instructional Policies: Teaching about Controversial Issues.

I previously wrote about a draft of these changes in May 2025, which we learned the edits were meant to align with Texas Education Code changes with the 89th Legislature. Instead, we found that many of the board policy changes went well beyond Texas law, as noted by the conservative Texas Scorecard site:

A few key notes from the article:

“Additionally, the board voted to restrict official classroom recognition of holidays and commemorative months to those established by state or federal law that also align with Texas and U.S. history. This standard prevents politically driven celebrations or events that fall outside those parameters from being promoted within district classrooms.”

“The policy also prohibits instruction or materials described as “unpatriotic or anti-American.” District legal counsel Kara Belew noted during the meeting that the terms aren’t defined in state law and would be interpreted and applied by the superintendent.”

Did I read that last line correctly?1

Fast forward to February 2026, and the school district has not shared anything about Black History Month and apparently informed its schools not to do so. The district then later corrected this in a follow-up with staff.

On February 5th, I received the following screenshot of an internal Conroe ISD email. I was able to verify it with several internal district staff, though they were not district administrators or school principals. As I have other articles and pending public information requests, I decided not to hunt this down with the district due to the time and money it now takes since their legal counsel changed.2

Black History Month (February 2026) District Guidance

Under Conroe ISD Board Policy EMB (LOCAL) and in alignment with S.B. 12 (89th Legislature), the District may formally recognize a state or federal holiday or commemorative month only when it is established through an official action such as a Presidential proclamation, Congressional law/resolution, Gubernatorial proclamation, or Texas legislative law/resolution.

Because Black History Month in Texas is recognized through an annual gubernatorial proclamation (rather than being permanently established in statute), the Conroe ISD can only formally recognize it in years when the proclamation is issued. At this time, we have not received or confirmed a current-year gubernatorial proclamation for Black History Month; therefore, Conroe ISD should not conduct campus or district activities that are formally promoted as a “Black History Month celebration/recognition” this year. If the Governor issues the proclamation, we will promptly update campuses. Campuses should continue to teach the history and cultural contributions of Black Americans as part of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) throughout the year.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out…

Screenshot ends

I then received this afterwards as a follow-up:

What this means is that if the government does not officially recognize a celebration of people, or the U.S. President or Texas Governor do not make a proclamation on it, Conroe ISD will not recognize those people either.

Before we get into the impact this policy will have, let’s do some due diligence.

Social Media Search

Prior to getting the correction from the district, I looked at the district’s social media posts and their most recent district newsletter for February. There is nothing there for Black History Month this year like in year’s past:

CISD February Newsletter

2.68MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

CISD Website Search:

CISD February 2025:

Here are the only posts I could find from individual schools for 2026; there may be others:

Anderson Elementary:

Houser Elementary:

It is yet to be seen what further communications will be sent regarding Black History Month from the district, but I assume something will be shared after more people become aware.

Policy Changes

Let’s look at the specific policy that caused this question to occur in the first place and how it may impact other commemorative months in the future.

Here is the relevant section of Local Board Policy EMB:

Holidays or Commemorative Months

In accordance with S.B. 12, (89th Texas Legislature), the District may acknowledge or teach the significance of state and federal holidays or commemorative months only if:

1. The federal or state holiday or commemorative month is established through a Presidential Proclamation, Congressional law or Resolution, Gubernatorial Proclamation, or Texas legislative law or Resolution; and

2. Fits into the themes of history and the stories of this state and the United States of America in accordance with the TEKS under Subchapter A, Chapter 28.

Now let’s look at the Texas law this is based upon, Senate Bill 12 (89th Legislature), emphasis mine:

SECTION 3. Subchapter A, Chapter 11, Education Code, is amended by adding Section 11.005 to read as follows: Sec. 11.005. PROHIBITION ON DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION DUTIES.

(a) In this section, “diversity, equity, and inclusion duties” means: (1) influencing hiring or employment practices with respect to race, sex, color, or ethnicity except as necessary to comply with state or federal antidiscrimination laws; (2) promoting differential treatment of or providing special benefits to individuals on the basis of race, color, or ethnicity; (3) developing or implementing policies, procedures, trainings, activities, or programs that reference race, color, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation except: (A) for the purpose of student recruitment efforts by colleges and universities designated as historically black colleges and universities in collaboration with school districts or open-enrollment charter schools; or (B) as necessary to comply with state or federal law; and (4) compelling, requiring, inducing, or soliciting any person to provide a diversity, equity, and inclusion statement or giving preferential consideration to any person based on the provision of a diversity, equity, and inclusion statement.

(b) Except as required by state or federal law, a school district: (1) may not assign diversity, equity, and inclusion duties to any person; and (2) shall prohibit a district employee, contractor, or volunteer from engaging in diversity, equity, and inclusion duties at, for, or on behalf of the district.

…skipping ahead

(e) Nothing in this section may be construed to:
(1) limit or prohibit a school district from contracting with historically underutilized businesses or businesses owned by members of a minority group or by women in accordance with applicable state law;

(2) limit or prohibit a school district from acknowledging or teaching the significance of state and federal holidays or commemorative months and how those holidays or months fit into the themes of history and the stories of this state and the United States of America in accordance with the essential knowledge and skills adopted under Subchapter A, Chapter 28;

(3) affect a student’s rights under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution or Section 8, Article I, Texas Constitution; (4) limit or prohibit a school district from analyzing school-based causes and taking steps to eliminate unlawful discriminatory practices as necessary to address achievement gaps and differentials described by Section 39.053; or…

Based on this, our school board approved a policy change that effectively allows them to ignore any commemorative month if it is not law or a government proclamation. They made this change specifically in conflict with item e-2 highlighted above.

Do you know what this means?

It is more than just Black History Month. It could include Women’s History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, or any other common celebration or recognition of the contributions and achievements of particular groups in U.S. history. If the political party in power does not wish to celebrate these groups, then our school district won’t either.

Student Impact

Recognizing commemorative months means more than just a post on social media. It includes activities that each school does to encourage students to learn about important history that we all share.

Go scroll this Facebook search to see what past activities are done during this time:

These are the kinds of activities that would be potentially restricted under this new policy change.

Greater Houston

Lastly, I decided to go look at other school districts in greater Houston that we often compare to. Here is a quick list of posts I found related to Black History Month this year, which all recognize and celebrate Black history:

Cy-Fair ISD: Link
Katy ISD: Link
Fort Bend ISD: Link
Spring Branch: Link

Closing

Our school board has passed dozens of major policy changes within the last six months, some of which go beyond Texas law requirements, but which all could have similar impacts to how we educate our children and celebrate our shared history.

We need to think really hard about the future we envision with our kid’s public education and what that means the next time we are asked to vote for people to represent our school district.

A special note we should recognize about Black History Month that is relevant for 2026 - it marks 100 years since the first national observance of Black history in the United States. Seems poorly timed for a public school district to attempt to ignore such a moment.

Read more about the 100-year commemoration here:

Thanks for reading.

This happens all the time with elected boards, including HOAs, school districts, MUDs, or other special districts. A board director resigns while in the middle of serving their elected term, and the board must take action to replace them. The replacement process can include calling for a special election or simply appointing a new person to complete that trustee’s term until the next election. Nine times out of ten, boards will appoint a new person rather than go through the election process.

Many people do not understand that boards can appoint people to public office when resignations occur. They often assume voters must elect them, but Texas law allows for appointments in these scenarios. Even if there are elections, they can be cancelled if they are uncontested (no opposing candidates in the race), allowing the board to save the time and money it takes to have an election.

Sec. 11.060. VACANCIES

(a) If a vacancy occurs on the board of trustees of an independent school district, the remaining trustees may fill the vacancy by appointment until the next trustee election.

(b) If the board is appointed by the governing body of a municipality, a trustee appointed by the governing body to fill a vacancy shall serve for the unexpired term.

(c) Instead of filling a vacancy by appointment under Subsection (a) or (b), the board or municipal governing body may order a special election to fill the vacancy. A special election is conducted in the same manner as the district’s general election except as provided by the Election Code.

(d) If more than one year remains in the term of the position vacated, the vacancy shall be filled under this section not later than the 180th day after the date the vacancy occurs.

Link

Most small boards rarely have volunteers to run for an election anyways, so appointing a new board director is often seen as the best solution. Why wait until the next available election window when you can just add someone now, making sure the seat is filled and you are able to meet quorum when needed?

Also, a board usually appoints someone they know and trust, making sure they are aligned with their goals and/or agenda. This helps keep board priorities in focus and moving forward, which can be positive or negative depending on who you ask.

However, this process can be used for questionable switcheroos, as our local school district has seen before:

“The Conroe ISD board of trustees appointed board President Skeeter Hubert to fill the position being vacated by Trustee Scott Moore, who submitted his resignation in August.

Moore serves as the trustee for Position 7, which is not up for election in November. While his resignation is not effective until Nov. 16, the resignation creates an immediate vacancy on the board.

Hubert, whose position is up for election this year, planned to run for re-election but was disqualified due to an error on his application. The district did not catch the error until after the filing deadline so Hubert was not permitted to submit a new application.”

Link

This gave board President Hubert the ability to stay on the board for another two years without being elected.1 Critics were quick to point this out, even though no laws were broken, and understanding that appointments like these are quite common with many boards.

Here in our backyard with Conroe ISD, this changeover is about to occur. We’ll go on a short tangent about this change and then move back to the topic of appointments.

Tiffany Nelson has resigned as CISD Trustee

For anyone that follows our local school board you know that one of our school board trustees, Tiffany Nelson, launched a campaign to run for the State Board of Education (SBOE).

As Texas law does not allow for someone to hold both SBOE office and a school board trustee, Tiffany is required to resign. Although the timing for resignation is interesting. State law requires that candidates for SBOE must not currently hold public office:

Board members may not hold other public offices. This also applies to candidates seeking election to the board.

State Board of Education candidate requirements

However, the Attorney General interpretation holds that a school board trustee must resign before the general election:

“In addition to the Texas Constitution, state law may affect whether a current school board trustee may run for a specific office while continuing to serve on the school board. For example, Texas Education Code section 7.103(a) provides that a person is not eligible for election to or service on the State Board of Education (SBOE) if the person holds another public office. According to the attorney general, this means that a school board member must resign from the school board prior to the date of the general election for a place on the SBOE. Tex. At’y Gen. Op. No. WW-0165 (1957).

Dual Office Holding Issues for School Board Trustees

Based on this, when Tiffany filed to run and when she resigned from the school board is not relevant, but it sent me down a rabbit hole for a good 20 minutes after I saw that she deleted an Instagram post regarding her filing:

Official records do confirm her filing on Nov 20th:

Lastly for those curious, resigning from a board can be as simple as an email, and the school board can wait until the next public meeting (or beyond) to appoint a replacement.

Tiffany served less than one term on the school board, leaving one year early to pursue office with the SBOE. She has one opponent in the Republican Primary, Barbara Denson.

How will our school board fill the spot?

This is more speculation on my part, but for those who are plugged into local groups we know the board will likely appoint someone within the next few months. My bet is that Aggie Gambino is the obvious selection for appointment by the current school board.

Aggie originally launched her campaign for the CISD School Board back in 2024, running within the ‘Mama Bear’ slate of candidates. However, there ended up being five ‘conservative’ candidates for four positions, and someone had to bow out, which was Aggie.

I am (again) speculating, but my belief is that Tiffany was always planning to run for another office, and thus it was promised to Aggie that she would either run in the next election as part of the conservative slate of candidates, or that she would be appointed when the time came.

This gives support to the reasoning why the school board has pushed to pass so many ideological policy and curriculum changes so quickly, as Tiffany needed the “wins” as part of her platform to run for SBOE. This included her personally securing $6,000 (from a private source) of the $7,500 in funds spent for 10 Commandment posters for all of Conroe ISD, which was somehow pushed through the district without board approval in a public meeting. This decision included the decision to put the posters on the walls, which are now being taken down.2

Getting back to Aggie, her campaign website is still up, and her donation page is available.

Aggie does have some recent accomplishments, primarily helping to create a new non-profit, the Conroe ISD Special Education Parent Advisory Board (SEPAC). This non-profit is external to the school district, as compared to the Texas required parent-led Student Advisory Health Council (SHAC).3

I commend the work these types of groups do and believe they are vital for student success, especially for students with special needs. Although, there are reasons to be concerned.

Through a few contacts I learned there was a bit of drama with the SEPAC non-profit, as they were attempting to use internal school district staff to promote the group and also book conference rooms (for free) at the school district’s conference center to hold meetings, similar to the district’s SHAC. Other non-profit groups learned about this and filed complaints, and that quickly killed the initiative behind the SEPAC as they could not afford to book nice meeting locations for large groups.

There are other interesting things about Aggie we could review for another post, including that her family successfully sued Conroe ISD regarding a dispute with her child’s special education, although based on the results of Aggie’s case they did not get hardly any of the relief they requested. It was arguably a weak case based on the results, as compared to another well-known case against Conroe ISD by the Fusca family (note Mark Fusca is also an executive member on the SEPAC).

For the SEPAC, I do hope they will work more to inform parents with getting the resources they need, rather than guiding them towards how to take legal action.

I have met and spoken with Aggie a few times in person, and overall, my impression is that she is passionate, actively involved within the school district, a capable driver for initiatives, and that she is a good advocate for areas such as special education. My hope is that this advocacy will include all students and families within the district, along with the 10,000 District staff and teachers who will rely on her support.

Why Appointments Matter

The interesting thing about appointed board directors is that they usually win their election after appointment, whether it is in a contested or cancelled election. For smaller boards like HOAs or MUDs, uncontested elections are usually the norm, so they may stay on another term without any challenge.

School boards are almost always contested, and being an incumbent has a huge advantage over challengers, as the incumbent can tout whatever policies they supported during their short term, and they get plenty of face time with the community via public meetings or other activities related to being a board director.

What can the public do about appointments they do not like?

Nothing, other than voting against them in the next election.

At most, there is law that requires a board to appoint someone within 180 days if there is a year left within the previous board trustee’s term, which could be remedied by public complaint. But this does not work the other way around.

This is why whom you vote for in an election to a school board matters more than just the individual person. It is the decisions that they will make and the potential for them to decide on appointing others to the same board when openings are available, which happens often.

How should a board approach appointments?

This is a subjective question that depends on the needs of the board and the district it represents. As said already, a board typically wants to appoint directors that are aligned with the board’s existing goals or agenda. This includes people they know, which can be problematic for finding those without bias. But appointing a member by simple vote is the simple, fast solution. This is important if you have issues of meeting quorum.

There are boards that ask the public for volunteers, having candidates submit a form to “apply” for the open board position. This gives the board a way to vet candidates and review internally before discussing during an open meeting. This can give the board a broader reach into the community to find people with previous board experience rather than simply appointing a ‘friend-of-a-friend’ that was interested, or an existing board member who could not run for re-election.

In my opinion, the process of appointments should have more rulemaking put in place, including public notice that a board member has resigned, a call for volunteers, and that candidates be given 5-10 minutes at a public meeting to present their qualifications and platform. This allows the public to see which candidates the board is able to select from, and the board’s decision can be more visible rather than them simply deciding behind the scenes or during executive session.

More transparency is important for public confidence and support of new board members.

In the end, however, it is a decision of the board itself, and they can basically appoint whomever they want into an open position.

Thanks for reading.

Do you have a topic that you would like to see covered related to Texas school districts, HOAs, MUDs, or other small government entities? Contact me at ryant@wehavequorum.net and let me know!

The Conroe ISD Board will be voting at the next meeting (August 19th) to change District policies to allow for hiring of outside legal counsel as ‘District General Counsel’, instead of hiring in-house counsel. This will likely cause the legal budget to balloon out of control as well as increase the conflict of interests found with our Board and their connections, which we will discuss.

The reason for these attorney changes begins with the retirement of our previous District in-house counsel, Carrie Galatas. I have questions regarding her retirement, which I am reviewing as it has curious timing with the Superintendent’s decision to also leave (as well as many admin and Principals across the District).

The Board’s goal, apparently, is to hire outside firm O’Hanlon Demerath & Castillo, and more specifically with attorney Kara Belew, who we will get to in a moment. Kara was introduced at the last meeting.

There are certainly pros and cons for a school district to outsource its legal department, but it becomes clear after looking at the data that in-house counsel is much more financially responsible for larger school districts like Conroe ISD.

Let’s start with which changes they are proposing.

Policy Changes

Those who follow me know I like to get into the weeds with policy, and luckily there are only two policy changes related to the changes with the attorney.

Note that for the next Board meeting they will be discussing changes to four other policies, which we will breakdown in another post.

Board Policy BDD (Local) - Board Internal Organization: Attorney

BDD (Local) Draft 08 2025

678KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Here is the current language:

The Board shall employ an attorney to serve as the District's general counsel and representative in matters requiring legal services. The District's general counsel, on behalf of the Board, may retain a private attorney or firm to represent the District in legal matters involving an ethical conflict of interest for the general counsel or requiring specialized legal knowledge. Services to be performed and reasonable fees and expenses to be paid by the District to a private attorney or firm shall be set forth in an engagement letter between the Board and the attorney or firm.

Individual Trustees shall channel legal inquiries through the Superintendent or general counsel, as appropriate, when advice or information from the District's outside legal counsel is sought. The Board President may make legal inquiry to retained, outside legal counsel directly, when circumstances so require.

A staff request for legal advice from the District's outside legal counsel must be submitted through the Superintendent or general counsel.

They are proposing to completely do away with this language and adopt the following:

• Enables the Board to retain either internal or external counsel for representing as ‘District General Counsel’

• Introduces language regarding ‘Board General Counsel’, allowing the District’s General Counsel to also serve as the Board’s private attorney (if desired)

• Clarifies points of contact as it relates to the District General Counsel and Board Counsel

• Requires any legal advice to be shared with the full Board. This has been a point of contention recently where only certain Board members have been getting responses from the Board’s private attorney, including not receiving copies of invoices from their current private attorney1

This language has some good and bad changes, in my opinion. It is good that it better defines the role differences between the District Counsel and Board Counsel, and that any requests to the attorney from the Board are shared with the Board in its entirety.

The bad is that it now opens the door to external counsel for general district legal matters, which will become very expensive, as we’ll see below. It will also become clear that this will negatively impact things like Public Information Requests (PIRs) and overall Board transparency.

Board Policy CH (Local) - Purchasing and Acquisition

This policy does a few things:

• Defines how the District buys or procures products or services

• Sets the rules for purchasing and competitive procurement requirements

• Requires that vendor costs over $50,000 must go through a competitive bidding process, as required by Texas law

• Defines cooperatives or interlocal agreement processes, emergency purchase processes, and other related matters to purchasing.

The proposed changes do one thing:

• Removes the requirement for costs over $50,000 to go through competitive bidding process.

At first glance my thought was the Board was removing this language so they can spend whatever they want on external counsel. However, after looking into this it does not appear to be related.

