What's been happening in Cy-Fair?

This article is a REPOST and all credit goes to the author listed below.

Aug 22, 2025, ~ Spherical Model ~ Off-Off-Year Means School Board Election ~ https://substack.com/home/post/p-171712256

We’re just a bit over two months out from an election—an off-off-year election. It’s not a presidential election year. It’s not even a congressional election year. This year is between even those. The only things on our ballot will be school board positions and propositions (proposed amendments to the state constitution, coming out of this year’s legislative session, but we’re not getting to those in this post).

The School Board Races

Four years ago, we were among some of the first school districts in the nation attempting to flip our board from woke to conservative—or, you could say, to what parents and communities want, instead of what has been forced down our throats.

We have seven school board trustees (board members). Three positions come up the year after a presidential election, such as 2021 and this year; four other positions come up two years later, such as 2023 and 2027.

These are supposedly nonpartisan positions. But, as we’ve all learned the hard way, nonpartisan just means no information on the ballot about the candidates’ actual partisanship. Somehow, we’d found ourselves—in a northwest section of Harris County, in one of the strongest conservative senatorial districts in the state—stuck with a 7-0 non-conservative school board. So, we set out to change that.

We won three of three seats in 2021. That included beating an arch-enemy ringleader, who had essentially run the board for a couple of decades. But it still left us with a 4-3 woke-majority board.

I’m sure some of those board members don’t call themselves woke. They might say they’re all about what’s best for the kids—and they know what’s best so much better than mere parents and community members. But what we found, going door-to-door, was that people were fed up with what the schools were doing. You’ll remember, 2021 was just a year into the COVID pandemic. Schools had closed for a while, then did online learning (not very successfully), then had kids wear masks in school—all the time except when actually putting food in their mouths. It was during this time that parents became more aware of what schools were saying to their children, and they didn’t want it.

So, we started pushing for legislative changes, to remove DEI, CRT, and LGBTQ sexualizing materials. The community spoke pretty clearly about that.

But it wasn’t until the second round, when we got three (out of four) more seats on the board, that we had the opportunity to make real progress.

It turns out, taking over the school board, while essential, isn’t the end of the story. We got our majority at the same time that we got a new superintendent—chosen by the previous, outgoing board, although they let new board members participate in the vetting process. But there’s a whole “deep state” of district administrators still left. And, with the new board and the new superintendent—surprise!—there was a huge debt suddenly in need of being taken care of. This is just a year after the opening of a new administration building (named after the outgoing superintendent who caused so many of our problems, including debt for this new building) along with a new performing arts center.

You can’t really go to the taxpayers—after that incredibly expensive (and unnecessary?) infrastructure purchase and say, “We can’t actually educate your kids unless you give us more money.”

So, the new conservative board was put in an impossible position. Nevertheless, they did some of the things we asked for:

Removing unwanted curriculum—mainly CRT and LGBTQ agendas. (I wouldn’t say this task is complete yet, but it’s underway. And I would credit all our conservative board members with this work.

Working to find ways to whittle down that debt hanging over us (school districts are required to have a balanced budget, so it’s necessary to take care of this).

Identifying and tracking which students are not reading at grade level (this continues to be a huge concern); the board now gets a report on the progress of these identified students every other month.

What we still have is TASB (Texas Association of School Boards)—an entity that “trains” [i.e., indoctrinates] school boards, and offers required teacher training. They do woke indoctrination on the taxpayers’ dime—and it’s a pretty hefty dime. Some of that money could go to alternative sources, or the services could be done within the district by personnel we’re already paying for.

Instead of cutting ties with TASB, the majority of the board decided to continue but cut back, with the intention of eventually replacing it with other resources. As if it didn’t matter, they voted to send the lone woke board member, Julie Hinaman, to represent them on TASB.

So, this election we not only want to maintain our conservative majority; we want to make sure we can overcome the deep state tendency to maintain its power.

The ballot will look like this:

Position 5:

Radele Walker (conservative)
Terrance Edmond
Lesley Guilmart

Position 6

Natalie Blasingame (incumbent for Position 5, conservative, current Board VP)
Scott Henry (incumbent for Position 6, conservative, current Board President)
Cleveland Lane Jr.

