South Texas School Board Association picks board, adds members

The new South Texas School Board Association picked a board last month and added two more members.

 

 

In August, the incipient nonprofit group — organized by former State Board of Education Member and current Region One Education Service Center Board Member Ruben Cortez — started asking school boards in deep South Texas to band together to advocate for their needs.

 

The pitch was simple: Cortez said school board members have long talked about the need for a unified voice.

 

Cortez said the South Texas School Board organization will serve as that voice, operating as part think tank, part advocacy group and part networking facilitator.

 

Other Rio Grande Valley organizations — like RioPlex and the Rio Grande Valley MPO — have been organized in recent years to represent other sectors along a similar line.

 

Valley school districts already had something similar in the South Texas Association of Superintendents, though it operates with a smaller budget and more limited aims than the new association.

 

The new association got eight school boards to invest membership fees based on their enrollment before representatives for member boards met last month.

 

With what organizers estimated as a little less than $100,000 in commitments, member districts organized themselves into a board in September.

 

They selected David Torres, Edinburg CISD’s board president, as the association’s president.

 

They picked Jerry Zamora of Mission CISD as vice president, Ramona Barron of PSJA ISD as secretary, Ester Cardoza-Wade of Monte Alto ISD as treasurer.

 

They also named as county representatives Mariselva G. Martinez of Zapata ISD, Pattsy Garcia of Rio Grande City Grulla ISD, Jaclyn Sustaita of Weslaco ISD and Rolando Velasquez of Lasara ISD.

 

 

“I’m comfortable with the team we have,” Torres said. “I mean, everybody was excited in our first meeting — PSJA, Mission, Weslaco. I mean, there’s a buy-in to what we want to be done here.”

 

Torres said he’s seen the fruit of collaboration in South Texas first-hand. He used to sit on South Texas ISD’s board, which has members from three counties, and was involved in the RGV MPO.

 

According to Torres, the new group started broadly with three goals in mind: recruiting new districts, setting goals and being fiscally responsible.

 

They won some victories on the first count after organizing its board, signing up Edcouch-Elsa and Progreso school districts.

 

It still has a long way to go if it wants to represent all South Texas’ school boards.

 

As of late September, only about a fifth of those boards had agreed to sign on, only two of them outside of Hidalgo County.

 

The absence of any Cameron or Webb County school boards was particularly apparent, though Torres said he wasn’t concerned by it.

 

“I know Cameron County well,” he said. “I’m gonna start reaching out. You know, I can imagine as a board member people are hesitant. You have to stick to what you have in your budget. So I don’t know, but I’m gonna do my best to reach out and talk to them, and I know them.”

 

Receiving a leadership role in the new association was a demand from Torres’ fellow trustees in Edinburg.

 

Torres, however, says he sees leadership in the association as being collaborative and transient.

 

Committees are a feature of STISD’s board and Edinburg CISD has endorsed them too.

 

Torres sees those, and changing leadership positions, as a likely feature of the new association.

 

“I don’t know how long our terms are, but I sure would like a lot of rotation,” he said.

 

Since the association is charging districts based on enrollment, buy-in from larger districts will likely have more impact on the new association’s capabilities.

 

As of late September, it only had two members that it classes as the very largest, Edinburg and PSJA.

 

Recruiting the other five largest districts, and medium to small size districts, could mean a budget of about $350,000 for the new association.

 

As of late September, the association had no paid employees, though it had acquired some volunteers.

 

Along with Cortez, consultant group Moak Casey, law firm O’Hanlon, Demerath & Castillo, and accounting firm Burton, McCumber & Longoria were working with the group.

 

Where the association spends its money, Torres said, will be up to the new board.

 

“That’s up to the board,” Torres said. “And I want a lot of input on that, and so I couldn’t tell you exactly what that is, but the more the better. And we’ll do what the taxpayer will want. I mean, that’s gonna be my role, that’s the way it is: we have to be frugal with whatever we do.”

 

Concrete goals for the organization, Torres said, will also be up to the new board.

 

He says he anticipates those goals to be nonpartisan but representative of South Texas’s school boards’ needs.

 

“There’s a lot of work ahead of us. We don’t have all the answers yet, but we’re gonna get them,” he said.

 

The association’s board was slated to meet again this month.