Recent Texas law changes, specifically SB 1173, raises the competitive-procurement trigger for school districts from $50,000 to $100,000 (effective Sept 1, 2025). The Board needs to update this policy to include more generic language, although removing it entirely is questionable.

Also note that legal services are not bound by that particular Texas law anyways, as certain professional services (e.g., attorneys, architects, engineers, CPAs) go through a different procurement process.

During the August 5th Special Meeting, the Board decided to table this one. We should know more at the August 19th Regular Meeting.

Comparing Districts

Do other school districts in Greater Houston use in-house counsel or external? Let’s find out:

Well, that answers that. Most school districts in Greater Houston, many at the same size or larger than Conroe ISD, employ an in-house attorney.

The reason is obvious, which is the economies of scale. School districts eventually hit a certain threshold where having an in-house attorney is more financially sound than contracting externally.

There are certainly benefits of going with external counsel, including having a wider range of expertise available within a law firm, which is still common when a district needs the help. But the overall costs increases are immense.

Consider all of the tasks that a school district attorney may provide:

• Routine contract reviews

• Employment disputes

• Litigation prep/response, Parent lawsuits against the district

• Special education compliance

• Policy drafting

• Open records requests

• etc.

These are all completed by the in-house attorney based solely on their salary. External counsel will likely bill for everything, including:

• Meeting prep and/or “getting up to speed”

• Phone calls

• Travel costs, including to Board meetings

• Per diems

• Emails

• etc.

Cost Comparison

We can begin our cost comparison by looking at how much schools spend on in-house attorneys:

Using Conroe ISD as the sample, where Carrie Galatas made about $219K/year, let’s think about how much this will compare to external counsel. We will use a low/moderate/heavy usage approach, splitting out costs based on hourly attorney feeds that range from $200-$300/hour:

As you can see in the highlighted boxes, comparing in-house counsel to an external hourly rate midpoint ($250/hr), plus expenses, and then averaging that out across total work hours spent (average 1,000 hours a year, ~25hr/week in a school year), you get on average an increase in cost up to +$50,000/year.

You can buy a lot of books with that money.

And this assumes that we will not have events where more expensive attorneys from the same firm are needed, such as those who charge $300/hr+ or how much it will cost the attorney to travel to meetings.

Assuming Kara Belew is the attorney, my quick search shows she is based in Austin. Doing some side math estimates the District may get billed $1,500-$2,000/month just for her travel.2

We are going to pause on the cost discussion so we can step back and research more on the pros and cons of external counsel.

Benefits of External Counsel

Let’s play devil’s advocate. What are the benefits of external counsel? We’ll ask the AI to save time:

• Specialized Expertise on Demand – Quickly bring in attorneys with deep knowledge of niche areas like special education law, construction disputes, bond financing, or complex employment cases.

• Scalable Staffing – Access to a full firm’s resources, meaning multiple lawyers can work on a matter if needed, without the district hiring more staff.

• Flexibility in Engagement – Only pay for legal work when it’s needed; no ongoing salary or benefits obligation.

• Easier to Replace – If dissatisfied, the district can change law firms without the HR and political challenges of removing an employee.

• Broader Perspective – Outside counsel often works with many districts, giving them exposure to trends, strategies, and pitfalls from across the state.

• Capacity for Large Cases – A firm can quickly add attorneys and paralegals to manage time-intensive litigation or emergencies.

• Separation from Internal Politics – Being outside the organization can allow counsel to provide more independent, less politically influenced advice.

These all sound like great ideas. What are the downsides?

• Cost & Budget - External legal support can lead to unpredictable and escalating costs due to hourly billing, travel expenses, and duplicated effort on recurring matters.

• Speed & Availability - External advisors aren't embedded in daily operations, which can slow down urgent decision-making and limit availability during critical times.

• Knowledge & Continuity - Firms may lack deep familiarity with your organization, requiring repeated context ramp-up and risking disruption from staff turnover.

• Risk, Governance & Ethics - Potential conflicts of interest and billable hour incentives can skew advice, while extra safeguards are needed for data privacy and compliance.

• Operational Friction & Optics - Coordination challenges and limited access to internal systems can slow routine processes and create inefficiencies.

The Attorney, Kara Belew

The real kerfuffle with the District’s attorney changes is related to who this attorney is. I do not know and have not met Kara Belew. I will note her resume is impressive and I can only assume she is a competent attorney. On any normal day I do not believe anyone would have an objection to her or the law firm O’Hanlon, Demarth & Castillo to represent the school district.

There is only one other school district in Texas (that I can find) that contracts with Kara Belew or O'Hanlon, Demerath & Castillo, which is Midland ISD.

However, there is one interesting note in her profile:

Kara is a co-founder of Texans for Excellence in Education (TEE), a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping school boards implement evidence-based policies that drive student success, strengthen accountability, and expand access to high-quality education across Texas. Through TEE, she champions systemic reforms, fosters innovation, and empowers boards to lead with clarity and purpose.

And this note from the TEE website:

Texans for Excellence in Education Welcomes Kara Belew to the Board of Directors

Fort Worth, TX – Texans for Excellence in Education (TEE) is pleased to announce the addition of Kara Belew to its Board of Directors. Kara brings over 20 years of experience in education policy and public administration, including service to two governors of the State of Texas.

You may remember our recent post regarding TEE:

Here’s the AI summary:

Texans for Excellence in Education (TEE) is a newly formed organization incorporated in Delaware with no physical Texas office, minimal transparency, and leadership lacking clear educational credentials. While it claims to offer the same breadth of services as the long-established Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) at half the cost, many of its offerings appear incomplete or “vaporware.” Critics note missing policy tools, unsecured training portals, and a lack of the economies of scale TASB provides for purchasing and risk management. A Texas Education Agency records request reportedly found no recognition of TEE or its consultants as authorized board trainers.

The group is also entangled in political controversies, with leadership tied to politically active individuals who have been involved in contentious school board races, ethics violations, and the spread of false election claims. TEE has been linked to divisive actions in other districts, raising doubts about its impartiality and professionalism. While Conroe ISD is testing a “free trial” membership, the article questions whether TEE has the infrastructure, credibility, and capacity to replace TASB’s proven statewide services—especially for a large district where projected cost savings would be negligible.

We want our District Attorney to be the person that is involved with this?

Just the disclosures alone will prevent Kara from working in the increasing number of areas that TEE is being embedded into the District, which includes Board policy updates and management, superintendent selection, and what we can assume will be any service currently provided by TASB. This could include cooperatives, insurance, board/teacher training, etc.

Will we be paying a separate attorney to work in these areas?

There are other conflicts that we could dive into related to her previous work with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and its advocating for Bluebonnet curriculum, which Conroe ISD adopted without teacher or parent input, as well as supporting the recently passed Texas voucher program. We’ll have to save those for another day.

We also learned from information requests that Midland ISD is being billed $28,000/month for Kara, which is on par with what we estimated earlier (based on a $300/hr attorney). This would be added onto the existing tens of thousands of dollars the Board has recently spent on private attorney Tim Davis with firm Jackson Walker (mentioned in my previous posts on TEE).

For the private attorney, this activity has basically become ‘dark’ money spending, as we do not know what our tax dollars are being spent on thanks to attorney-client privilege. We already know this based on what has happened in other school districts like Keller ISD (who also uses Tim Davis).

We may also be able to assume the following:

• Public Information Requests (PIR) will likely all be placed behind a paywall, as they will cost money no matter what the request is. If not, we can at least assume costs will be introduced into more kinds of requests beyond simple public documents copies.

• If the District General Counsel also becomes the Board’s private counsel, it may become more difficult to determine what information is considered attorney-client privilege versus what is not. This could enable the Board to become much less transparent to information requests.

• Based on the use of the Board’s private attorney and its expansion of District policy changes, the confidence that we will have for this external attorney to represent the school district, rather than the school board, will definitely come into question.

Bringing it Together

Our school board in Conroe ISD is looking to replace our in-house attorney with an external law firm as our primary District General Counsel, which is something no other large school district in Greater Houston is doing. This will likely cost the District at least another $50,000 - $100,000 a year in Legal costs.

The attorney to be selected, Kara Belew, is rife with conflicts of interest due to her connections with Texans for Excellence in Education (TEE) and the increasing use of their services by the District.

This is not fiscally conservative.

This does not increase transparency for parents. It in fact does the opposite.

In my opinion, our school board is not prioritizing students or families with these changes. This appears more that the Board is protecting itself or its interests rather than its constituents.

Thanks for reading.

While our local school district discusses a new cell phone policy, and the Governor of Texas is pending signature of legislation restricting use of phones in schools, I figured it would be a good time to discuss this topic (again). This issue is more important than most people realize, and I hope this post helps readers understand why these policies are needed.

In Fall 2023, I took part in our local school district’s Cell Phone Committee, which was tasked with reviewing our district’s student cell phone policy. It was initiated by the Student Health Advisory Council (SHAC), of which I am now a volunteer with.

There were four cell phone committee meetings that spanned three months. We sent and reviewed surveys from parents and students, met with teachers and principals, visited schools, and reviewed policy options.1 I wrote about the experiences here across five posts:

We found that most of these schools were not able to enforce cell phone rules consistently, from school to school, or even classroom to classroom, as we found during the teacher and principal surveys and in-person panels.

In the end, the committee recommended to the school board that we align all the schools with the same policy, which most of our schools generally had well-rounded restrictions on cell phone use already.

The school board accepted our recommendations, and the new policy was applied across the entire district, much of which gave local schools the initiative to restrict access to phones during instruction but leaving many decisions up to local administrators for enforcement. The thought was that the local groups (i.e., Foundations) would know their school best and how the cell phone restrictions should be applied locally.2

In reality, I do not believe these new policies made much impact. In fact, these changes were sent out as guidelines as part of the Student Handbook and not officially adopted as school board policy. This basically put the issue of cell phones back onto the same people who were already managing them.

I have had much more time to think about phones in schools, and I have read many, many articles and research papers breaking down the impact mobile devices have on children. I even put together a research post as part of the cell phone committee, last updated in 2023. You can find quick summaries for several research papers, books, and other resources here:

Here is a sample book:

The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt (2023)

“The Anxious Generation is a penetrating and alarming accounting of how we adults began to overprotect children in the real world while giving essentially no protection in the brutal online world. Haidt documents the four fundamental harms of the phone-based childhood: sleep deprivation, social deprivation, cognitive fragmentation, and addiction. He then shows the unique harms affecting boys, and the unique harms affecting girls. In the last section of book, he offers concrete and scientifically based advice with separate chapters addressed to parents, schools, universities, governments, and to teens themselves. He draws on ancient wisdom and modern psychology to help everyone understand what healthy development would look like in the digital age.”

And sample research:

Age of First Smartphone/Tablet and Mental Wellbeing Outcomes (2023) - Link

This report shows that 18–24-year-olds who acquired their first smartphone (or tablet) at each older age had, on average, better mental wellbeing, and correspondingly fewer problems with suicidal thoughts, feelings of aggression towards others and sense of detachment from reality. This points to a cumulative effect of smartphone use in childhood on outcomes in adulthood, one that is particularly prominent for females.

The data collection on the topic of kids with cell phones is vast, with many focusing on the impact of giving children unfiltered access to the internet (and social media specially). The topic has become the go-to capstone or thesis for many graduate and PhD programs.

The data is clear that giving cell phones to children at young ages has a strong negative impact on their abilities to communicate, develop relationships, build soft skills, or to put it plainly…make friends and grow as functioning human beings.

Phones also drive addictive behaviors not unlike actual drugs. One study even found that just the presence of their phones, even if out of sight, was a distraction that took up valuable attention spans. One high school teacher put it as succinctly as I’ve ever heard:

“You wouldn’t let your kid smoke cigarettes in your class, so why are we letting them consume electronic brain cocaine?”

Even if we ignore all the data showing that phones and unfiltered internet access are harmful for kids, is there any significant study to show that they are safe?

Putting the data aside, what does this mean for schools and providing a quality public education for our kids?

Seeing it in person

As part of the district’s cell phone committee, we were invited to visit schools to see the issue for ourselves. Let me tell you…I definitely got to see it.

I visited my local high school and afterwards had drafted a post about my experience. When I sent the draft to the district for their comment, they became alarmed and wanted to discuss with me further. I decided to archive the post, believing that our new policy would help clean up the mess of phones that I had seen.

And make no mistake - it was bad.

This high school has 3,000+ students, and there were phones out everywhere. I walked by dozens of classrooms, and literally all of them had at least four to five students scrolling on their phones.

Teachers were lecturing, kids were scrolling.

Projects were underway, yet heads were on desks turned to the side, scrolling.

Ear buds were everywhere. Most kids would just have one earbud in, but there were several that had both ears plugged. There was a substantial number of students that were completely checked out of school while sitting in class.

During the visit, I had an Assistant Principal as my guide. As we were walking by or entering each classroom, the students would barely look up at us. Even for those that did look at me or the AP, not one of them rushed to hide their phone. They openly used them without thinking there would be any repercussions.3

My visit was eye opening, and it made clear to me that there was a serious issue that was not being properly addressed. Even though the high school already had cell phone restrictions within their local handbook, enforcement was not happening.

But why?

A no-win scenario

Teachers must constantly deal with children who do not want to listen. They try to enforce the rules the best they can, but it is often that teachers cannot both educate and discipline disruptive children class after class, day after day, weeks and into months. It can become exhausting and mentally taxing (to put it lightly).

They rely on their local administrators as backup to provide the discipline. Those admin have limited tools at their disposal, and it is often that they run into parents who are either indifferent to the behavior of their child or enraged that the school would discipline them. When there is no support at home, it makes student management 10 times more difficult at school.

Dealing with the worst of these children, or their parents, can make cell phones a “small” issue that teachers do not want to bother with. Why would they, when they risk a child or parent going ballistic about their phone getting taken up?

This is why the issue of cell phones in schools is so important to address. It is not only an addiction for children and harmful for their brains, but the enforcement of school rules on cell phones is near impossible when each school, teacher, or local administration may handle the situation differently.

With a district-wide policy that is clear and with defined discipline measures, the burden of policy ownership would no longer be on campus educators. The phones can be taken up and discipline applied exactly the same from class to class and school to school. Kids who get their first phones in intermediate school can expect the same policy in junior high and high school.

Further, if parents get upset, staff can simply point to district policy and tell them to take it up with the superintendent or school board. This frees up the mental and emotional drain on teachers (as fleeting as it may be) to deal with something that is completely out of their control, which is the adults who give these addiction machines to their kids and allow them to take it to school.

And about these adults…

We should recognize that it is not only the kids who are addicted to their phones. Parents have equally commandeered the attention of their children while at school due to their own inability to put down their devices.

“Did you make it to school okay? How is your day? Did you make any friends? What would you like for dinner? Do you have practice today? Where are you going after school?” …and on and on.

As a kid of the 90s it still baffles me how entire generations of children are being micromanaged remotely, when in reality a key area of growth that they desperately need is to be able to function without their parents hanging digitally over their shoulders.

Children need to be able to operate independently, and public schools used to be a place they could get away from their ‘managers’ long enough to develop their own personalities and friendships.

This leads me to the kids themselves.

How do the kids feel about using cell phones?

Obviously, kids want their phones 24/7, and they want unlimited, unfiltered access to the internet. And we should recognize why: They are being raised to use them.

As they are children, they do not understand the impact the devices have on their development. As adults, they can become acutely aware. Give this a listen (or read below):

It Was the Damn Phones

By Kori Jane Spaulding

I think our parents were right.

It was the damn phones.

We laughed as children, hearing, “It’s that Snapgram and Instachat and Facetok”.

They didn’t understand. They couldn’t even say it right. We thought we knew better than them.

They didn’t know what it was like, having the world at the tip of our fingers.

We scroll through the trash so much, we have news headlines tattooed on our skin.

Wires for veins. AI for a brain. And they may not have understood. But they were right.

It was the damn phones.

I prided myself on sobriety, on being drunk with only propriety. I was above addiction.

A hypocritical notion. For am I not addicted to my own anxiety?

Brought on by a need for constant stimulation. A drug in our pockets.

But who can blame us? We were but children when they were given.

We didn’t know how to stop it. If I added up all the hours I spent on a screen,

existential dread and regret would creep in. So I ignore this fact by opening my phone.

And it’s not like I can throw it away. It’s how we communicate. It’s how we relate.

It’s a medicine that is surely making our souls die.

I used to say I was born in the wrong generation, but I was mistaken.

For I do everything I say I hate. Exchanging hobbies for Hinge,

truth with TikTok, intimacy with Instagram, sanity with Snapchat.

I have become self-aware. Almost worse than being naive. I know it’s poison, but I drink away.

The character behind the phone screen has become self-aware.

We used to be scared of robots gaining consciousness, a lie by the media companies.

To keep us distracted enough, so not to become conscious of the mess they created.

We are the robots. We are the product. And so I sit and I scroll and I rot on repeat.

Sit and scroll and rot.

Until my thoughts are what is being fed to me on TV,

until my feelings are wrapped up in celebrities,

until my body is a tool of my political identity.

I sit and I scroll and I rot.

And I post on the internet how the internet has failed us

so that I may not fail my internet presence. I think our parents were right.

It was the damn phones.

The After Babel blog helps break this down further:

It has been true for hundreds of years: older generations worry about whatever new technology young people are using, and whatever new media they are consuming. This is why some people believe that the current wave of concern about social media and smartphones is overblown, like earlier concerns about violence in comic books and music lyrics. These skeptics say that no new norms or laws are needed.

But during all previous waves, most young people liked the things they were doing (as far as we know).¹ They were grateful to have access to radios, TV shows, comic books, and rap music. They did not create organizations to fight back against these industries for harming kids.

How do members of Gen Z feel about smartphones and social media? Are they grateful to have gotten them in middle school? As we (and several others) have shown using surveys, the answer is no. Many members of Gen Z have deep regrets about growing up attached to these products. They see the damage done, and there is a growing movement to push back.

Common Questions

There have always been questions in this debate, and we heard these frequently during our district’s cell phone committee meetings.

Let’s go through these.

What about other school districts?

There are Texas school districts that have had cell phone bans in effect since the very beginning. I’m talking early 2000s. And yet, there are many ISDs that have simply ignored the issue for 20+ years. It is why I believe it has reached a breaking point to where the state legislature has had to step in to address it.

One of the more interesting versions of these policies at another district is one that includes confiscation of phones (when not allowed), requiring the parent to physically come to the school to pick it up and pay a $15 fee. Any phones not picked up within 90 days gets disposed of.

I can only imagine how quickly this kind of policy would resolve cell phone use in districts where there are no current policies.

Regardless, if your school district is considering banning cell phones at school, they would be far from the first.

Not to mention, the results speak for themselves:

Fit To Teach

My School Banned Phones for the Year. Here's What Happened.

“Screen time check!” I barked out at my health class…

Read more

a year ago · 1166 likes · 193 comments · Fit To Teach

My child needs their phone for medication reminders, alerts through medical apps, etc.