Position 7

George Edwards Jr. (conservative)
Kendra Camarena
Elecia Jones

Because there is no primary, the precinct chairs have tried every cycle to get a slate of conservatives without a conservative challenger. We’ve never managed to do that, including this year. I was part of the process, and have been every time. It doesn’t always go the way I’d like, but I’ve promised to stick with the outcome of the majority and the choices of the candidates.

I’ll save commenting more about the race for another day, other than to identify the three conservative slate candidates—who now have the endorsement of the Harris County Republican Party: Natalie Blasingame, Radele Walker, and George Edwards. You can learn more about them at NRGforCFISD.com.

I will say, though, that George Edwards has an incredible amount of finance expertise and experience on multiple boards (including CFISD back in the late 1990s); having him get a detailed audit of CFISD expenditures is something we really need.

The Push Poll

I want to spend the rest of this post looking at what the campaign opposition will be about.

Several weeks ago I got invited on my phone to participate in a poll about Cy-Fair ISD. I had a few minutes, so I started to take the poll. Before long, I realized it was a push poll, and I started taking screen shots. I didn’t finish, because they were asking for my name, email, and phone number (supposedly just to make sure they didn’t get repeat participants)—but they already had my phone, I didn’t want them to attach my name to a poll, nor did I want them to have my email.

So they didn’t get my polling data. But I got their intentions for their opposition campaign. I know the lies they plan to tell, and I can now debunk them. (It’s interesting—and telling—that they don’t have anything to campaign on but lies.)

They present six things they say the current CFISD board has done, and then ask “Which two of the following bother you most?” In other words, they’re telling you these are terrible things that should bother you:

Cut science chapters from State-approved textbooks
Did not ask lawmakers to close the State-funding shortfall
Make school libraries inaccessible for most students
Cut teaching aides
Campaigned for taxpayer-funded vouchers for private schools
Cut bus routes and field trips

We can just go through them. The first couple are longer. Some of the others probably go together under the budget problems.

Lie #1: They Cut Essential Science Chapters

The board ostensibly approves curriculum used in the district. They are provided with a copy to go through. But in much of the past couple of decades, going through it and doing more than rubberstamping their approval wasn’t done.

Natalie Blasingame (whose specialty is curriculum), along with Christine Kalmbach, and also it looks like Todd LeCompte, actually read the curriculum. And then made recommendations!

Board members can’t meet together, more than with one other board member, outside of meetings, to avoid open meeting law requirements. So they communicate by phone, text, email, and occasional one-on-one conversations. Christine and Natalie independently came up with what they thought were the sections that needed revising—or, as it turned out, removal. They agreed on the problems, which they shared with board members for review prior to a vote. All but the woke holdout voted for the curriculum removal.

Because many books are now digital, it’s possible to delete a chapter, but not a paragraph or sentence. Out of 450 chapters, they asked for the removal of 13. The woke lobby blasted them in meetings and in media: “They’re getting rid of science!” Not really. They were getting rid of biased, unscientific skew.

The removed subject matter included pushing the COVID vaccine—which, now in hindsight would appear very unscientific, as well as dangerous to promote. They were not against talking about vaccines, or even against giving both sides; they were against an agenda-driven perspective.

Similar issues arose concerning bias against humans: the earth is overpopulated; humans are the main cause of global warming; the planet would be better off without humans; we should limit human flourishing for the sake of the planet. Again, it was skewed and biased, and there’s plenty of scientific evidence they weren’t considering. Other concerning topics also had that lack of balance.

In order to make sure all TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, the state requirements) were covered, three chapters needed to be rewritten by the district’s curriculum writers. Much of the material in the deleted chapters was usable—only the problem materials had to be omitted. It turned out that the curriculum they wrote was balanced and well done—so much so that it may be the direction of choice in the future. It took a while to get it done, though. In fact, it took until a couple of months after the previous curriculum superintendent retired in December 2024. I don’t know if she was holding up the process or if that was coincidence.

