The Texas State Board of Education certainly caught the nation's attention last week. The board has been an embarrassment for a long time, but lately the national media has been lavishing attention on its outrageousness, and that is all for the good.
After more than a year working for Democrat Judy Jennings, now the nominee for District 10, and having urged Rebecca Bell-Metereau, now the nominee for District 5, to get into that race after I heard her speak last April, it was gratifying to see the volume of tweets over the weekend on #SBOE (though some of the contents make me wince).
If you're reading this, you probably know that our State Board of Education has out-sized impact on textbooks for the obvious reason that Texas is big and we are one of the few states with an elected board allowed to meddle with their contents. Less well known outside of Texas is that we have a special endowment called the Permanent School Fund, which produces hundreds of millions of dollars in income every year and which has to be mostly spent on textbooks.
But I digress ...
Anyhow, this morning I got a request from a fellow American asking me to explain to him the make up of the board, how it's elected and what can be done to change it. Here's what I wrote:
Fifteen individuals serve on the Texas State Board of Education. There are currently 10 Republicans and five Democrats. They are elected to four-year terms with seven or eight positions up every two years. This year, there are eight positions on the November 2, 2010 ballot, but only three positions are contested by Democratic and Republican candidates. The other positions were effectively determined by the outcomes of the March 2, 2010 Democratic and Republican primaries since the districts are heavily gerrymandered.
Seven of the current Republican members form an ultra-conservative bloc and consistently vote together. They are usually able to put together a majority by picking up one or more votes. At its March meeting, for example, the board approved final passage of the much-amended social-studies standards on a 10-5 partisan vote.
One member of the ultra-conservative bloc, Don McLeroy (District 9), lost to a more moderate Republican in the March 2, 2010 primary. Another of the ultraconservatives, Cynthia Dunbar (District 10), did not seek re-election, but is backing one of the remaining candidates in the April 13 Republican primary runoff election.
Of the three contested districts this November, District 3 (San Antonio and South Texas) is solidly Democratic (Obama 59%), District 5 (north San Antonio, South Austin and the Hill Country leans Republican (Obama 44%) and District 10 (Austin to the suburbs of Houston) is swing (Obama 48%). (Certain statewide Democratic candidates outperformed President Obama by one or two percentage points in each of these districts.)
Districts 5 and 10 are the only opportunities for Democrats to pick up seats. Both Democratic nominees, Rebecca Bell-Metereau (District 5) and Judy Jennings (District 10) are highly qualified professional women with Ph.D.s in English and Educational Psychology, respectively. Rebecca is an award-winning teacher at Texas State University and a Fulbright Scholar who served in the Peace Corps. Judy formerly worked at the Texas Education Agency, which is overseen by the Board, and is thus very familiar with the work of the Agency and the Board’s proper role. She specializes in educational assessment and works with classroom teachers regularly on designing effective curricula and lesson plans. Both are mothers whose children attended public schools.
Though Judy’s district is the most favorable to a Democrat, Rebecca is helped considerably by the fact that ultraconservative incumbent Ken Mercer won his primary and is one of the most controversial figures on the Board. He is notorious for saying in 2008 that a group of educators who spent two years developing a new English curriculum “got a very well-deserved spanking” when the Board rejected their work on a 9-6 (mostly partisan) vote. Judy and Rebecca will both be helped by a strong get-out-the-vote effort in Democratic Austin (which was very deliberately divided between the two districts by the Republican-controlled Legislature in 2001). But Democratic turnout alone will not be enough. Both candidates are working hard to earn the votes of independents and moderate Republicans who care about their children’s public schools but who are turned off by the partisan rancor engendered by the Board’s extremists.
There are numerous factors that make it feasible for Rebecca to close the six percentage-point gap between President Obama’s performance within the district and victory. I’ll name three: 1) We have in Bill White the strongest gubernatorial candidate at the top of our statewide ticket since Ann Richards; 2) Though divided between Rebecca and Judy, Travis County (of which Austin is the county seat) is the flagship Democratic County in both districts and there is amazing synergy and excitement here from having two well-qualified, professional women running as our Democratic nominees; and 3) no statewide candidate has ever put in the time, money and effort that Rebecca and Judy are putting into these specific districts.
Judy and Rebecca are well qualified, their strategy is sound, and each campaign is very engaged in the very tractable challenge of winning 1/15th of Texas. If you’re looking for a couple of races where your donations can make a difference, please support Judy Jennings and Rebecca Bell-Metereau. If you'd like to make one donation and have it split between both, please visit the site of the political committee Paint Texas Blue.