Students with 504s/IEPs are exempt from every version of cell phone policies that I have seen. This is an easy accommodation. I would personally prefer to lean on the school nurse to manage or assist with these types of things, but if an accommodation is needed, then there is a mechanism for it.

Teachers need them because there aren’t enough computers.

It is often an argument that personal phones are needed to offset schools that do not have one computer per student (aka 1-to-1). As in, if there are not enough computers for all students, and they have a task that needs to be completed online, students must use their own cell phones.

With or without 1-to-1, some teachers will have students use their personal phones for taking pictures of slides, doing surveys, or submitting work.4

I believe this is bad practice and needs to end.

There is a long, complex discussion around 1-to-1, especially when you involve school bonds. My conclusion is that it is the school district’s responsibility to provide what is needed and to not lean on taxpayers to offload device needs.

For schools where devices are in short supply, teachers will adapt and find other methods for students to complete the work needed. They always figure out a way, and they are really good at getting things done with the resources they have.

If the school can manage the abomination that is taking STAAR tests online without 1-to-1, then they can figure out how to make sure kids complete normal schoolwork.5

What about in between classes or at lunch?

Why would we want the only social times in school to be the only available moments for cell phones? Of course, kids would choose their phones over making conversation with people in real life. It may make for quiet hallways or lunchrooms, but this defeats part of the purpose of removing the phones to begin with.

We should want students to interact directly while at school, and in between classes or at lunch are the few times they have to do so. I certainly would not want my kids to be worried about making friends online when they could build real relationships with kids their age right in front of them.

Coaches send out texts for practice notices.

Again, this was not a problem before the age of cell phones. Schedules are set for a reason, and if there is change to the schedule then there are other methods to letting students know that practice was cancelled or that it will be held elsewhere because of rain.

It does not mean coaches cannot text updates. It just means that students can get those notices after they are done receiving their education.

What about teacher’s cell phones?

How often do you use your cell phone at work? These are professionals doing their jobs, and their phone use includes completely different use cases. Their phone use can be part of their job role.

K-12 students are not required to have their phones to learn.

My kid’s phone has parent controls, and they don’t have social media.

You are doing great, but unfortunately you are in the minority on this. Most parents do not know how to properly control screentime, nor do they understand the complex parent controls to block sites like social media or porn. It is why the school bus is likely where your 5th grader will see the most horrific things on the internet for the first time, because a parent gave their 1st grader a phone with an unrestricted browser.

We certainly do not need these websites within schools during instructional time.

For those that need help managing their kid’s phones, there are many resources out there on properly introducing technology to your kids, and how you can educate them on the harms of social media or other sites.

Similar to drugs, alcohol, vaping, or other harmful activities, we have to explain how things work to kids so that they can understand how to manage themselves when they are adults. Cell phone use, social media, and pornography has simply become another thing for us to parent them on (when the time is appropriate).

My kids follow the rules and do not abuse their use of cell phones.

Are you sure about that? Have you checked their screentime usage recently?

I bet every teacher who reads this knows of at least a few kids in every class whose parents don’t believe them when they say their child does not follow the rules.

It is often this way because kids at home are free to play what they want, where at school they are forced to do work that they absolutely do not want to do. They may act differently when they are forced to give up the one toy they have at school.

What if my kid needs me?

This is a question about parenting that we will have disagreements with. If my kid needs me during their day, or there is an emergency (more on that in a moment), then does my child need to be able to contact me at any time?

Are we meant to fix all our kid’s issues without giving them an opportunity to resolve it on their own?

As a kid who didn’t get his first flip phone until 11th grade, there was never an issue of the school getting ahold of my family. Most of the time I did not want them to contact my family. Similarly, if my family needed to get ahold of me, it was a quick message through the school’s front office to do so.

And let me tell you how impressive school front office staff are. You send them an email, or call in about your kid, and they will definitely get your message to the right place. If your kid has an issue, you can also bet the front desk or school nurse is going to call you. I have seen this for myself by spending multiple days at schools through the Watch DOGS program. All day long they are fielding calls, sending notes, delivering transportation changes, and on and on.

In my opinion, I much rather prefer that an adult calls me to give me the situation details rather than my kid who may just want to get out of school or is overthinking what someone might have said about their hair.

I can empathize with parents who have children with special needs, high anxiety, or if they feel the school district is not treating their child fairly. You want to be plugged in as best as you can to support your child. As mentioned above, students with 504s/IEPs would not be impacted by these policies if the accommodation of a cell phone is needed.

For reference, here is one question from the parent survey results our cell phone committee sent out. Look at the second line for the #1 answer:

Here is where you can find the full survey results:

Parent Survey Results

Teacher Survey Results

As it relates to school shootings or other major emergencies, none of these policies stop students from grabbing their phones when needed (assuming they’re nearby). If they do not have their phones, rest assured school staff know there is a shooter in the building, and they have protocols to follow to protect students and alert authorities.

Law enforcement also has their protocols, and outside the atrocity that was Uvalde, I fully expect our local police departments to go through that door. Having kids call/text their parents, rushing 1,000+ cars to the high school while the SWAT team is trying to get there, probably isn’t going to help.

For other events such as bad weather, there is procedure there as well, which is why you will receive texts or emails from the school telling you what their plans are for dismissal, power outages, etc.

Unfortunately, this is a difficult, complex topic to think about as parents, and there is no right answer for this one. We simply want our kids to be safe, and it is understandable that we want them to be able to contact us whenever they need.

More data

Before we close, here is more information on this topic. Any and all data you want on the impact of social media on children, and its ability to consume their time, energy, and mental health, can likely be found on the After Babel Substack:

After Babel

A free weekly newsletter from Jonathan Haidt and his team using moral psychology to explain why so much is going wrong

By Jon Haidt

After Babel - which all posts are free - provides an abundance of data from multiple perspectives, which includes a focus on the importance of childhood play, the recognition that there is a mental health illness epidemic worldwide (much of which is caused by social media), and several other fact-based sources on why giving kids access to the open internet 24/7 is a bad idea.

A recent relevant post:

After Babel

All the Conversations That Kids Are Missing

Intro from Zach Rausch…

Read more

a year ago · 296 likes · 45 comments · Alison Wood Brooks, PhD

Here are their most popular posts:

1. The Teen Mental Illness Epidemic Began Around 2012

2. Yes, Social Media Really Is a Cause of the Epidemic of Teenage Mental Illness

3. Here are 13 Other Explanations For The Adolescent Mental Health Crisis. None of them Work (By Jean Twenge)

4. The Teen Mental Illness Epidemic Is International, Part 1: The Anglosphere. (By Zach and me)

5. Why the Mental Health of Liberal Girls Sank First and Fastest

6. Why I am Increasingly Worried About Boys, Too

7. Play Deprivation is a Major Cause of the Teen Mental Health Crisis. (By Peter Gray)

8. A Time We Never Knew (By Freya India)

9. The Case For Phone-Free Schools

10. The Ed Tech Revolution Has Failed (By Jared Cooney Horvath)

Give these a read when you have time.

Closing

What does a phone ban in schools mean in reality? It means your kids will still be able to take their phones to school, but they would have to remain off or away completely during instructional time or perhaps the entire school day. “Away” means in their backpacks, purse, locker, etc.

If they get caught with the phone out while not allowed, they would be disciplined, perhaps with a schedule of escalation up to school suspension.

Other devices, like earbuds, smart watches, or Nintendo Switch (yes these go to schools too), would likely face the same policy if not be completely banned from entering the school.

Public schools should not be a place where kids go to sit and scroll their phones, feeding their online addictions. There are true mental tolls that come with these devices, and when they are part of a teacher’s classroom, it diminishes their ability to do their job properly, which is to educate our children.

Phones disrupt the classroom environment, arguably impacting overall student outcomes. Allowing them to go unchecked is bad policy, in my opinion.

We must recognize that students need to develop their social skills, to learn to speak to one another with respect and empathy. Behind a keyboard, whether anonymous or not, can bring out the worst in adults. What do we expect it to do with young minds that haven’t fully developed?

There are plenty of alternatives and solutions available to help fill the gap for where student cell phones are currently being used, if they are to be removed.

I support completely removing student cell phones from schools, from opening bell to release. You should too, because not only does it support improved outcomes for our schools, but it is also better for your child and their growth as a human being.

Sorry, no TLDR on this one.

Thanks for reading.

During the April 15th, 2025, meeting of the Conroe ISD Board of Trustees, a review of nine policy changes were presented to the Board by a Committee, which had been working with a third-party to review current Board policies and receive recommendations on which additions or changes to make.

As you remember in our last post, this third-party is Texans for Excellence in Education (TEE), which has been involved in several controversial activities within other school districts:

To summarize the article:

Conroe ISD has unanimously approved trial agreements with TEE, a relatively new organization aiming to replace the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) in providing policy guidance, legal services, and board training. TEE's limited track record and ideological leanings have raised concerns about transparency and the potential politicization of public schools.

TEE performed a policy audit for Conroe ISD, which was then reviewed by a Board Committee, and then shared with the full Board on April 15th. The Committee was made up of three Trustees - Misty Odenweller, Lindsay Dawson, and Melissa Dungan. Here is the summary as provided from the Committee, found within the April 15th Board Packet:

TEE’s Initial Policy Audit Results and Findings:

• Committee members were thoroughly briefed on the 9 primary initial recommendations (AIB, BF, CL, EFA, EFB, EMB, FNAA, FM, GKDA) that were drafted/revised by TEE’s legal team, free of charge.

• In a separate attachment, TEE also provided their Local Update 2025 (mirroring TASB’s 124 Update) to bring the district into compliance with law, rule, and court cases from Fall 2024.

Board Actions:

• The policy committee thoroughly vetted the Initial Policy Audit, consulted with the Board Attorney, and made minor revisions that are presented in the Board Book.

• The committee agreed to add these policies to the April 15th agenda for the Board to have the first hearing and a vote on them at the May 13th meeting.

• The committee voted unanimously to subscribe to Policy Services and Policy Connect with TEE to get additional customized policies and necessary updates crafted by trusted legal experts. The first membership fee is waived through Aug. 31, and President Odenweller signed the agreement.

The last item means that the Board has already solidified its agreements with TEE, and that come August it will begin paying for their services beginning with ‘Policy Services’ and ‘Policy Connect’. TEE offers various other services, which you can reference in my last post.

Starting with Policy Connect, this is an online hosting of Board policies, replacing the TASB Policy Online service that holds our Board policies today. This is simply changing the website where our policies are hosted. It is not yet known the cost difference of making this change, but it is likely minimal. You can view the new TEE Policy Connect page here:

For the next service, Policy Services, this one does not have much documentation, but this is essentially the service they provided to the Committee by reviewing our district’s policies and providing these nine recommendations.

From TEE website:

We assist school boards in the development, review, and implementation of policies that comply with local, state, and federal laws…

We provide guidance on board governance matters, including the interpretation and application of bylaws, regulations, and statutes. Our team assists in maintaining compliance with relevant laws, ethical standards, and best practices, ensuring the school board operates transparently, effectively, and within legal boundaries.

Before we Begin

While we review these Board policy drafts, I want you to keep in your mind not only the policies themselves but the implementation of such policies. Imagine how administrators and teachers will be required to enforce these changes.

As always, these posts are very long. You can scroll to the bottom to find the Summary/TLDR.

Policy Additions

Out of the nine policy recommendations from TEE, let us begin with the new policies. Note that although the District may already have a Legal policy, they do not always have a Local policy. Legal policy provides the legal requirements from the state or federal governments. Local policy is specific for the school district. Local is where we are seeing these additions.

(NEW) AIB Local: Accountability Performance Reporting

Here is a summary of what the current AIB Legal policy provides:

This policy outlines the responsibilities of Texas public school districts in reporting performance data. Its primary purpose is to ensure transparency and accountability by mandating that districts collect, analyze, and disseminate information related to student achievement and other performance metrics.

ConroeISD AIB Local DRAFT 04-2025

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Here is a summary of the new AIB Local policy:

• Introduces a specific definition for "Subject Persons," which includes District employees, volunteers, or anyone directly interacting with District students. This is used throughout the other policy changes as well.

• Prohibits programs involving Critical Race Theory (CRT), Systemic Discrimination Ideologies (SDI), gender fluidity, or the performance of equity audits.

• Departments or programs that include prohibited content are to be reassigned or terminated immediately (pending contractual requirements).

• Clarifies that it does not restrict students from forming student-led groups or discussing related issues in private forums.

I find this policy very odd to be listed under AIB, which is meant to address district implementation of state-mandated performance reporting. Why would we want to use AIB as a place to block CRT/SDI or gender fluidity? Do these programs even exist within Texas public schools or Conroe ISD? Are teachers performing “equity audits”?

This policy would be more appropriate under a new policy code, and based on its purpose this policy will have little impact on the district, especially as it does nothing to improve student outcomes or safety.

(NEW) CL Local - Buildings, Grounds, and Equipment Management

Here is a summary of the existing CL Legal policy:

Policy CL (Legal) addresses the management of school district facilities, encompassing buildings, grounds, and equipment. It outlines the legal responsibilities and standards that districts must follow to ensure the safety, accessibility, and proper maintenance of the District’s physical assets.

The new CL Local draft policy is short, so does not need to be summarized. Here it is in full:

Use of Bathrooms and Changing Facilities

The District will formulate, interpret and apply its rules concerning the use of rest rooms, locker rooms, changing facilities and participation in all extracurricular activities, including sports competition in a manner consistent with the biological sex of each student.

For purposes of this policy, a statement of a student's biological sex on the student's official birth certificate is considered to have correctly stated the student's biological sex only if the statement was:

1. Entered at or near the time of the student's birth; or

2. Modified to correct any type of scrivener or clerical error in the student's biological sex.

ConroeISD-CL-Local-DRAFT-04-2025

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Similar to the AIB Local, it appears more ideological or symbolic in nature. I would be interested to see any data from the district on incidents regarding the use of bathrooms.

As for impact, this will yet again place a burden on educators to manage, and it targets a very small number of students, making it a highly ineffective policy. I covered this in a previous post:

Policy Revisions

(Revised) BF Local - Board Policies

This policy outlines the procedures for the development, adoption, and implementation of district policies. It specifies that policies must be reviewed by the Board regularly, updated as needed, and made accessible to staff, students, and the community. It ensures that the district's governance is transparent and that all stakeholders are informed about the guidelines that direct the district's operations.

BF(LOCAL)-DRAFT-04-2025

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The redlines for this one are very curious, which I decided to use the ChatGPT reasoning on these:

TO REMOVE:

"Legally referenced policies contain provisions from federal and state statutes and regulations, case law, and other legal authority that together form the framework for local decision making and implementation. These policies are binding on the District until the cited provisions are repealed, revised, or superseded by legislative, regulatory, or judicial action."

• Removing this language means the policy no longer clearly shows it is based on state or federal law. This could cause confusion about whether the district is legally required to follow it and make it harder for people to understand where the policy comes from.

TO REMOVE:

“Legally referenced policies are not adopted by the Board.”

• Removing this makes it seem like the school board has control over policies that are actually required by law.

TO REMOVE:

“At each policy code the legally referenced policy and the Board-adopted local policy must be read together to further a full understanding of a topic.”

• Removing this could lead to confusion by making it unclear that both the legal and local policies need to be read together to fully understand the rules on a given topic.

The TEE notes do say that removing the Organization section of this policy will be addressed in a subsequent policy (not found in these drafts), but I am very curious why it had to be removed from this one.

There are two other areas removed from policy BF Local:

AMENDED:

“Policies and policy amendments may be initiated by the Superintendent, Board members, school personnel, or community citizens, but generally shall be recommended for the Board’s consideration by the Superintendent.”

This one removes the Superintendent from the policy creation or amendment process. Board members, staff, or citizens can bring proposals straight to the Board agenda without the initial administrative review.

There is a great deal I could say about this one and is likely the most alarming of all of these changes. We will have to save this one for another day and hope the Board reviews this one clearly during the next meeting.

TO REMOVE:

“After Board review of legally referenced policies and adoption of local policies, the new material shall be incorporated into the official policy manual and into other localized policy manuals maintained by the District. If discrepancies occur between different copies of the manual, the version contained in the official policy manual shall be regarded as authoritative.”

Removing this is very curious to me. This language ensures that there is a single source of truth as it relates to Board policies, and that policy updates are incorporated in a timely fashion. It also designates legal authority, which is a backbone of any legal defense. If there is ever a dispute you would point to the official policy manual. Without this, we might not have a clear way to resolve policy confusion, which could lead to inconsistent enforcement across the district.

This is a huge liability in my opinion.

(Revised) EFA Local - Instructional Resources: Instructional Materials

The purpose of EFA Local is to align instructional materials with the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and with district goals, which includes only using materials that are free of harmful, obscene, or sexually explicit material.

I am very familiar with both policies EFA and EFB as I did a deep dive on these last year when the district started removing books in bulk, causing chaos within English classrooms and raucous Board meetings.

Policy EFA and EFB Local are frequently the targets of school boards that wish to remove books from libraries and classrooms, many times referred to as “book banning”.

EFA(LOCAL)-DRAFT-04-2025

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Here is a summary of what TEE would like to change with EFA Local, which is immense:

• Expands definitions of materials covered as instructional materials:

  • “combination of book, workbook, and supplementary materials, including all media, writings, drawings, graphs, charts, photographs, pictures, film, videotapes, sound recordings, images, data, and data compilations of any kind, electronic resources, such as computer software, magnetic media, DVD, CD-ROM, computer courseware, online services, or an electronic media or other means of conveying information to students or otherwise contributing to the learning process through electronic means”

• Shifts the authority and discretion of classroom instructional materials from the Superintendent to the Board, allowing the Board the option to bypass or override the Superintendent. This allows the Board to choose instructional materials directly or delegate the task elsewhere.

• Prohibits instructional materials that promote:

  • Critical Race Theory / Systemic Discrimination Ideologies (CRT/SDI)

  • Gender Fluidity

  • Certain Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) concepts (defined later)

  • Use of the term “Latinx”

  • “Potentially Pornographic Materials” (defined later) unless specifically Board-approved

• Prohibited materials must be removed from general circulation and placed in a “Parental Consent Area” with strict parental approval procedures.

  • This effectively removes the ability for parents or the community to challenge these book removals, as these materials are not “banned” but simply moved to the Parent Consent Area, of which requires a process for parents to allow their children to get access to.

• Adds a lengthy list that details requirements to teach U.S. founding documents and promote civic knowledge and discourse.

• Keeps formal procedures for parents or staff to challenge materials but bypasses it for content explicitly prohibited above as it goes through the Parental Consent Area process.

There is a lot of unnecessary and duplicate language within these changes. I am most curious how a “Parent Consent Area” (further referenced as “the restricted section”) would work at every school. In actuality, this policy is related to instructional materials, which means classrooms. I am interpreting this to mean that restricted books that may be used in English AP classes (e.g., Brave New World, The Bluest Eye1), would be stored in a restricted section in the school library, of which parents must consent to their students having access to (access defined as up to six months).