As to the accusation that the “conservative” State Board of Education had already reviewed the materials, implying that our board had no business questioning their recommendations, it turns out that wasn’t exactly true. First, they aren’t all that conservative. Second, the SBOE had looked at TEKS, to make sure materials were covered, but had never looked at suitability. The infiltrated propaganda would have been taught to kids in our schools had it not been for the school board’s action to remove those pieces—as they’d been elected to do.

Recent state law changes should make it easier to eliminate such materials going forward.

Lie #2: They Refused to Get Legislative Help for Our Budget Shortfall

As I mentioned, we had a big—surprise—budget shortfall that was brought to the attention of the new board and new superintendent in January 2024. It appears the outgoing superintendent and his administration kept that information from the board—to make it look like the new superintendent and board’s fault? I don’t know for sure, but it looks like it.

Some of this happened because there were ESSER funds (elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund)—federal grants related to COVID, to help schools with distance learning and then to overcome the gap in learning as a result of that bad year. The funds were doled out in increments, the last of which was paid September 2024. These funds were never meant to be permanent. And they were intended to be used for those specific temporary purposes. But if it all went into the budget and got mixed around, then it looks like suddenly we have less money. And—the learning gap is still there.

My guess is Dr. Mark Henry, the previous superintendent, saw the writing on the wall. He could avoid dealing with the problem—and go out with his legacy looking intact, with his name on the new, extravagant administration building—if he just retired at the highest superintendent salary in the state, before anybody could actually blame him for all the problems he’d personally caused. But I digress.

The district also has a disadvantage because of a LOHE (local optional homestead exemption) that has been in place in our economy for several decades. A good chunk of the current funding shortfall could be covered by removing the homestead exemption—thus essentially raising everybody’s taxes by an average of $1000 per household per year. We would get no educational benefit from that, and our housing would go down in value. But the state punishes us for keeping taxes a little lower for our citizens. Only the legislature can fix that. They could give us temporary partial relief or full relief.

It is a lie that our board refused to go to the legislature to ask for this relief. They went. I don’t know numbers for all of them, but I know Natalie and Christine went to Austin 8 times during the legislative session (mid-January to early June). Scott Henry also spent time in Austin. There are probably many trips by our board that I don’t know about. Plus, they made contact with many legislators here in town.

In the legislature Mayes Middleton was a champion for us. Mike Schofield also worked hard. Tom Oliverson was the Republican Caucus Chair, and all of his bills were thwarted, but he worked nevertheless worked for us. Lacey Hull was for us, although it wasn’t a priority for her. Capriglione was helpful. Even Jon Rosenthal—the deeply partisan Democrat House Rep. in the Cy-Fair area—was for us; this might be the only issue we agree with him on. (Senator Paul Bettencourt wasn’t anxious to help us; this was fallout from failure to pass a chaplain policy he favored, which is a discussion for another day.)

Some of the legislators went to the TEA Commissioner, who could have given us $35 million in relief, but he refused.

The board is continuing to work during the current special legislative session; they’re not giving up.

To say our conservative board members “refused” to ask the legislature for help is a flat-out provable lie, and a pretty ridiculous one at that.

Lie #3: They Made School Libraries Inaccessible for Most Students

When the budget shortfall hit last year, necessary cuts had to be made. The district managed to do it without firing anyone. This doesn’t mean they kept the same number of employees. It meant that openings wouldn’t be filled, and some employees would be reassigned. Some who didn’t want the reassignments would quit.

The principals decided that they would prefer cutting librarians rather than some other staff. Some librarians then—I’m assuming those that also had teaching certificates—were put back into classrooms. Many of the remaining librarians handled more than one school. On days when a librarian wasn’t present in a school, paraprofessionals or volunteers could handle those duties. No libraries had to be closed. No child had to be deprived of library access.

Except—some principals wanted to make a statement, so they would close their libraries when the librarian wasn’t physically present. That is the principal’s decision. Neither the Board nor the administration deprived any child full access to school libraries. And only a small minority of principals chose to deprive their respective students.