However, after thinking about this for some time, it is an interesting approach to dealing with the conflict that is book removals. Instead of removing/banning books, it places them into a special area that parents must consent to. Is this better than removing the books completely? I am not sure.

What I am sure of is that this will only encourage students to read those books. And can we assume it would be the job of the librarian to manage access to the restricted section? Will it be in a locked area?2

(Revised) EFB Local - Instructional Resources: Library Materials

Similar to EFA, EFB Local focuses on which materials (e.g., books) are allowed in libraries rather than classroom materials. However, these new changes from TEE include the teacher libraries under EFB, which seems to conflict with EFA in my opinion.

EFB(LOCAL)-DRAFT-04-2025

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Here is the breakdown of changes for EFB Local:

• Adds teacher classroom materials to the library collection development standards

• All new library materials purchasing must now go through the Board, and follows a new process:

  • Librarians must submit all new purchase requests to the Superintendent, who adds these materials to the Board agenda which is reviewed during an open meeting

  • Board members who have concerns about any proposed library materials must notify the Superintendent at least 15 days before the Board vote

  • The Superintendent will obtain professional reviews of the materials in question

  • The full list of materials (including challenged items) will be presented to the public for a 30-day review period

  • Before the vote, Board members may argue for removing specific items, and the Board may amend the list individually or as a group

  • After approval, only materials on the final list may be ordered; any unlisted items received must be returned or destroyed.

• Digital library materials must follow the same selection rules as physical ones, and student access must be age-appropriate, determined with input from librarians, educators, and peer-reviewed sources.

Wow. This adds an insane overhead of tasks related to ordering library books, for everyone involved. Librarians who curate their shelves must submit everything to the District and Board, essentially adding a months-long delay to ordering books. The Superintendent/District staff must provide and present this information to the Board. Board members must essentially review all of these book titles, which will likely include hundreds if not thousands of books and then present those concerns to the Superintendent and/or Board.

Each individual Board member can challenge books, providing their own evidence and personal resources as support for removal.

Once approved, there is a 30-day public review period, which any public challenges would then have to be debated by the Board to drop or approve challenges. And this is just for physical books.

This policy change brings in digital library materials under this same process, which as we saw in a previous policy brings in a huge swath of online materials for the Board to review and approve.

There is no way the Board is going to have the time or ability to review all of these materials. Either it will be outsourced, or they will have to hold special meetings every time library books or digital content needs to be ordered or reviewed.

This is not what Boards are meant to do. We hire professionals within the district for a reason: To do the work. The Board’s job is to set policy based on law and community values. Those values are codified into policy, and that policy is then enforced.

If librarians are purposely placing porn on shelves for children, then they are clearly violating policy. You hold them accountable for that. If any challenged book is removed because it was found to violate policy, then the Board has the Superintendent run down how it was placed on shelves, which may require more training for staff on the district’s policies.

Instead, the Board is taking on the role of the micromanager.

Moving on.

(Revised) EMB Local — Miscellaneous Instructional Policies: Teaching About Controversial Issues

EMB Local outlines the district’s approach to teaching controversial issues.

This policy draft vastly expands definitions on what includes “controversial issues”, and it hits all of the ideological talking points we hear today. This one adopts many, many changes.

EMB(LOCAL)-DRAFT-04-2025

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Here is the summary of changes for EMB Local:

• Teachers are not required to discuss controversial issues. If discussed, topics must:

  • Be age-appropriate and educationally relevant

  • Include multiple viewpoints

  • Avoid coercion or bias

  • Teachers should consult principals if unsure

• Bans the following concepts from being part of any curriculum:

  • That any individual, by virtue of their race or sex:

    • is inherently superior or inferior

    • is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive

    • should face discrimination or receive adverse treatment

    • determines their moral character

  • Content that includes CRT or The 1619 Project3

  • That Meritocracy4 or hard work is inherently oppressive

  • That the delivery of slaves and the advent of slavery in the U.S. constituted the true founding of the United States

  • That slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to the founding principles of the U.S.

• Defines permitted and prohibited SEL-related content:

  • Permitted SEL concepts:

    • individualism; a rejection of victimhood mentality; conflict resolution techniques; aspiration to serve as entrepreneurs and spiritual and community leaders; financial self-sufficiency; importance of the nuclear family; liberty, hard work and perseverance as the basis for a successful society: and the virtues or self-discipline, forgiveness, patience, kindness, determination, hope, thankfulness, reliability, honesty, industry and responsibility

  • Prohibited SEL content:

    • anything deemed divisive, conflict with District policy, or inconsistent with District education goals

• Bans any teachings of gender fluidity, including:

  • The view that gender is a social construct

  • That it is possible for any person to be any gender or none

  • That an individual’s biological sex should attempt to be changed to match a gender other than their biological sex

  • Supports hormone therapy or other medical treatments that would alter one’s biological sex

• Bans use of pronouns that does not align with an individual’s biological sex unless written parental consent is provided

• Defines and adopts rules around “Potentially Pornographic Material”:

  • Includes materials that contain human sexuality and/or nudity, sexually transmitted diseases, sexually explicit acts, and/or graphic presentations of sexual behavior (e.g., sexual education)

  • Requires that any of this material first be voted on by the Board before distribution to students, and that a public website provides all approved materials, locations, and Board votes5

• For all of the above, prohibits unapproved materials, even from a staff member’s private collections

• A list of prohibited terms is adopted:

  • “Latinx” is banned; use “Hispanic,” “Latino,” or “Latina” instead.

  • “Minor-attracted person” is banned; must use “pedophile,” which any material that includes pedophilia must be portrayed as a crime.

These changes are a real doozy, and each section needs to be unpacked. Classroom discussions are being increasingly controlled and limited as a district, topics are being more clearly banned through a political lens, SEL will seemingly have nothing related to inclusion of student’s mental health, emotional well-being, and social development, and we are now banning words?

Where in any part of our district are these words being spoken? Do we have curriculum where pedophiles are being labeled as “minor-attracted persons” or that pedophilia is taught at all? My issue with this is not with the banned words, but with the introduction of banning words at all. To begin to ban language in schools, even if it is focused on district staff, is to start what may inevitably become censorship.

Further, to implement a policy is the requirement to enforce the policy. What will be the punishment for using the word Latinx? Since this policy applies to school volunteers as well, are we now policing which words the PTO is able to say?

Lastly, this clearly puts into crosshairs any materials, classroom or library, that include any inkling of gender fluidity. This will effectively remove any and all books that may contain content related to transgenderism, even those that would reference a transgender character.

EDIT 5/14/2025: Parts of these policy changes for EMB Local are directly referenced from Texas law passed in 2021, which you can reference here: HB 3979.

(Revised) FM Local — Student Activities

Policy FM Local outlines guidelines for student participation in extracurricular activities.

It has one addition in TEE’s recommendation, which includes student participation in UIL activities:

• Bans students from competing in an athletic competition opposite to the student’s “biological sex”

• Allows female students to participate in an athletic competition designated for male students if there is no corresponding competition designated for females

FM(LOCAL)-DRAFT-04-2025

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This aligns with the latest Texas Education Code requirements.

(Revised) FNAA Local — Student Expression: Distribution of Nonschool Literature

Policy FNAA Local governs the distribution of non-school literature by students. The changes to this policy aligns with the other policies we have already reviewed, by basically saying that students cannot distribute anything already prohibited by the school district.

FNAA(LOCAL)-DRAFT-04-2025

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(Revised) GKDA Local — Nonschool Use of School Facilities: Distribution of Nonschool Literature

Similar to policy FNAA Local, GKDA Local governs the distribution of non-school literature by everyone else, such as individuals or organizations not affiliated with the district. This includes those that rent or lease school facilities, such as churches or other organizations.

The changes for this policy also aligns with the other policies we have already reviewed, where individuals or organizations cannot distribute anything already prohibited by the school district.

GKDA(LOCAL)-DRAFT-04-2025

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Wrapping Up

These policy changes are a clear, sweeping set of changes that hits nearly every conservative talking point we have heard in the last 10 years.

I have several concerns, much of which revolves around implementation of these policies and how it will impact teachers and administrators. We should also consider the impact to a very small number of students and their families.

There is also clear language that gives more direct responsibilities to the Board rather than the Superintendent, which I believe is the absolute wrong direction that the Board should be headed in. They are taking on a vast amount of work normally managed by the district, at least as it relates to selection of instructional materials. Do they not understand what this means for them?

Overall, my opinion is that these policies are mostly unnecessary, as they attempt to solve problems that do not exist (e.g., CRT/SDI in K-12 education, banning words like Latinx, bathroom designations, etc.), they inject curriculum requirements directly into policy (e.g., founding documents which are already part of TEKS), and as a matter of policy language, the changes are written more as contract language rather than school board policy (i.e., they do not fit the tone and structure).

My one curiosity is about how a restricted section in the library would function, as perhaps it would be a middle-ground between those who wish to remove books and those who wish to retain them. On its face it sounds like another way to blackhole books the Board does not like. I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Summary / TLDR

• The district has contracted TEE to replace certain services previously provided by TASB.

• New policy additions and revisions have been proposed, with a possible vote during the next normally scheduled Board meeting in May.

Policy Changes Breakdown:

• AIB Local (New): Bans programs promoting Critical Race Theory (CRT), systemic discrimination ideologies (SDI), gender fluidity, and any equity “audits” related to such programs. Departments supporting such programs will be terminated immediately.

• CL Local (New): Requires bathroom and changing facilities to be used according to a student’s biological sex as stated on their birth certificate.

• BF Local: Limits superintendent involvement in policy development, giving Board members greater control over policy decisions, and removes requirements to align official policy manuals with adoption of Board policies.

• EFA Local: Expands the definition of instructional materials, prohibits materials promoting CRT/SDI, gender fluidity, certain Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) concepts, and the term "Latinx." Creates a “Parental Consent Area” (i.e., restricted section) for materials deemed not to meet policy.

• EFB Local: All new library acquisitions must be approved by the Board, which now includes teacher classroom libraries.

• EMB Local: Broadens definitions for banned topics, including CRT, SDI, gender fluidity, certain SEL concepts, the use of pronouns, introduces new concept of “Potentially Pornographic Material”, and bans the use of words "Latinx" and "Minor-Attracted Persons."

• FM Local: Restricts students from competing in sports that do not match their biological sex, unless they are female and there is no alternative for sports designated for male students.

• FNAA Local & GKDA Local: Restricts distribution of non-school materials by students or any person/organization that interacts with students that contradict district policies, based on the latest changes from the other policies.

Concerns & Implications

• Increased burden on educators to enforce controversial policies.

• Board micromanagement in instructional material selection.

• Uncertainty over implementation, such as managing the restricted book section for libraries.

• Potential impact on students and families, particularly those affected by gender identity-related policies.

Thanks for reading.

The Conroe ISD school board has been quietly working to review and enter into agreements with Texans for Excellence in Education (TEE), a rather new name within Texas public education. Within the last few board meetings, we have seen agenda items and a presentation regarding their engagement with TEE representatives:

Board Meeting, January 23, 2025:

• Receive Information Regarding Texans for Excellence in Education and Consider and Possibly Take Action to become a Member of Texans for Excellence in Education (Requested by President Odenweller)

  • Vote: Passed unanimously

Board Meeting, February 18, 2025:

• Authorize the Board President to Negotiate and Execute Documents Related to Hiring Board Legal Representation (more on this one later)

  • Vote: Passed unanimously

• Authorize the Board President to Negotiate and Execute Agreements with Texans for Excellence in Education (TEE)

  • Vote: Passed unanimously

You can watch TEE’s January presentation to the Conroe ISD Board below. I recommend you watch at 1.25-1.5x speed as this is one hour long (3:04:12 - 3:56:00). Timestamp starts at 3:04.

And as reported in the Houston Chronicle:

Conroe ISD leaders will start a free trial with the newly-formed advocacy organization Texans for Excellence in Education as they explore an alternative to the long-standing Texas Association of School Boards for training, policy guidance and support.

The trial membership ends in August.

“We want to give kids the best chance at education, so they have the best chance at life,” TEE Executive Director Hava Armstrong said during the board’s Jan. 23 meeting. “Let’s make this a neutral environment that is focused on education, on exactly what you send your kids to school for everyday. Get those distractions out of the way and students will flourish.”

There is a great deal of history to review before we begin to understand TEE and its recent activities, so grab some coffee, get comfortable, and let’s begin.

Getting Started

Similar to a growing number of school districts, Conroe ISD has begun the discussion of phasing out existing district support services in favor of TEE. Other school districts include Carroll ISD, Princeton, Katy, Sherman, Keller, Brenham, and potentially more.

But why?

TEE is viewed as a potential replacement for the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB), which as it states in the name, is an association of school boards. TASB provides a wide range of support services for Texas school districts, as we’ll discuss later.

Conroe ISD contracts with TASB today, as do 99.9% of Texas school districts.

TASB is the provider of key support services for Texas public school districts, and they have been the ‘800lb gorilla’ in this space for over 75 years. Their dominance is not because it is a ruthlessly run for-profit business monopoly, but because it was built as a non-profit ‘board of boards’, enabling school districts across Texas to collaborate and unify on the mission to promote public education.

TASB is simply the only school board association to effectively build a coalition and community to provide these services at scale.

The Texas Association of School Boards was established in 1949 — a landmark year for public education in Texas. After years of neglect due to the Depression and World War II, schools in the Lone Star State were finally the focus of needed reform that year via the Gilmer-Aikin laws enacted by the Texas Legislature. The same laws established the Texas Education Agency as the state’s administrative agent to supervise the public school system.

Leading up to that year of change, a small group of school trustees in the Houston area had been meeting to discuss the formation of a state association of local school board members. They wanted local school boards across the state to be able to share experiences and information with each other and to form a unified voice that supported and promoted public education.

In November 1949, their dreams were realized. Approximately 100 trustees gathered in Fort Worth to establish the new nonprofit member organization that would initially serve 26 school districts. Today, TASB serves nearly all 1,025 school boards in Texas. With headquarters located in Austin, the outreach of the Association spans every region of the state.

I recommend you scroll the TASB history page of their website. It is very informative on how they have grown to support public schools over decades, including the development of their vast number of programs.

However…

If TASB is such an important organization for Texas school districts, then why have they been under fire in recent years, and why would school districts be considering leaving their TASB membership behind in favor of something else?

Over the last decade there has been a movement to uproot TASB due to a difference of opinion on its advocacy efforts (among other complaints). The most recent criticism is that TASB advocates ‘agendas’ that promote progressive ideas, such as supporting laws or providing guidance in areas like transgender student issues.

This reached a breaking point after TASB released an update to its Legal FAQ titled ‘Legal Issues Related to Transgender Students’, which was provided to school districts as guidance on how school boards could manage or implement policies related to transgender students. It is largely based on protections provided by Title IX, prior to the second Trump administration. You can download a copy of the TASB FAQ here:

TASB Legal Issues Related To Transgender Students June 2022

367KB ∙ PDF file

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Here is an AI summary of this document:

The document addresses legal and policy considerations for school districts regarding transgender students. It emphasizes the importance of creating safe and inclusive environments while complying with federal and state laws. Key topics include:

1. Definitions: Provides key terms such as gender identity, gender expression, and transgender, to aid understanding of transgender issues.

2. Recognition of Transgender Students: Schools should respect students' gender identity, including their choice of clothing, names, and pronouns, unless prohibited by law. Transgender students are entitled to protection from bullying and harassment under federal law.

3. Title IX Compliance: Highlights that discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation falls under Title IX protections against sex-based discrimination.

4. School Records: Discusses handling requests for changing names and gender on school records. Schools should balance legal requirements and students' rights.

5. Facilities Access: Explores rights related to using restrooms and locker rooms corresponding to a student's gender identity and provides suggestions for case-by-case resolutions.

6. Participation in Activities: Reviews considerations for field trips, sports participation, and other activities segregated by sex.

7. Parental Involvement: Addresses scenarios where a parent's views on gender identity differ from the student's, emphasizing the need for caution and collaboration.

8. Privacy Concerns: Outlines the importance of protecting transgender students' privacy, particularly regarding their gender identity and records.

9. Legal Resources: Provides guidance on where districts can find additional information, including national resources and federal agency recommendations.

Our write-up today is not meant to debate transgender policies, so we will not be diving into TASB’s FAQ. What I will say is that after reading the policy in full, it appears to me as any other legal FAQ that an attorney would provide to its school board. None of it is binding, and the information is provided as recommendations and guidance if the need arises. It references state and federal regulations, current legal cases, previous case law, and other “it depends” legal jargon.

The one item related to this FAQ I cannot resolve is that it had been published by TASB years before (2015), with periodic updates in 2018, 2021, and 2022. But it only became a hot topic after January 2023, which you can see here as an example:

Another quote from Rep. Brian Harrison:

“It’s bad enough that harmful woke ideology is being pushed on Texas students over the objection of their parents, but worse that local elected officials are forcing those same parents to fund it with their tax dollars. That must end,” said Harrison. “I appreciate my colleagues joining me in fighting to stop the continued weaponization of our constituents’ tax dollars against them.”

Interestingly, TASB’s Legal FAQ is no longer available on the TASB website (or any document related to the topic of transgender people), even though it is referenced on their ‘TASB Myth Buster’ site.

Here are TASB’s rebuttals to these complaints:

Myth: "TASB advocates against parents on LGBTQ+ issues."

This is false.

In January 2023, TASB Legal Services updated its Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) on Transgender Students to reflect a case out of the Federal Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. This FAQ resource was not a new document but one that had been online since 2015 and has been periodically updated as new law becomes available.

Contrary to criticism, this FAQ on Transgender Students fully aligns to current law and does not encourage school districts to obscure information from parents.

In fact, the FAQ does the following: 

• It encourages districts to work closely with parents and students to find individualized, reasonable solutions that protect students’ safety, privacy, and wellbeing in the educational environment.  

• It cites the Texas Attorney General’s guidance about parental rights twice in the document. 

• It cites and repeats the law on reporting child abuse verbatim, clearly noting that “a person having reasonable cause to believe that a child's physical or mental health or welfare has been adversely affected by abuse or neglect by any person must immediately make a report as provided by Texas Family Code chapter 261.”  

• It fully aligns with Texas University Interscholastic League (UIL) rules and the “Save Girls Sports Act.” TASB’s legal resource information at the relevant reference policy clearly says that a student must participate in an interscholastic athletic competition that is designated for the biological sex stated on the student’s birth certificate.   

• And, when in doubt, it encourages district officials to seek legal advice. 

In short, this FAQ was designed to help school attorneys and district policy administrators understand legal and compliance issues related to the complex and evolving area of law surrounding transgender students. This document doesn’t direct school districts to adopt any policies or take any position on this topic but is intended to help school districts minimize legal risk that could result in costly taxpayer-funded lawsuits. 

Myth: "TASB advocates men be allowed in girls’ bathrooms."

This is false.

Nowhere in any TASB materials, documents, or trainings does TASB advise school districts to allow men in girls’ bathrooms. As noted, TASB’s Legal FAQ on Transgender Students addresses how school officials can respond if a child and the child’s parents come to the school and ask about access to restroom facilities. The FAQ says school officials should first talk to the parents and try to make safe, private, and separate arrangements for the child.

Those who repeat this false claim are clearly trying to provoke a narrative that has no basis in reality. In its nearly 75-year history, TASB has been nothing but protective of public schoolchildren and public education. TASB remains committed to strongly countering distorted and false attacks on its image and reputation.

Fallout

It is clear that TASB is on the defensive on the topic of transgender students, whether they meant to take a ‘political’ position or not. The Texas legislature and media machine has since been increasingly hostile to TASB’s existence:

Texas Senator Calls Out Texas Association of School Boards

Lawmakers Urge All School Districts to Leave Texas Association of School Boards

Texas Association of School Boards Pushes ‘Transgender’ Restroom Policies

Taxpayer-funded Lobbying Org Pays Massive Salaries

$113K Funneled Into Legislator's Pocket Via Taxpayer-funded Lobbying Payouts?

TASB Threatens to Sue School Districts

School Board Members Instructed to Weaponize Pay Increases

Interestingly, you can find many of TASB’s criticism coming from just a few websites, one of which is the Texas Scorecard, the source for all the links above.

There is an ongoing investigation by the Texas Observer that has focused on the politization of public schools in Texas, and the individuals behind Texas Scorecard is a key component of it. TEE is referenced as part of this effort.

That fight has landed squarely in districts like Grapevine-Colleyville, where the “classical social and emotional learning” policy that Davis reviewed for the Grapevine-Colleyville school board in 2022 was eventually adopted by the conservative majority, instating, among other things, a total ban on employees engaging in any discussion of what the district defines as “gender fluidity.”

That same policy has since been promoted to other schools by Texans for Excellence in Education (TEE), an organization with ties to Monty Bennett, a billionaire funder who has donated to several school board candidates and PACs.

The Observer reviewed two different versions of the “classical social and emotional learning” policy featured on the TEE website and identified two people credited as authors: Ali Williams, an employee of Davis, and Tony McDonald, general counsel for Texas Scorecard, a right-wing website funded largely by West Texas oil billionaires.

TASB

Before we dive further into TEE, let’s take a step back and review more on how TASB works and where it fits into this story.

TASB Structure

TASB is a non-profit school board association, governed by a 40-member Board of Directors, which consists of school board members who represent different regions across the state. The idea is that TASB is a collaboration of school board trustees, who all vote on the direction of the organization. It is a collaborative entity, a “board of boards”, bringing together representatives from school districts all across Texas to advocate for combined interests in public education as well as provide relevant services that school districts need.

Daily TASB operations are led by an executive team, also responsible for areas like risk management, communications, legal support, etc.

TASB Services

The services that TASB provides is comprehensive:

• Leadership training - Equips school board members with skills and knowledge to effectively govern their districts.

• Policy and governance tools - Provides resources and expertise to help districts develop and implement effective policies.

• District operations expertise - Offers guidance to improve efficiency and effectiveness in managing school district operations.

• Human capital services - Assists in recruiting, retaining, and developing highly qualified staff.

• Purchasing and energy cooperatives - Facilitates cost-saving opportunities through group purchasing and energy management programs.

• Legal support - Delivers expert legal advice and resources tailored to school district needs.

• Safe Schools programs - Promotes strategies and solutions to maintain secure and welcoming environments for students and staff.

• Student access resources - Enhances opportunities for students to access educational tools and programs.

• Risk management services - Helps districts identify and mitigate potential risks to protect resources and ensure safety.

• Investment and insurance assistance - Supports districts in managing finances and securing insurance coverage.

• Facility services - Advises on planning, designing, and maintaining school facilities.

• Special population consulting - Provides expertise to support students with unique educational needs.

• Advocacy programs - Represents and amplifies the collective voice of school boards to influence educational policy.

• And much more

Conroe ISD, from what I have gathered, is an ‘Active’ member of TASB, utilizing services such as board member training, policy updates, legal advice, insurance, and oversight of its risk management fund.

Texans for Excellence in Education

Let us now compare the competition, TEE. To begin, we should note a few odd things with their organization:

• They are not registered in Texas like TASB is. TEE is registered in Delaware.

• Their Delaware tax filings show it’s one Officer and Director is a Dallas consultant who focuses on the hospitality industry.

• Their registration addresses are virtual (i.e., not real offices), both in Delaware and in Texas. This is not uncommon for PACs or many other small businesses out there, but it should be noted for such an important role that a school board association provides.

• Their contact address is no longer on their website as it was when they were newly created. Perhaps they moved virtual addresses or physical offices, but there are interesting Twitter threads on TEE’s business registration:

And this thread:

And a related video:

As a side note, TEE’s online media campaigns are full of politically leaning messaging:

Of course, we should compare against TASB’s feeds as well, which you can do here via their Twitter and Facebook feeds. Scrolling through them I do not see anything as political as noted with TEE.

As an organization, TEE does not appear reputable as a school board association, at least based on everything we just collected. But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and look at their structure, services, and recent activities in other school districts.

TEE Structure

As presented during the Conroe ISD meeting, TEE is similar to TASB in that it is also a school board association, a “board of boards”. It also has a four-person executive team that manages the business.

There isn’t much else I can find on their structure outside of the inconsistencies we learned on their Delaware business registration.

TEE Services

TEE claims to be able to provide any and all services that TASB can. Looking through their website and the various presentations they have made, I did mark that most of the services listed on their website and in their school board presentation are comparable by description. Each service’s scope may be different, but the key components are all there, including support of key district services, insurance, risk management, human resources support, purchasing co-ops, board training, etc.

If TEE does indeed have all the same services, we should note that a smaller organization will not yet have the economies of scale for a school board to consider, such as the fuel or purchasing co-ops. Nor do they offer all of the various programs within those services, as you can learn via the TASB history page.

Based on their ‘training connect’ service, as we will outline below, these services appear to be on-the-fly, building them as they go. We will also see where certain services listed in their slide deck, presented to the Conroe ISD Board, are seemingly non-existent.

TEE is giving major start-up vibes.

TEE Contractors

One obvious item is that TEE is not near as staffed or capable of delivering services as TASB is, if only for the reason they are still new and not as established as TASB. This does not mean TEE cannot continue to build their portfolio, and as they take on more school districts they should continue to grow.

However, what this means in the short-term is that they will have to subcontract out many of their services, one of which is training.

Based on reporting from the Texas Scorecard, a training partner with TEE is a non-profit named Innovative Teachers of Texas (ITTexas):

Melissa Martin, head of TEE’s training partner Innovative Teachers of Texas, spoke to the board as well.

ITTexas is a nonprofit approved by the Texas Education Agency to provide state-required training for school district administrators and board members.

“ITTexas provides training without the political agenda that’s going to offend any of your community members or parents,” Martin told Carroll ISD trustees.

If you visit the ITTexas website, you will notice it is not well cared for, as there are many broken images and links. If you look around the site you will find their mission items, such as:

An educator's job is to teach students. ITTexas believes educators should be liberated from any responsibility not related to academic success including, but not limited to, topics such as Social Emotional Learning (SEL), Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE), Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI), Critical Race Theory (CRT), Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI), etc…

…Judeo-Christian values are the values upon which our country is based, and those moral values should be respected when dealing with other people's children. ITTexas is not an inclusive or exclusive organization. ITTexas does not seek to allow every standard into our society for the woke appearance of being "inclusive" nor does ITTexas wish to be reactionary or an "exclusive" force.

It is unclear if all the services or programs provided through TEE are similar in their mission statement, but based on what we have seen so far, we would have to assume that they lean a certain political direction. This brings us to our next discovery.

Questionable Activity

For anyone keeping tabs on public education in Texas, you may be aware of the absolute drama occurring in Keller ISD. The short version is that the KISD Board is working to split their district into two, in order to address their $12 million budget shortfall (sound familiar?). Their community has been in uproar, and their Superintendent resigned over it.

A Keller ISD community group has been submitting constant public information requests (PIRs), doing their own investigation into the events that led up to the decision to split the district. This has led to a growing number of organizations joining into a lawsuit, claiming that the KISD Board committed TOMA violations in the process:

The plaintiffs contend that the board used encrypted messaging apps, undisclosed meetings and improperly hired consultants to advance a controversial plan to redraw the district’s boundaries without community input. That proposal has since triggered Superintendent Tracy Johnson’s resignation, opposition from Fort Worth’s top elected officials, a student walkout and calls for a public vote on the split.

Guess which “consultant” is at the middle of this drama?

Texans for Excellence in Education.

The push to split Keller ISD began as early as 2022, when the board hired a private attorney, Tim Davis, to consult on unspecified legal matters, according to the suit. Davis serves as general counsel to the Tarrant County Republican Party and on the board of managers for JPS Health Network, where he was appointed by County Judge Tim O’Hare in 2023.

Plaintiffs allege that Davis — whose hiring was never formally approved in a public meeting — was instrumental in developing a legal strategy for the proposed division of the district.

The lawsuit then details a network of consultants who allegedly played key roles in crafting the plan.

Among them is Grant Anderson, a self-described expert in school finance and business operations, who has ties to Texans for Excellence in Education. The nonprofit group presents itself as an alternative to the Texas Association of School Boards in providing training, legal advice and policy drafting to school districts.

Continued allegations are that for months TEE has been working behind the scenes with certain Board members to split the district so that TEE or other consultants could be used to manage and essentially privatize services of the school district.

They also claim that TEE is not actually an authorized TEA Provider, as a PIR to the Texas Education Agency (TEA) resulted in no results being found for TEE or the TEE representative to Keller ISD (Grant Anderson) that provided Board training:

“We went to TEA's website and couldn't find TEE or Grant Anderson as an authorized TEA Provider, so we submitted a public information request to TEA asking for Grant Anderson's certification and registration with the state to be authorized to legally provide trustee trainings. And you'll never guess what we got back? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Because Grant Anderson isn't registered with TEA to provide any school board trainings. We even called and confirmed with the TEA Governance division- Grant Anderson is NOT registered with the state, nor is TEE as an organization.” -LINK

I cannot personally verify these allegations, but you are welcome to view the Keller ISD community discussion on their Facebook group here, and you can see their collected public information request documentation here.

To go deeper into the web of connections of TEE, I found several interesting Reddit threads that connects others involved tangentially with TEE. I verified the information with the referenced links:

• Hava Armstrong, the woman who presented to the Conroe ISD Board on TEE’s services, is married to Matt Armstrong who has been politically involved in several north Dallas area school board races, as well as local Republican Party Commissioner activity and the creation of related PACs that have backed school board candidates. He has made some questionable choices, some of which has landed him in trouble, including multiple Texas ethics violations that resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

• Matt Armstrong’s PAC, Parents and Teachers of Decatur ISD (now dissolved), supported a Decatur ISD Board candidate, HollyAnn Petree, which the PAC sent text messages to their entire area sending false statements about her school board election opponents (also sound familiar?).

• HollyAnn Petree is the wife of John Petree, the man who also presented to the Conroe ISD Board and is President of TEE.

Moving on, I decided to check out the TEE website and training portal.

TEE’s Portals

Looking at TEE’s training website, I noticed that anyone can register an account. I registered an account for myself and searched to find any available free trainings. Some of these appear to be scheduled Zoom calls, but even though these Zoom meetings are expired, you can easily click to receive your certificate, even after not doing anything at all!

Simply register an account, enroll into a free course, then click Complete Course to view your certificate.

This training site does not appear to be well secured, nor does it validate any information. I was not required to verify my email address, nor were any security options offered for my account (e.g., 2-Factor Auth). I wonder if I were to add a payment method for the trainings that do cost money, that I could also “complete” the course and print my certificate.

As this was for testing purposes only, I did send this info to the email on the website to let them know of these potential issues.

I also enrolled into a training course that was a recorded video, which is also available on their YouTube channel (the only video on their channel). Perhaps TEE provides some free content, or they clicked the wrong button when publishing it on YouTube:

In that hour long presentation (I watched at 2x speed), I actually did learn a lot about the Texas Accountability System. I cannot validate the accuracy of their training, but I will say it was well structured and clearly presented.

We should note that there were only 15 courses available for training in their portal, some of which were focused per school district (e.g., Katy ISD, and Conroe ISD recently added).

Lastly, in digging through the other services they presented on, I could not find any links for the various ‘connect’ services that they offer (Member Connect, HR Connect, etc.). You can view a sample of Policy Connect for Sherman ISD here (the only ISD I could find using it). Board Connect runs on Diligent, so I could not access it, but many of these “services” appear to be vaporware. Even the links on their website for Privacy and Legal policies go nowhere.

TEE appears to be selling services that do not actually exist.

Cost

One key point TEE touts is that they are only half the cost of TASB. I looked through the last three years of Conroe ISD AP registers for how much has been spent with TASB, excluding the Risk Management fund:

The total Conroe ISD budget for ‘24-25 is $711,000,000. Switching to TEE would not bring any substantial cost savings to the district.

My Take

TASB has been around for 75 years, and with any type of service provider it is important to have competition to keep them fresh. However, one could argue that an association such as TASB is not meant to have competition in the same way a for-profit business does. At its core, TASB is a combined voice for school boards, similar to a union. But perhaps that union has grown a little too comfortable with its status.

Having a new fresh association such as TEE does provide school boards with more choices to align its local community values.

However, TEE is basically a startup company. Their online content alone shows us that their platform is not completely finished. TEE is not transparent as an organization, their team has committed questionable acts within other school districts driving community outrage, they are much more of a politically-aligned association than TASB (e.g., TASB does not endorse school board candidates whereas TEE founders have directly contributed to candidates), their service offering appears subpar at best when compared to TASB, and their cost savings are inconsequential for a district of CISD’s size.

As a non-expert in public education policy, I am not able to validate TEE’s industry expertise. The content I was able to watch did appear as professional as any other I have seen, and their leadership team, though small, appears to have the credentials (I did note for one person, TEE is basically a side-gig from their normal day job).

Part of their presentation to the Conroe ISD Board included a statement that they offer all the current services as TASB. I highly doubt this. Though even if they do, I question their ability to execute on those services due to their small size and use of questionable contractors.

If the Conroe ISD Board is wanting to get away from TASB, surely there are better options than TEE? Perhaps there are not other board associations, but there are definitely companies out there that provide the same type of consulting services (examples here).

Why TEE? Why now?

What’s Next?

One item mentioned at the very beginning is that the CISD Board, specifically President Misty Odenweller, is hiring Board legal representation. This is not uncommon in cases where there is litigation involving the Board, conflict of interest, policy development, governance issues, negotiations, or many other cases where the school district attorney is not the appropriate person to handle such matters.

However, one item we noted earlier regarding Keller ISD is that their Board also hired legal representation, which turned out to be the same person who represents seemingly all of these school districts looking to move to TEE, Tim Davis. Tim Davis is a partner with Jackson Walker, and they provide TEE’s legal consulting services.

I am curious if President Odenweller is engaging with the same attorneys or firms to begin onboarding TEE services. Without submitting a public information request we probably will not know until upcoming meetings. After seeing what is going on in Keller ISD with their district split, I wonder if there are similar discussions happening in Conroe.

Closing Up & Appeal to the Board

If any of the Conroe ISD Board members happen to read this, I do implore you to ask more questions of TEE:

• Can you provide case studies or examples of successful implementations in other school districts?

• Can you provide references or testimonials from current clients?

• How do you ensure quality and consistency of your services across different districts?

• Can you demo each ‘connect’ portal live to show their capabilities and use?

• What kind of cost savings can we realistically expect by switching to TEE?

• How do you stay updated with the latest educational policies and best practices?

• Can you provide a list of partners that support TEE’s services?

• What qualifications and experience do your consultants and trainers have?

• How accessible is your support team, and what is your average response time for issues?

• What measures do you have in place to handle potential conflicts of interest?

• How do you address and resolve any controversies or issues that arise with your services?

I apologize for such a long post, but I have been going down a rabbit-hole with TEE for quite some time. If you made it this far, I hope you can see the real concern with what the Conroe ISD Board may be doing with TEE and that you will speak up to voice these concerns.

TLDR Summary

• Conroe ISD is considering replacing the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) services with Texans for Excellence in Education (TEE).

• Recent board meetings have discussed and approved actions to move forward with TEE. A 'trial’ has begun, ending August 2025.

• TASB has been a long-standing support organization for Texas school districts, providing services like board training, policy development, legal assistance, and advocacy.

• It has faced criticism for its stance on progressive issues, particularly transgender student policy recommendations provided via its Legal FAQs.

• TEE is a new organization offering similar services to TASB but has faced scrutiny due to political leanings and questionable practices.

• Concerns about TEE's legitimacy and capability have been raised, given its newness and political connections. It is not a Texas-registered organization, and its founders have been involved in numerous controversies.

• TEE has been involved in questionable activities in other school districts and potential conflicts of interest, such as orchestrating a district split of Keller ISD, or its connections with megadonors.

• TEE claims to offer services at half the cost of TASB, but the actual cost savings for Conroe ISD are minimal.

• TEE's services are still developing or non-existent, and there are doubts about their ability to match TASB's comprehensive offerings.

• The Conroe ISD Board is hiring legal representation, possibly linked to TEE's legal consultants for onboarding.

Thanks for reading.

In my post on how HOAs can sharpen your skills at work, we discussed the various benefits to you joining your Homeowner’s Association Board as it relates to building your skillsets as a leader, which can translate to your professional career. To discuss the opposite, there is the other side of volunteering within a small bureaucracy like your HOA. It can become quite challenging for the uninitiated, leading to burnout and failure.

Today we are going to review the reasons for why some HOAs you come across seem to be struggling or under fire by homeowners. There are few HOAs I have seen that are running smoothly month to month, year to year, and where the homeowner complaints are at a minimum. Those that are humming along may still have a reputation of being unorganized or poorly run. Why is this?

Typically, the only way you know things are running smoothly is when few people show up to Board meetings, complaints from homeowners are rare, and everything looks decent when you drive through the neighborhood. It is not unlike working in IT - when people are not complaining, it means things are working.

Yet, if you join your neighborhood Facebook group you might assume the HOA is doing everything wrong. This is where I believe there are at times differences in perception versus reality.

Before we begin, let’s make some assumptions:

• We are talking about common HOAs/POAs that run on small budgets and where daily work is handled by a management company. Communities with full-time property managers are the exception (and sound amazing).

• My experience has all been within neighborhoods, not condos. They face similar challenges, but some of what we’ll discuss may not be relevant for condos.

Making a Difference

One of the first things you learn when joining your HOA Board is that you likely do not really understand how things work. You put your name in the hat for the election because people complain constantly, and you think you can spare an hour or two a month to attend meetings and make decisions. You want to help.