Lie #4: They Cut Aides

Again, beyond initial cuts to administration and bus drivers, no employees were laid off. That includes aides, or paraprofessionals. However, openings may not have been filled, so the number of aides might have decreased.

Lie #5: They Campaigned for Taxpayer-funded Vouchers for Private Schools

The legislature passed a school choice bill. I wasn’t fully satisfied with it, but it’s a start. They passed an ESA bill (Education Savings Account), which is different from a voucher. A certain amount (around $11,000/year) could be granted per child for use in private school tuition or any other education purpose, but they probably wouldn’t have excess after paying tuition; I was disappointed at how that wasn’t significantly different from a voucher for those students. For homeschoolers, a much smaller amount was allotted (around $2,500/year), but they have much more freedom in how to use it for their educational purposes.

Our board members may have personally approved or disapproved of the bill, or the concept. But they did not campaign for the bill; they advocated only for our public school district.

Natalie Blasingame has been clear every time she has run (this is her fifth campaign) that she believes parents ought to have choices. But she believes we can and should provide those choices within the public schools. While I, as a parent who chose to homeschool when the public schools failed to meet our needs, am skeptical about their ability to provide enough choice, I am very much in favor of trying to meet the needs.

It is a conservative principal that parents are in charge of the care and upbringing of their children—including their education. Also, most of us can see that competition will only incentivize public schools to be better. We shouldn’t be afraid of that.

Note also that the ESA bill used an entirely different funding source; no public school funds went to the ESA bill. If you stretch the facts a bit, you could assume the limited number of students benefiting from the ESA bill are all public school students leaving our district’s schools (even though the bill is used by a relatively small number of students across all of Texas). Schools get a per-student allotment, so a student who leaves the public schools means less money for the public schools. That’s the only way the ESA bill affects public schools. But so far everywhere ESAs have been tried, public schools have gotten more money, not less. I hope we do enough of school choice in the future for the public schools to feel the competition and do better at meeting the needs.

Lie #6: They Cut Bus Routes and Field Trips

I wrote about the cut bus routes here. It was a mistake—caused, in my opinion, by the “deep state” that made up the budget committee. Two-thirds of the committee was made up of staff or their family members; they wanted more draconian cuts, which the board refused to do. In retrospect, they should not have cut any. But it was the transportation department that failed to hire enough bus drivers and failed to meet the safety standards the board required. And it was the communications department that failed to tell parents until two weeks before the start of the 2024 school year that the routes would be cut.

There’s good news now. In the past, there was a shortage of bus drivers at the beginning of every school year. 2024 was no exception; they actually had a smaller shortfall than usual that year, because of the cut routes. Because mainly Christine Kalmbach and Natalie Blasingame kept pushing them, the board gave pay raises for bus drivers—from $19/hour to $23/hour.

In 2025, not only are the bus routes now reinstated, but this year, for the first time in recent memory, bus drivers are fully staffed at the start of the school year. At a recent in service Training meeting, bus drivers thanked board members for giving them a living wage. They seem happy and satisfied. Our district even got back some bus drivers who had left for other districts. Now they’re happy to be back.

As for field trips, those probably were cut back in the debt crisis. We have to do some DOGE (get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse) so we can get over the debt crisis—this year. And then we can look at getting back some good-to-have nonessentials.

On a similar note, paraprofessionals and other lower-level workers (custodians, kitchen workers) got raises, from something like $12/hour to $15/hour. Teachers got raises, dictated by the state, although the district was budgeting for that anyway. The contentious point was the 4% raise for administrators; Natalie Blasingame voted against the budget for this reason. Administrators only got a 1% raise the year before, but some of us think they are greatly overpaid. And mostly we’re upset at how many there are. That new luxury office building that houses them has room for 700 of them—“educators” who do not work in the schools and classrooms. Seems excessive, and I’d be glad to see more of our cuts coming from there.

There will be more to say about the school board races. But just know that, if the opposition only has lies as reasons to vote against conservatives, we can see through that. And if enough sensible people know the truth—and get out and vote—we’ll have better schools year after year.