The reality is that being a dedicated Board member requires more commitment than people realize, and the truly great ones that can drive change may burn out before they can make a difference. However, those that stick with the effort can really make an impact on their community.

Here are the categories I see with Board members and their level of effort:

Board Effort Levels

• Not engaged: Attend some meetings, rarely or never answer emails.

• Minimum effort: Attend most meetings, answer most emails.

• Engaged: Keep engaged with the community, communicate frequently to other Board members and homeowners, and actively help find solutions to problems. Stay informed with contractors such as the management company, pool company, landscaper, etc. Meet contractors in person when needed, review contract terms, and plan budgets.

• Leading: Build and support committees, liaison to external parties (e.g. other HOAs, city/county officials, law enforcement, etc.), and be a voice for the community. These people develop other Board members. Also includes taking part in drafting new policy or guidelines.

• Exceptional: Drive and succeed with an effort that requires supermajority support (topic for another day).

In nearly a decade of being involved with HOAs, I would say most Board members I have worked with balance between the minimum effort to engaged. This is not a criticism. It is just a reality of how long-term volunteer efforts typically work.

People join their HOA, put in effort for a time, then may get frustrated with the bureaucracy or the frequent criticism from their neighbors. They may also get involved without realizing the commitment required. They can have jobs that are in-office, kid’s sports on the weekends, or a schedule that does not allow for a perpetual volunteer.

This is why Board members may typically be older, retired, or stay-at-home in some fashion, which enables them to maintain the commitment. It means that the only people that can lead your local community are probably limited to a subset of homeowners who have the time, much less the initiative to drive and see change.

For myself, I try to stay in the ‘engaged’ area as much as I can, but this requires a significant time investment that is difficult to sustain. ‘Leading’ is even more of a commitment that I have tried for stretches of time, but it requires a constant presence that most people cannot invest into, and remaining too long within it may drive you away from the entire effort.

Attempting to lead also comes with added conflict, as your initiatives can often be met with resistance to change or disagreement on priorities by other Board members or homeowners.

All of this is heavily dependent on who is doing the day-to-day work, which brings us to our next item.

Management Companies

Your complaint with your HOA is probably less about the Board and more about the management company running the daily operations. This is where most homeowners are confused about what an HOA actually is. You have the HOA members (every homeowner who owns a property lot), the Board, which are the elected homeowners who make HOA decisions, and then the contract management company who performs the daily operations.

That violation you received about your trashcan is likely from the management company inspector, or an upset neighbor that reported you.1

If a Board member is the one actively writing up people for violations, as we see in funny commercials, know that this is not very common in my experience. This is why news stories about HOAs fining people for nonsense are “news”, because these one-off violations do not happen every day.

Most Board members are not involved enough to actively patrol the community for things like trash cans or yard decor. The Board primarily sets the policy and guidelines, and it’s up to the management company to enforce it. If your HOA does not have a management company, then it at least has a one-person property manager and/or poor souls that both sit on the Board and run the operations.

The unfortunate part is that your property manager is likely the manager for 5-10 other neighborhoods. They probably do not live within your HOA, and they may not even be the ones doing the monthly inspections for violations. Inspections are a whole other discussion, as they may be done by minimum wage workers who are fresh out of high school.2

There have been multiple occasions where a new inspector will get too excited with their role, and they start writing up homeowners for everything from grass an inch too tall or for things the Board agreed to not bother with (e.g., parking in the street).3

As an example, we once had a homeowner receive a violation for a dumpster in their driveway. A few weeks earlier their home had caught fire, and it was undergoing repairs. The inspector did not know this, so they wrote a violation. That owner posted in the Facebook group for help, and then we had an uproar over how terrible the HOA is. One simple email from the Board to the management company and the issue was resolved.

Yet, the criticism continued long after because of this one mistake by the management company. You also receive these common complaints related to violations:

“The HOA sent me a letter for my grass, but they can’t even keep their own grass cut!”

“Why should I get a violation for my RV parked in the driveway when the HOA pool looks like a swamp!”

“The HOA is harassing me about my trashcan! I am going to sue them!”

etc., etc.

These homeowners are not entirely wrong to be upset if the neighborhood is looking drab and then they receive a violation, but these are issues that the Board must address separately. Your violation is likely legit. The pool having algae may also be true, but that does not mean your HOA is doing nothing to resolve it.

Inspections may also only be done once or twice a month, so there are bound to be gaps in enforcement. This is especially so when violations have a certain number of days (e.g., 10 days in Texas) to be ‘cured’ by homeowners. This gives fuel to those who believe they are being treated unfairly because of other homeowners who may be doing the same thing (i.e., they should also get a violation but do not because they were outside the inspection window).

The alternative is to have a dedicated, full-time property manager within the neighborhood or subdivisions. This person could perform inspections weekly, if not daily.

Why not have a dedicated property manager for every neighborhood? They are expensive, of course. A management company usually charges a per-lot fee, like $7/lot per month. For 1,000 homes this comes to $84,000/year, along with the rest of HOA business expenses to manage the community (e.g., office supplies, violation letters sent, etc.). To hire a full-time person may double that cost, and they would also need office space within the neighborhood, increasing monthly expenses.

You could certainly hire a property manager without the company, but this brings other pros and cons we do not have time for here.

The important note is that it may not be your HOA Board that is bad, but the management company or their processes running it. Try not to throw your Board under the bus so quickly until you give them a chance to remedy any management issues.

We should make a side note here that there are absolutely HOA Board members who become way overinvolved into their role. They usually become popular on Reddit (sub appropriately named ‘Fuck the HOA’) before making it to the local news. These people usually run for the Board so they can exert control rather than building community to address issues. This is less an issue of HOAs than it is people who obtain slivers of power.

Homeowner Understanding

Another challenge with HOAs is that few homeowners understand how they work.

As an example, first time homebuyers do not spend enough time understanding the home they are buying or the neighborhood they are buying into.

They may see that there is a community pool and splash pad, but they miss that there is only one for the entire neighborhood, and that it’s not in walking distance from their home (or even part of the same subdivision). The same can be said about playgrounds or simple things like sidewalks, which new neighborhood developers may completely ignore because they are not required to install or completely connect them.4

Many people may not know that HOAs are generally a “keep the lights on” organization. It is rare that an HOA, working on a budget designed to keep costs low, is able to afford to build amenities like new playgrounds, gyms, or a new clubhouse.

If you buy a home, whatever you have access to at that moment (e.g., playground, pool, splashpad), is what you can expect for the rest of your time there.

Your friend who lives in the neighborhood next door and pays the same HOA yearly amount you do, yet they get many more amenities, is not a reflection on how bad your neighborhood or HOA is. It means you bought in the wrong neighborhood.

The bare minimum you can expect from your HOA is that the bills get paid, the grass gets cut, the pool cleaned, the fences maintained, and whatever services you are contracted for such as trash or security. Many HOAs can find difficulty in maintaining these basics, so if you expect more, then you need to change your expectations - unless you plan to join the Board.

Instead, it is common for homeowners to post on social media to ask why we cannot build more amenities to make the neighborhood nicer, or that we should make a major change. They often lament about the HOA Board, and a movement forms around an issue that doesn’t actually exist.

As we know, most homeowners do not show up to meetings, and there are few to volunteer for the Board or committees. There is a lack of understanding with the core challenges, the history of the neighborhood, or what is already being done to address issues. This cycle of complaints may repeat every few months or years, even when communications are sent out frequently to keep homeowners informed.

At this point I may be ranting, but what I am trying to get across is that the stress of dealing with uninformed homeowners is a very challenging part of being on your HOA Board, and why it is difficult to keep good volunteer Board members engaged or leading the community, keeping it on track and running consistently.

Nobody is Perfect

I must add that I myself have not always been a perfect Board member. When I first got involved, I had a need to 'prove’ that the HOA was doing everything it could; that I was doing everything I could. In the process I ended up fighting with people online and made both friends and “enemies” in the process.

It took quite some time for me to develop the hardiness you need to volunteer in small bureaucracies like an HOA or MUD. There is a tact and method to messaging that you slowly develop, and it gets easier to ignore the trolls. Admittedly though, even today I find myself struggling to not post or comment on people’s negativity, but you at least find yourself using more neutral language and gracefully accepting criticism.

You also have to get used to sometimes failing when you and the Board make a poor decision. Realizing that you must cut losses, pivot, or make big changes is something you must get used to, making sure your pride does not get in the way of keeping your community in good shape while meeting your fiduciary duty.

As examples, this could be moving the neighborhood pool from chlorine to salt, changing the landscaper, rolling out a Fining Policy or new Architecture Guidelines, and so on. When something does not work, do not double down and blame homeowners. Take ownership of the mistake, collect feedback, and turn your failures into positive change.

In the end, your HOA is simply people doing the best they can with the available information and resources.

Strategies for Success

For HOAs that are running poorly, how do you turn them around? Simple, get rid of the HOA! (I’m kidding…sort of).5

If you find yourself on an HOA Board, there are key things you should focus on:

1. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Make sure that after every meeting or every major decision, that emails are sent out, posts are made in the local social media groups, minutes and financials are posted on the website, and that you get the ‘status’ of the neighborhood in front of people on a recurring schedule (at least quarterly). Make sure they know that the Board is working on the issues. Although do understand that…

2. Less is more. Do not overpromise and under-deliver. Keep the Board’s goals at a high level and with extended timelines. With any bureaucracy progress takes time, and you should make sure that you give yourselves the room to navigate challenges. I use the Scotty Principle wherever possible.

3. Hold contractors accountable. Make sure that issues are reported to the pool crew, the landscaper, the lake management company, or whoever is managing maintenance. This is something the property manager should be doing, but as they probably do not live within the neighborhood it usually falls on the Board to monitor. When they do not deliver, make sure they understand your contract has a 30-day out. Similarly…

4. Review contractors yearly. Each time your renewal is up with a contractor, make sure you evaluate if you are getting the responsiveness and service that you are paying for. This means the Board needs to be engaged enough to understand when change needs to be made. At a minimum, make sure these reviews are on the monthly agenda.

5. Build committees. This is a tough one, because it is difficult to not only find people to join committees (e.g., landscaping, architecture, etc.), but finding people who can lead them. It is often that when a Board gives responsibilities to a committee that they wash their hands of it and let them do their thing. This is a bad idea. Keep tabs on your committees; I have learned the hard way that not keeping up with them can lead to disastrous results.

6. Meet in person whenever possible. In-person meetings are still vitally important to keep people talking in a civil manner. Do not take your HOA meetings to be 100% online if at all possible, and make sure that homeowner complaints or challenges (e.g., 209 Hearing) are always performed in person. If someone has an issue, encourage them to speak out about it during public comments at the next meeting. If it is important, then it should be both heard and discussed in person, even if the Board must meet a homeowner or contractor outside of a normal meeting. As an extension…

7. Limit the Board’s social media interactions. Any good attorney will tell you to get off of social media as it relates to being part of a bureaucracy. I challenge this idea because it is my opinion that good Board members are ones that are plugged into it, and unfortunately social media is the best way to do that. It allows you to keep a finger on the pulse of the community. However, restrain yourself from getting into flame wars with your neighbors. When necessary, provide the info they need and move on. Most of the time the rest of the community will correct them anyways.

8. Make the tough decisions. Your HOA has a duty to keep the neighborhood in good condition so that homeowner’s property values are maintained (among other reasons). This includes collecting fees, up to putting a lien or foreclosing on someone’s home. It means getting rid of the landscaper, even if they have been delivering for the last 10 years but then raised rates too high. As a Board, do not be afraid to take action.

Closing

While much of this post feels like an HOA President venting, I hope you have come to understand why your HOA may be the way it is.

It is mundane, unpraised volunteer work. There is little to no benefits of being on your HOA Board other than being proud that you are keeping things running well. This means your Board volunteers may have a high turnover, causing your HOA to miss important things on a recurring basis.

Most homeowners do not understand how HOAs work, and they often take it out on the Board. This drives good Board members away and keeps the conflict ongoing. It also means the perception of the HOA is not aligned with reality; perhaps it is actually running really well?

Good contractors can be difficult to find and manage. It requires multiple Board members and a good property manager to keep tabs on the community so that it is always looking its best. This is a recurring task that must be kept up with all the time, and sometimes this means things get dropped.

HOAs typically work on shoestring budgets. This means your neighborhood does not seem to make “progress” in growth or becoming fancier. The reality is that HOAs are meant to keep things as well-kept as possible, not to build new amenities (without special assessments).

At the end we discussed ways to keep things moving, and hopefully you took these to heart. If you are on your HOA Board today, remember to keep working through the challenges, stay off the local news, and don’t become case law!

Thanks for reading.

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Whether dealing with the smallest forms of bureaucracy, such as HOAs, MUDs, and small city councils, or with massive public school districts and large metropolitan areas, newly elected board trustees or councilmembers often find that what they fought for during their campaign is going to take more effort than they realized. This happens when they learn they cannot make changes overnight or may realize they have no idea how things work.

Those who follow me know that I have been highly focused on our local school district with Conroe ISD, which we will discuss in a moment, but this type of realization by the newly elected happens all the time at every level. It underscores the importance of elections and the need to vote for knowledgeable, competent individuals.

Similarly, you may know people at your job who get hired for a position that they are not qualified for, and they struggle to meet performance objectives due to their inability to grasp basic concepts required to do the work expected of them.

However, this does not mean that they will not be successful.

Similar to your professional career, being on an HOA or school board does require ‘on-the-job’ training, and as long as you are determined to see things through, you can achieve your goals with proper strategy and adopting realistic objectives.

Before diving into strategies for success as a newly elected representative, let's explore the initial challenges faced when stepping into a new role as a public official.

Everyone Hates their HOA

As President of two different HOAs over the last eight years, I will say that HOAs are one of the worst parts of living in suburbia (outside of loud neighbors).1 It is another level of oversight in your life that requires an additional fee you must pay. To be on your HOA Board is to become a facilitator of that oversight, part of a small bureaucracy. It is also mundane volunteer work that can easily be hijacked by the worst kind of people (you know who they are). Yet, if done right, your HOA can run smoothly in the background, humming along with minimal complaints on the Facebook group.

Pretend for a moment that you want to run for your HOA.

You may be upset that your neighborhood landscaping has gone downhill, or that the pool is looking more like a rundown hotel amenity. You run for the HOA Board and win, only to realize on day one you have no idea how things like budgets work. As you listen to the financial report at your first meeting, your eyes glaze over and a wave of imposter syndrome tsunamis over you as you attempt to keep up.

Your goal of getting rid of the landscaper on day one is thwarted when you understand you have to first give them a 30-day notice, as stated in your contract. Also, Texas law requires any HOA contracts over $50,000 to be bid out. As landscaping is expensive, it means you have to send out request for proposals (RFPs) to new contractors, all of which you must review, discuss, and vote on as a Board at the next meeting. Quickly solving problems becomes a months-long series of emails and meetings. Nothing is fast.

You are now on the other side of complaints as you see people rage about the HOA on Facebook. That was something you did as well, but now you are their target. As you attempt to explain to people how things work, they digitally plug their ears. They don’t want to hear your explanations. They either want things to change or see you fail in the process; the details do not matter to most critics.

I know this because I experienced it myself. I have seen simple projects take six months to a year to complete, because of all the red tape and decision making that must take place. This can truly discourage you with trying to make future changes.

This is why I believe joining small community councils or boards is a great way to cut your teeth on learning how things work. This forces you to peek behind the curtain and humble yourself with your own ignorance. It is also a great way to improve your skillset and build leadership capability in your professional career:

The best ways to improve upon understanding board or government basics is the following:

• Ask a lot of questions, even if they are dumb. If your pride is too much of an obstacle, then only ask these questions in private. Your HOA property manager can help, or many times property management companies offer free board training. Your fellow board members can help. Your consultants can help, or your local professionals are available to sit down and help you understand how things work.

• Get training. Whether it is official training, simple videos on YouTube, or asking ChatGPT to explain how finances work, do it. Do not expect the knowledge to just pop into your brain. Learn how things work.

• Read books. There are countless books, articles, and blogs that touch on how to be a great public official. I covered a few of these related to school boards in a recent post.

• Lean on your consultants or professionals. As a board trustee, you are not expected to run the day-to-day work of your association or district. You are expected to make decisions based on the information provided. Although it is important for you to understand how things work, you do not need to become a subject matter expert in the work itself.

Ideally, you should have learned much of this knowledge before running for election, but it is not a requirement. There are many things you can do to get better at running your association or district, but at its core you just need to keep learning how things work. It is the best way to stay informed so you can make good decisions.

Going Public

To increase the complexity of board work, you may decide you want to run beyond an association and go for city council or your local MUD. These are true government entities, which are bound by many more rules from state and federal regulators. You become acquainted with things like the Texas Open Meetings Act or Public Information Act. Finances become much more complex, as you now have taxing authority.

Words like ‘fiduciary duty’, ‘SB2’, ‘parity’, or ‘VATRE’ can quickly become a nightmare to navigate.

The benefit of public entities is that they usually come with great consultants. Whereas HOAs are typically run by underpaid property managers who have 10+ properties at a time, your city council or MUD has a dedicated attorney, engineers, operators, bookkeepers, tax collector, and so on. The work becomes much easier when you have the experts in the room to help guide you.

I have been part of our MUD Board for the last six years, and I recently became President. My initial mission was to drive down our outrageous tax rate, and we have made some strides with this (1.39 to 1.07 within last 8 years). However, over time you begin to find just how complex government systems are.

As an example, the challenge with tax rates is that lowering them is much easier than raising them. You have to consider this when planning for future needs like covering new expenses or debts (e.g., bonds). With this, I have learned that having a low tax rate is a double-edged sword. Although your constituents may celebrate you for lowering taxes, within the next year you may find you cannot add or expand important services (especially so when the state forces unfunded mandates). Many of the things you campaigned on cannot be realized, like renovating a park or giving raises to teachers.

Taxes are also something you can only change once a year. Implementing change in bureaucracy is a long, grinding process.

Similarly with this grind, you will now have to sit through the most mundane parts of being an elected official. You must listen to public comments, often from people who do not understand how things work or who have personal agendas. You have to sit through lengthy status reports and make decisions on things like turning off people’s water or putting a lien on someone’s home. Sometimes it feels brutal, especially as these may be people you know, but this is the role you signed up for and a responsibility you must meet.

Of course, these processes exist for good reason as they ensure fairness, transparency, accountability, and thoroughness in decision making. They help you meet your duties as an official, such as fiduciary duty, which requires you to act in the best interest of your association or district, even if it makes the public upset (e.g., closing schools).

Bureaucracy is important for our local government to work, whether we like it or not.

When Experience Matters

For many people, putting someone in charge of a meager $400K HOA budget is not that big of a deal, especially when the impact is the grass not getting cut or people receiving more letters about trashcans.2

It is a different story when it is a $700MM budget, or managing oversight of thousands of employees, or management of tens of thousands of students.

As an example, using my favorite topic of our local school district that is Conroe ISD, this was somewhat on display at recent board meetings.

Our new slate of ‘Mama Bear’ Trustees overseeing Conroe ISD are playing catch-up with their knowledge on how things work:

To summarize: The first board trustee talking did not understand a core concept of taxes and public school financing. A moment was taken to explain it. As a side note, that trustee campaigned heavily on the previous board not being good financial stewards because they adopted a deficit budget (like most Texas school districts in 2024). She was wrong on this.3

However, that trustee is doing what new board members should do. She asked a question, and now she knows a little more of how something works. This is a good thing and something that I believe they should all do more of. Also, if I am being honest, I am not confident that her opponent in the election would have known how that part of school financing worked either.

As another example, when Trustee Misty Odenweller was first elected to the Conroe ISD Board in 2022, she also asked many questions that revealed how little she understood about public school processes, as well as simple Robert’s Rules of Order. Over time, she now understands much more and is presiding over meetings. As President she is now driving the district bus, and I hope she continues to learn how things work so that the board can better support our children.

Related to our school district, I believe it is yet to be seen how well our new board performs. None of them had prior board experience before their election, and it shows. Yet, board experience is not a requirement, as they often mentioned during the election when their opponents attempted to use it against them. And they are right.

It is good to have experienced people in office, but it is not a requirement.

This brings me to my next point.

Critics often make the best Board Members

I have witnessed this on many occasions. Some of the most ardent complainers can become some of the best board members. It is why when I see complaints about something in our neighborhood, I ask them to attend meetings, join committees, or think about running for the board themselves. They clearly care about the issues, and at a minimum, I want them to hear what we are working on.

To state what you already know, most critics do not care to participate in building or implementing solutions. Nine times out of 10 they laugh it off because their lives are always too busy to volunteer for such things. Yet when they do end up joining your board, and peek behind the curtain to see why things are the way they are, it is often that they can bring the ideas or tenacity needed to see through change.

They can also completely derail everything and bring progress to a halt. As with most things, your results may vary. I have seen many times where people get into new hobbies or roles without planning, only to quickly realize they have no idea what they are doing:

Serving is Rewarding

Even with understanding the difficulties that can come with volunteering for your local board or council, the rewards can be immense. Being part of processes that help people feels great! Supporting others has many rewards, and for some it can launch them into areas they had not thought about before.

Also, learning how things work gives you the opportunity to share that knowledge and help others understand, which can give them the initiative to volunteer as well.

Ultimately, serving your community is a personal decision. If you are thinking about running for any type of office, make sure you are ready for the long-term commitments it takes to see through change, but also think about how you may make a positive impact while also growing your own skillsets.

Closing

Bureaucracy is a grind, and it can take a toll on those not prepared for or able to adapt to it. Their ideas and grand plans can quickly be crushed when they understand the weight of the responsibility and the perseverance it takes to see change through to the end.

This is not the case for everyone, as some can really excel. Even those with board experience can fail when they move from one level of bureaucracy to the next, so it depends on the determination of the person.

For those finding difficulty in their new role, there are things you can do to keep pushing forward, such as asking questions, reading more, leaning on your professionals, and keeping an open mind.

For those who wish to fight against those they dislike, or see them fail, this does nothing to help those who need leaders to make good decisions. Building bridges is always better than tearing them down and being part of the solution is better than heckling from your keyboard.

This does not mean we cannot recognize policies or agendas we believe are wrong, but it does mean that instead of ranting on Facebook we should be involved where possible to help influence more positive outcomes. That, and voting.

It is why I choose to volunteer my time in our community, discuss things openly with whoever is interested (like in this blog), and continue to learn how things work.

And I hope you will keep learning with me.

Thanks for reading.

In a special meeting of the CISD Board of Trustees happening this Tuesday, December 3rd (agenda here), the newly elected ‘Mama Bear’ slate of trustees will be reviewing a potential introduction of new policy: FA Local Policy Student Welfare: Parental Authority and Gender Fluidity Matters.

Conroe ISD does not currently have policy FA Local, only FA Legal, which defines the Texas legal requirements of the district as it relates to ‘Parent Rights and Responsibilities’. Therefore, a gender fluidity policy will be new for the district.

Recap

CISD often compares itself to similarly sized school districts in Greater Houston, such as with enrollment numbers, tax rate, graduation rate, awards, and so on. For CISD Mama Bears, one specific district is often referenced in areas of discipline, parental rights, and gender identity - Katy ISD.

They referenced Katy ISD’s policies often throughout their campaigns for the Board, and as Katy’s FA Local Policy is named the exact same title as what is being discussed in Conroe, we can assume that the CISD Board is at least using Katy as a template. With this, we decided to review their policy and provide some personal thoughts on its potential impact.

Note, we did not yet reach out to the CISD Board for comments, as I imagine we will hear their positions during the special meeting. We may contact them during the policy drafting phase to get their feedback.

Policy Intro

If we start within Conroe ISD, creating a policy on gender fluidity first began discussion around May 2024, when Trustee Odenweller (now President Odenweller) proposed the Board implement such a policy. This was covered by several local news outlets:

The Board at the time split 4-3 on the topic (as was common with most issues), and they did not move forward with the policy. Along with the personal opinions of the Board, President Hubert had mentioned it was risky to move forward with such a policy at that time, as Katy ISD had recently implemented a gender fluidity policy and were now under federal investigation for potential Title IX violations:

Feds investigate another Texas school district for its gender identity mandate

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation Monday into Katy Independent School District’s gender identity policy on the basis of gender harassment under Title IX. The investigation came nine months after the Houston Landing reported that the district adopted a policy that notifies parents if their child requests to use a different name or pronouns at school.

With an incoming Trump Administration soon to take over the White House, it is assumed these investigations will promptly end. It does not mean policies on gender fluidity will not have legal risk, but it at least means the federal government will either roll back Title IX changes made by the Biden administration or implement new regulations (similar to 2020), likely negating Title IX protections for transgender students.

Therefore, it is clear that the CISD Board is not wasting any time to get this new policy into motion.

Policy Breakdown

The Katy ISD Gender Fluidity Policy is an easy read, but here are the key components:

Key Definitions

• Biological sex is defined by official birth certificate or other government-issued record.

• Defines gender fluidity as any belief, theory, or ideology that:

  • Espouses the view that gender is merely a social construct;

  • Espouses the view that it is possible for a person to be any gender or no gender (i.e., non-binary);

  • Espouses the view that an individual's biological sex should be changed to "match" a gender different from that person's biological sex; and

  • Supports hormone therapy or other medical treatments or procedures to temporarily or permanently alter a person's body so that it "matches" a gender different from that person's biological sex.

Policy Summary

• Staff will not teach, share, instruct, train, or otherwise require any student or other District staff to adopt, support, or otherwise promote gender fluidity.

• Staff will not promote or require non-biological sex pronouns.

• District must notify parents if a child requests transgender identification.

• Pronoun changes require written parental consent.

• Staff cannot be compelled to use pronouns conflicting with their beliefs.

• Athletic facilities and teams restricted to competitions matching biological sex.

• Overnight travel accommodations are based on biological sex.

• No instructional materials or online resources supporting gender fluidity are allowed, including any use of classroom displays or communications related to gender fluidity.

Thoughts on Impact

Let’s first check recent news on Katy’s policy and then think about how this may impact CISD schools:

Students say Katy ISD's controversial gender identity policy puts staff in 'too much of a risk'

From Sept. 1 until Nov. 15 [2023], internal records show Katy ISD administrators have made 23 notifications to parents that their child either identified themselves as transgender or asked to use different names or pronouns at school…

Katy ISD students say they've since seen teachers leave the room when students talk about gender…

"The teacher can't report it because the teacher doesn't know that the student has said such things," Thornton said.

"You run too much of a risk to come to these people because even if they do want to help you, they're put in a place where they have to choose between the safety of their students and the safety of their career," Burton said. "We're so scared that we're going to wake up one morning, and we're going to hear about a kid that got hurt or attempted suicide or something horrible."

ABC13's public records request revealed no students in the district have been punished for their restroom use so far.

"I use the nurse's restrooms because I feel uncomfortable going into the women's restrooms, and I'm not allowed in the male restrooms," Thornton explained.

Reports

My first thoughts when reading Katy’s policy was that these rules will likely build a type of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” environment, and the feedback above seems to confirm this.

Teachers will be more closed off to any discussions around gender, and students will not divulge them for risk of “outing” to their parents. There will be teachers who will ignore the policy, those that will feel forced to report even if they do not agree with it, and then (let’s be honest) inexperienced teachers or administrators who may use it against children in negative ways.1

Truthfully, my assumption is that 99.9% of teachers would not have to change their normal behavior with this policy. They work in classrooms, where the class is addressed as a whole or individual students by their first names (although we do recognize name changes are also part of gender identity). A teacher’s first response to a pronoun request will likely be, “Have you discussed this with your parents?”

Of course, their challenges are not with pronouns but with behavior. If they could get students to write their name and date on top of their paper, then they are having a good day. We also live in Texas, where “y’all” is the pronoun of choice for everything.

The main change for educators will be the requirement to report students when they say something related to their gender identity. As usual, school policy will create more work rather than resources for teachers.

Also, even if you take the count of Katy gender reports noted above (23 for one month) and spread it out across the entire school year, Katy would be averaging 230 reports in one school year. They have 96,000 students. That is .0024% of their student population that they are targeting, making this an arguably ineffective policy.

Bathrooms

As it goes for bathrooms, this has always been a non-issue based on the data. Boys do not go into the girl’s bathroom or vice-versa, and if they do, they are disciplined based on existing policy. Either way, transgender students are already avoiding student restrooms, or they make use of the nurse’s office restroom.

Athletics

Related to athletics, I actually do see where a policy such as this at least sets the boundaries. However, it is likely unnecessary when it is already Texas law (see HB 25), and Conroe ISD already updated the related policy FM Legal, Student Activities.

An interscholastic athletic team sponsored or authorized by a district may not allow a student to compete in an interscholastic athletic competition sponsored or authorized by the district that is designated for the biological sex opposite to the student's biological sex as correctly stated on the student's official birth certificate, as described below, or if the student's official birth certificate is unobtainable, another government record.

Instructional Materials

For instructional materials removing any references to gender fluidity, this may have some challenges in Conroe ISD as its history has shown. When removing ‘sexually explicit’ content from schools, it also meant inadvertently removing AP English literature from classroom shelves such as Brave New World, The Handmaid’s Tale, and The Poet X. Will removing books about gender fluid persons also include those beyond its assumed scope, such as books with gay or lesbian characters?

Any new policy around instructional materials or library books will need to be well defined to include language specific for gender fluidity.

Lastly, there are many unknowns related to how this policy will impact transgender students. Although Katy ISD’s policy reinforces treating everyone with respect and enforcement of anti-bullying policies, this may place these students in danger by further alienating them from school staff or activities. This is the only policy in the school district that will target a specific group of kids, and this can have unforeseen consequences.

Priority & Ideas for Change

As priority goes, this is obviously a major concern and initiative for conservative movements within the last decade. Even with the estimates of transgender persons ranging around ~1% of the U.S. population (much less in Texas), the general public seems to think there are many more. There are also those that believe educators are attempting to promote gender change or transition students directly within schools (without evidence), fueling these debates and driving gender policies as a #1 focus for conservative school boards.

With these things in mind, we should assume Conroe ISD will adopt this policy in the coming months. Therefore, I have some thoughts on improving these policies to limit the impact on educators and students alike:

1. Require that any reporting from staff is confidential and managed through District administration. For example, if a teacher must report that a student requested a new pronoun or name, require that the teacher do so via an internal process that is handled with care through the school counselor. This will help offload these new requirements (and stress) off of teachers and onto District professionals trained for discussing these types of things with parents. Further, it protects teachers from becoming targets of parents or the public that may claim they attempted to discriminate against their child by making the report (e.g., “The teacher is transphobic, so they reported my child,” or “The teacher wants to ruin my child’s reputation, so they reported them as transgender.”)

2. Require a structured, documented counseling pathway. Similar to how parents are involved in educational progress or disciplinary actions, use this opportunity for a professional counselor to prepare and manage a joint meeting with parents that focuses on the student’s well-being. This way all facts are presented, health resources can be provided, and the school can “hand-off” the discussion to the parents properly. It documents everyone involved, gives parents transparency for what school staff are doing, and puts responsibility for the student’s care into the hands of the parents. It also adds some protections for students as it may identify if the student fears abuse at home.

   1. I know this may seem counterproductive for students who are too afraid to come “out” to their parents, but I do not see a good alternative considering that the school board is laser focused on parental rights.

3. Monitor this policy with proper reporting. As with all school board policy, it should incorporate data collection and reporting to show if the policy is working or needs amending. For example, in the article referenced above, Katy ISD had 23 reports made for students requesting pronoun change within the first few months. This is valuable information for the Board to consider. Similarly, it could also include the number of incidents involving students attempting to use a restroom not of their biological sex, or the number of books removed from classrooms or libraries due to gender fluidity content.

   1. Don’t forget to consider Board policies EFA and EFB Local to remain consistent.

4. Begin the policy in the 2025-2026 school year. This may not be a popular decision for the Board, but I do hope it is considered. The staff will need to be properly trained on the new policy. Students will need to understand its impact, and parents need to receive communication on the topic. Allow the public to consume these changes and set clear timelines on its implementation into the new school year so that when a teacher must make a report, everyone involved knows what to do.

Closing

Once we hear the CISD Board’s discussion at the next meeting, we will have more information about their plans to implement this policy and if it will mirror Katy ISD’s version. We will also review the draft policy when it becomes available.

Please let me know if you have any thoughts or corrections on this topic.

Thanks for reading.

As with many school districts today, ours here in Montgomery County, Texas continues to debate its book policies. As in, which books can be used for either instructional use by educators or found for student self-selection in libraries. In Texas schools, these are commonly known as Board Policies EFA and EFB.

I wrote a deep dive on these policies last school year, after hundreds of titles were removed from Conroe ISD classrooms and libraries following a change in EFA/EFB to include language restricting “sexually explicit” material. This was in line with Texas law, HB-900, Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources (READER) Act. You can read the full write-up below, but note it is a long read:

I originally planned to write a second part to that post, but there are still debates and decisions being made that makes it difficult to discuss and predict what will happen next. Perhaps after our board elections this November, we will have more to discuss.

As of August 2024, the Board is considering new changes to these policies, one of which may include adding another layer in the appeals process. Watch this below:

Essentially, Conroe ISD is having to roll back some of its book policies due to them enabling the removal of a vast array of books, many of which are used in AP Literature. Frank Strong breaks down why this is important in his latest post here:

Anger & Clarity

Conroe ISD Holds a Warning for Fort Bend, Other Districts

The “Mama Bears” of Conroe ISD no longer want to talk about books…

Read more

2 years ago · 9 likes · Frank Strong

For today, I wanted to brainstorm on ideas to update our existing EFA/EFB policies, as it relates to challenging those books (a.k.a., reconsideration). This includes the informal and formal reconsideration processes.

Is there a policy where inappropriate books can be properly challenged (and potentially removed), while still maintaining the freedom for young minds to read important books that teach empathy, understanding, or difficult-to-accept truths (e.g., slavery or sexual assault)?

Can this be accomplished across the different grade levels, making sure age-appropriate material is only available to those students who are mature enough for it? With how American politics are working nowadays, pleasing everyone is an impossible task; but we can challenge this assumption, seeing as how we all have to get along (right?).

Based on this, I decided to write-up drafts for potential EFA/EFB policy changes, and then sent them to our school board. I will also be sharing this post in the social media groups where I know candidates for school board will see it.

For these changes, I wanted to accomplish the following goals:

1. Focus solely on the reconsideration process, not changing the definitions for inappropriate material, as these are already well defined in Conroe ISD EFA/EFB policies. It is difficult to navigate what is, or is not, inappropriate material when much of today’s debates on book content is arguably subjective and driven by bias or agenda than literary merit.

2. Find solutions to end the one-at-a-time book challenges at the board level (i.e. Level 3), attempting to find a method in which the school board can take back their valuable time and discontinue the frequent public battles where individual book titles must be debated. Boards should be focused on policy, not deciding where every stop sign must be placed.1

3. Put the responsibility of managing books back onto the District’s professional staff, making sure the Board is focused on policy. If staff are not following Board policy, or the requirements of the policy are not clear, that is a separate issue that the Board should address, rather than playing whack-a-mole with every book title.

4. Add solution for “reverse challenges”, specifically building a method for informal reviews to be reversed, using the existing formal reconsideration process.

   ---

Here are the redlines for my changes, which you can review yourselves. The summary is below:

EFA Local EDITS - Tsamouris

183KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

EFB Local EDITS - Tsamouris

219KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Summary of Changes

• Brings back ‘Guiding Principles’ for challenges, which includes language that a parent’s ability to exercise control over instruction extends only to his or her own child. These were removed in 2023.

• Requires any book reconsideration, informal or formal, to be requested from a verified District resident. This is due to the fact that District administrators are not required to verify if someone challenging a book actually lives within the District.

• Removes the ability for ‘Any District resident’ to be able to submit an informal request, limiting informal reviews to parents, students 18 or older, or a District employee. ‘Any District resident’ must submit all challenges via the formal request, but it would require costs associated with processing the request, similar to Public Information Requests.

• Removes the ability for informal reviews to be requested by a Board member, requiring Board members to submit formal reconsiderations.

• Limits informal or formal reconsiderations to be one resource title per request, and each person can only submit one challenge every 60 days.

• Establishes that informal reconsiderations can now be challenged using the formal reconsideration process, where a parent, student, or District employee can “reverse challenge” the removal of books that occurred via the informal review process. Reverse challenges cannot be requested for completed formal reviews.

• Completed reconsideration reviews are kept for three years instead of one, so that books that are removed or remain cannot be challenged every year, providing cost and time savings for the District and Board.

• For appeals, brings back Level 2 for the reconsideration process.

• The Level 2 hearing officer confirms that the proper policies and procedures were followed during the original reconsideration request. Level 2 would determine if the reconsideration should be sent back to a new Level 1 committee, with a shortened reconsideration checklist, or to close the appeal. Once completed, the challenger can then appeal to Level 3.

• For Level 3 appeals, requires that the Board majority first vote to accept the appeal to Level 3. If the Board declines to hear a Level 3 appeal, the appeal is closed with no further action.

• Regarding Board members who wish to challenge a Level 2 decision (on behalf of the original challenger), requires that during a normal Board meeting that a majority of Board members request a Level 3 hearing for challenges that did not pass Level 2 reconsideration. This assures that the Board is aligned in discussing certain reconsiderations, and not driven by one person. This also spreads out the process and gives both the Board and public time to review the necessary materials being challenged.

Other Ideas (not in redline)

• For Level 2 appeals, create a Book Reconsideration Committee appointed by the Board that meets as needed. Could include AP Literature students.

• For Level 2 appeals, utilize the SHAC in some manner.

• Limit the number of appeals any individual or entity can make within a single school year.

Closing

I should note that I purposely added many changes, perhaps unnecessary, to throw in as many ideas as possible. My hope is that some of these could be useful for the current or future Board members.

There is much more to look at with this, and if I receive any comments back from the Board or this year’s candidates, I will share those in a separate post.

Thanks for reading.

I have spent the last year deep-diving multiple areas into our local Texas school district, and it has truly been eye-opening. From volunteering on district committees, learning how things work in the community collaborative, joining the local dad program, and generally pestering the administration with long calls, I have learned a lot within a short amount of time.

Further, I have been internally comparing these experiences of public school districts with how other public entities function, like Municipal Utility Districts (MUDs), or private Homeowner Associations (HOAs). I currently sit as President of both within our community, and I can say with certainty they differ immensely.1

Putting all that aside, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on this new knowledge, as well as share writings from others also concerned about the future of our children and the world we must prepare them for.

Recently, I have begun reading from Generation Z authors (up to 27 years old), as many of them are either recently done with education or still moving through secondary schools. As an elder millennial (a.k.a., Oregon Trail Generation), it has been concerning to me on how recent generational shifts have driven our youth to rotate into never-ending crisis.

Recognizing that the last 25 years have been tumultuous, from 9/11, the wars in the Middle East, the 2008 housing collapse, never-ending debates on gun control and mass shootings, COVID, to the rise of extreme identity politics, and record inflation…we have been through a lot. And our youth have been part of those experiences.

Kids today are not growing up in the America anywhere close to what previous generations would call “normal”, and they haven’t been for over 20 years.

Arguably, the 90’s have become associated with the last decade of the “the good times”, even for those who did not live it. There is even a term referenced in an article below you should come to know:

“There is a beautiful and melancholic word I like called anemoia. It means nostalgia for a time or a place one has never known.

This is a sentiment I often sense from my generation, Gen Z—especially in recent years. I see it in the YouTube videos of old concerts that get millions of views. I see it in our fascination with polaroids, vinyls, vintage cameras, and VHS tapes. And I see it in our reaction to gut-wrenching videos about how life has changed…”

That was written by Freya India, a popular Gen Z author. At 24 years old, she is writing the most honest and truly insightful content about her generation, and at times it includes her fears of what will happen to the next generation (Gen Alpha).

We have three Gen A kids, so we are doing our best to pay attention to how their world works today and may look tomorrow. Learning words like skibidi or sigma can only go so far to understanding Gen A (I know, it’s giving…old).

At risk of losing you for the rest of this post, I encourage you to read the following two articles from Freya (they aren’t too long):

After Babel

A Time We Never Knew

Introduction from Jon Haidt: Freya India is one of the most sensitive and perceptive Gen Z writers. She went through the social media maelstrom herself and now chronicles its effects on her generation. She writes widely, especially on her Substack…

Read more

2 years ago · 1002 likes · 152 comments · Freya India

GIRLS

Our New Religion Isn't Enough

These days it seems like everything is described as a new religion. Social justice is a new religion. So is climate activism. Trumpism, too. I saw a funny tweet recently about how girlboss feminism has now reinvented the Sabbath, with the shocking news that we might benefit from “one lazy day” a week. Even AI seems to be…

Read more

2 years ago · 2005 likes · 296 comments · Freya India

My key takeaway from her writing is that although we see the typical misunderstandings between generations, Millennial parents are needing to recognize that Gen Z and our Gen A children are dealing with or going to face challenges that we did not. We had the benefit of our youth’s prosperity (pre 9/11); much of their struggle revolves around understanding their place in the world and the purpose of their lives, as they continue to see us adults consistently fail to make things better for them.

For us, the future was bright, and the world was whatever we dreamed it could be. For them, it is an orphan crushing machine.2

Growing up between the 80s to early 2000’s, we had the instruction and confidence that we could do or be “anything we want”, and we had the freedoms from technologies like social media to build the relationships and social skills needed to navigate the stresses of a complex world.

This is not to say that Millennials have not borne the brunt of multiple “once-in-a-lifetime” events, but at least many of us had the foundation of happier childhoods to keep us on course for what we know our world can be.

Freya recently began writing for After Babel, where they focus a lot on mental health of kids and how technology is ruining nearly everything about growing up. The creators of After Babel have poured a great deal of research into the topic, so much so that I used it as part of the research collected during the CISD Cell Phone Committee meetings.

Moving on, I have also been reading books on school boards:

The Essential School Board Book: Better Governance in the Age of Accountability, by Nancy Walser - Amazon Link

The Essential School Board Book highlights effective practices that are common to high-functioning boards around the country—boards that are working successfully with their superintendents and communities to improve teaching and learning.

This book focuses on areas for how school boards can improve results, much of which is focused on how the board consumes data. There is a lot more to this, but I’ll save this for another post.

Great on Their Behalf: Why School Boards Fail, How Yours Can Become Effective, by AJ Crabill - Amazon Link

Step by step, the exercises in this book inspire board members to adopt a student-outcomes-focused mindset as they reevaluate their impact on those they serve. It challenges them to explore effective ways to focus on what students need. Then, it provides the necessary knowledge and skills for school boards to empower their students for success.

I found this book very interesting as it puts focus on ‘adult inputs’, pointing out that school board members often bring in baggage, bias, and a desire to use their personal or professional experiences as their primary toolkit as a board trustee.

The focus should instead be on student outcomes and the methods to improve them.

As an example, I have worked in IT for almost 20 years. My natural inclination to joining a school board may be that I can help tackle the technical challenges that schools have. It may lead me to believe my best contributions could be anything related to technology.

In reality, focus must be placed where it is needed. I would need to change my mindset to focus on how things should be improved, versus how I believe I could personally improve them with my experiences (and thus biases).

The book breaks down steps to help focus school boards on changing how they improve their knowledge, skills, and mindset as it relates to improving student outcomes. It further goes into how school boards get stuck focusing on adult inputs3 and how nothing can be improved until the focus of the board is prioritized.

I highly recommend this book for current board trustees or those running for the board. You can get a peek into the author’s thought process in this interview with him:

Can This School Board Be Saved?

Quotes from this interview:

The things that school boards focus on actually do, in fact, matter. When school boards focus on student outcomes, they’re more likely to create the condition from improvements in student outcomes. If school boards focus on the color of the cheerleaders’ uniforms, we’re more likely to have the proper color of uniforms. 

How can elected boards manage controversies like the recent spate of book censorship arguments?

This is like the difference between debating the placement of a single stop sign versus debating about safety. The job of the board isn’t to pick and choose where to put stop signs. The job of the board is to get underneath arguments about stop signs and figure out, OK, what is the community value that is really at stake here? Safety. 

The same principles apply to the books’ example. The board should be very aggressive about codifying community expectations to protect the values beneath. These are what I refer to in the book as “guardrails.” On certain books, communities will differ. One might say, the value that we have around book selection is: We want them to be inclusive. We want all of our curriculum and learning materials to be representative of the diversity of our student body. But another community might say, the thing that we value about books is how they represent and lift up a view of American exceptionalism. If they don’t match that, we don’t want them in our libraries. 

We’ve also learned a lot in the last year about how Texas public schools work, and it is obvious where the most issues are needing to be resolved. As the Texas legislature continues to consolidate its control over schools, with decades of moving power and funding from local districts to the capital, the primary blockers to improving schools is not at the school board level. It is in Austin and in the voting booth.

A school board can absolutely impact the local community with its policies, but these are symptoms of a larger question about our community values, which we know are being questioned in every community in the country. These values are then reflected in who we vote for at the State and local levels.

We live in Montgomery County, Texas, a majority conservative area. The one question I have been trying to understand is this:

Do we, as a whole, value public education in Montgomery County?

I have not been able to answer this question, as we continue to elect people who focus on the adult inputs of the day, rather than actual student or education needs. There is obviously a lot of history to cover on this topic.

Where do we go from here in Conroe ISD?

There are new Board elections happening this November, along with a well-followed Presidential election. Montgomery County conservatives will once again show up in record numbers and vote down-the-line for conservative candidates.

For Conroe ISD, this means a new Board with a full slate of ‘Mama Bears’ Trustees. I haven’t been able to form an opinion on what this means for the school district, or overall public education within the County.

What I do know is that what we have today is not working for the long term. Whether the Mama Bear’s win or lose this election, I have little faith that a new Board will make the significant changes needed to resolve the ever-mounting issues found within our schools. This includes focusing on teacher retention (and everything around it), rethinking our student discipline process, the overcrowding of schools and driving support for growth (i.e. bonds, VATREs), better supporting special education programs, fixing our poor lunch nutrition options, and doing better at resolving local disputes before they reach a courtroom, to name a few.

Only some of those things can probably be tackled at the district level anyways. What we need is for our Texas school boards to use their voice at the State level to fight for the resources needed. As we know with the debate on the Governor’s drive for vouchers, that is a likely a losing battle until vouchers become a reality.

Thus, we are stuck fighting at school board meetings over the distractions that are book policies, health curriculum, and what is in science textbooks. These are indeed important, but not anywhere near the level of urgency needed for sustaining our district for the decades to come.

As parents, all we can do is focus on what is within our control, and drive for the best outcomes possible by voting and supporting our educators.

For our house, we will continue to learn and volunteer where we can within the district, but I am of the opinion that Texas public education will get worse before it gets better. It will be a long while before there is a sense of “normal” within education (and the world), and my hope is that at least one of our children will be able to experience it.

Thanks for reading.

On the fifth and final meeting of the Conroe ISD Community Collaborative group, we met at Conroe High School, where we took a lengthy tour through the empty hallways and ongoing construction, learned about how the district manages planning & construction projects at scale, received a breakdown in which summer programs are offered, and closed with a presentation on safety from the district Chief of Police.

It was an interesting visit to an aging high school, as we were able to step back in time from decades past. Built in 1964, you can still see (and smell) the different layouts from the 60s, 90s, and the most recent expansions and renovations from the last twenty years of bonds passed.

Eventually, it will all look the same with the more modern look and feel, which should be completed within the next few years - just in time for the next needed expansion.

As part of our continued theme of CISD doing more with less, Conroe High School is the largest in the district in both students and building square footage, yet it sits on the smallest amount of acreage. 5,500 students are stuffed within old and new buildings sitting on only 27 acres, compared to newer high schools where they have 90+ acres of space to expand within. Conroe High has 700,000 sq ft of building space, compared to Grand Oaks or The Woodlands High Schools which have around 440,000 sq ft.

It was an eye-opening visit, and it was even nostalgic for someone like myself who did not attend there. Older schools, like where I attended in Latexo ISD, have a certain feel to them. Could be the asbestos.

Weather Closures

On the day we visited the high school, there was yet another wave of May thunderstorms passing through that morning. I had almost expected them to cancel the meeting, but the weather cleared right before most of us drove in. When we arrived, Dr. Null used the moment to talk about how the district decides when to close due to weather.

It is a no-win scenario for the district. When your schools are spread across 348 square miles, you may have to close the entire district for severe weather that may only impact one of the feeder zones. This seemed counter-intuitive to me, as much of the time bad weather only impacts certain areas of the county. After further discussion, it makes total sense:

• Staff work across the district. A teacher that lives in Grand Oaks might not be able to travel to Conroe High. Same for bus drivers. Closing one area or sets of schools would be very difficult to account for staff who could not reach the open schools.

• The make-up of lost days due to weather would be difficult to manage when only certain schools were closed. Making up the minutes or days, and the waiver process that goes along with it (another discussion) would require rethinking how these are calculated. That is more of a Texas question rather than district, as it relates to how schools are financed.

• The communication to the public on which schools are closed would likely add to the chaos of the weather event. This is especially so for schools that support multiple feeder zones.

• Similarly, weather can be difficult to predict even locally, like when certain areas flood due to Lake Conroe being released or drainage channels get backed up.

Dr. Null also discussed the impact closing schools has downstream. Students who are not old enough to be at home by themselves require a parent to be at home, which may keep them from going to work. If schools are closed across the district, it can have wide-ranging impact to local services and businesses. It may also mean children go without breakfast or lunch, or even food for the weekend if the schools are closed on Fridays when bags are given to those in need.

The decision to close the district itself is essentially using the best information you have to make a choice which best protects students and staff, while keeping in mind the community impact it will have on the 70,000+ students and families within the district.

During a current or pending weather event, Dr. Null and his team are up at around 3am with Montgomery County Emergency Services, reviewing the information they have. Although it is Dr. Null’s call to close the district, it is based on data and recommendations provided by the county and weather models.

In order to mitigate weather related closures, two inclement weather days are added to the calendar, which provides extra minutes to use for starting school later in the morning or closing for an entire day.

Facebook chatter would have you believe the district either does not close schools enough or that they overreact for weather that turns out to be minimal.

However, we have learned here that these decisions are made with a great deal of thought and consideration, using all the resources available to protect students and staff.

The next time that the district closes because of the weather, but you see it is bright and sunny outside, maybe give Dr. Null a break instead of blasting it on Facebook.

Side note:

The only time an individual school is typically closed is if the local utilities are not functioning, such as power or air conditioning. So there are some circumstances where one or two schools can be closed, but that is usually unrelated to the current weather conditions.

Planning & Construction

Easy Foster, the district’s Director of Planning & Construction, provided an overview of how CISD builds and renovates schools. As usual, there is a level of technical knowledge on the topic that would require its own deep-dive, and the layers of complexity on this topic match what we see in other areas of district management.

Although some of the work might actually use a crystal ball, we see yet again that CISD has very knowledgeable people who can run the gamut of requirements to support the needs of the district.

Public school construction is planned way in advance, and it takes years to move from concept to implementation. Based on growth projections and future needs, the planning teams are continuously working to keep up with influx of new students as families move to the area. As Montgomery County sees no signs of slowing growth, we can foresee more planning and construction needs well into the next decade.

Easy provided a sample of the construction project process by showing a Gantt Chart, but as someone who works in Agile my eyes glazed over that. What we did see is that the district has become very good at building and renovating schools. Here are notes from the discussion:

• It can take up to nine years to go from purchasing land, design, going through bond process, and then completing construction.

• Junior high and high schools take 8-9 years.

• Elementary schools take around 5 years.

• Grand Oaks High School started design one year before the bond committee was formed.

• Where many school districts wait after a bond passes to initiate projects, CISD hits the ground running as soon as they receive the bond results. We are good at moving projects as quickly as possible.

Similar to other aspects of government, there are government codes that must be followed:

Each of these must be well understood and followed to prevent any issues or delays. This is why you need effective leaders running these projects, as they understand the process and provide the expertise needed to support the type of growth CISD continues to see.

The group had several questions, including myself on topics like adding contingency to bonds (we can’t), and how the bidding process works. You can view the slide deck here for more info.

If you visit the CISD Planning & Construction website, you will find all of the construction updates per bond, as well as pictures of project updates.

Tour of Conroe High

After the planning and construction discussion, we took a tour of Conroe High where Easy and Dr. Null (Principal of CHS 2010-2014) showed us the growth of the school over time. Here are the pictures I collected:

We also took pictures to show the size of the school, which can be seen in the endlessly long hallways and with the latest construction:

Lastly, a few pictures of the old parts of the school, which included some tight spaces, old gyms, and other areas that a ghost hunter would be thrilled to visit:

Summer School

Dr. Winkler, in place for Lisa Garrison, gave a presentation on the summer school options that CISD provides. Similar to construction, planning for summer school begins way in advance, often within August or September of the previous year.

What many people may not know is that summer school isn’t just for kids who fall behind. It includes academic programs, enrichment programs (e.g., choir, robotics, GT), and credit offerings for students wanting to free up their normal schedule for extracurriculars, or to graduate early.

The schools used for classes changes each year, and summer schools are used as training grounds for Assistant Principals looking to one day be Principals themselves.

Depending on the type of program, classes may range from a week to a month.

Also an important note, summer schools are used as food distribution locations, where free breakfast and lunch are provided to children in need.

If you are interested in enrolling your kids into summer school, then give this slide deck a read and contact the district. Here are the enrollment numbers for last year:

School Safety & Police Department

Chief of Police for Conroe ISD, Matt Blakelock, gave us a presentation on the police department and its various roles within the district.

Here is the makeup of the district police department and a sample of trainings they attend or provide:

Notes:

• School police officers are indeed real police officers. They can write you speeding tickets if needed, but their focus is on school safety.

• The district provides about 100 hours of training to its officers every year, even though only 40 hours are required.

• The CISD Police Dept is the third largest in the county, and they are one of the five 911 operation centers in Montgomery County.

• They also have three full-time detectives for investigations, two narcotics-sniffing K9s, and one bomb-sniffing K9.

• As of June 2024, there is not yet an officer at every campus all day, but the goal is to eventually staff an all-day officer at each campus (see Texas HB3 for more info). However, other law enforcement entities such as the Sheriff’s or Constable’s officers are invited to visit as they can to keep them familiar with our schools.

The most important aspect from the presentation, in my opinion, was the discussion on how officers are selected to work within the district. Obviously, working in schools is different than working for other law enforcement agencies. Officers require a great deal more patience and specialized training to deal with adolescents who, thanks to hormones and lack of understanding, may act in ways that would get them in serious situations with normal law enforcement.

We also had a short discussion around school shootings and the trainings they undertake to prepare for such an event. It is indeed extensive, and unlike Uvalde, there is a clear chain of command in place (i.e. Chief Blakelock would be in charge) as well as expectations for the first officers on the scene (i.e. get in there). It’s absolutely terrible to think about as someone who has three young children. But, this is America.

I appreciated Chief Blakelock’s candor and willingness to explain the details to us. We have a great police presence in the district, and it will only get stronger as we make progress to get more officers in schools.

You can learn more about the CISD Police Department on their website. Here is a link to the slide deck from this presentation.

Conclusion & Takeaways

This post ends our part in the ‘Cohort 1’ of the Conroe ISD Community Collaborative. It is likely the district will host these during the spring of each school year, bringing on another 30-40 interested community members that are wanting to learn more about how our school district works.

I truly appreciate the effort the district put forth to share all of the information they have about how things work. It was a very eye-opening experience for someone who knew very little about public education.

The district also received feedback from the group before and after each meeting, so these community collaborations will only get better.

I hope these meetings were especially informational for the people running for school board, and I hope future board candidates attend them as well.

There is so much more I could say about getting people in a room together, talking in person, sharing experiences, and just being in the discussion. Too many people take to social media to vent their frustrations with our schools, and if they took the time to understand “the why”, then I am certain we would find more opportunities for improvement and make actual progress.

These community meetings are certainly a new and great way to do just that.

Thanks for reading!

Collab Meeting Summaries:

Meeting 1: Intro to Conroe ISD, Finance, Procurement
Meeting 2: Growth & Transportation
Meeting 3: Staff Development, Recruitment, Retention
Meeting 4: CTE, SPED, Extracurriculars, Zoning
Meeting 5: Planning & Construction, School Safety, Summer School