Sunday, May 13, 2012

Fort Bend ISD Has 3 New Faces on the BOT

Well I’ll be the son of a motherless goat. It seems the voters in Fort Bend ISD, or at least a majority of 5.15% of them anyway, want a change on their Board of Trustees. We had three positions that were being sought by eight candidates, two of them were incumbents.

Results just in, both incumbents were given the boot by voters. Cynthia Lenton-Gary, incumbent for Position 7 who was appointed to the board to serve out the term of Jim Babb, the feisty one who saw that he was simply wasting his time trying to change things, was ousted by TEA Partier Dave Rosenthal who received 4171 votes (52.26%) to Lenton-Gary’s 3306 (41.42%). Lenton-Gary, a perennial candidate for one thing or another, was widely considered a “rubber stamp” on the board.

Ironically she is being replaced by another TEA Partier. Ironic in that the TEA Party is famous for its opposition to public education.

The other perennial candidate for this position, Rodrigo Carreon, got his usual 500 votes.

So this is to be viewed as both an anti-status quo vote as well as a TEA Party poll swarming. It seems the TEA Party can get their candidates to win nearly every time in these low turnout elections.

This turned out not to be the case for fellow TEA Partier Patt Snyder. Snyder was edged out by Grayle James with 3536 votes (44.49%) to Snyder’s 3182 (40.04%). James had the endorsement of the Fort Bend Employees Federation (the Teacher’s Union). This was an open seat as the incumbent decided not to run.

Now we know why.

But most surprising was the results for Position 6. Marilyn Glover, the former chair of the Fort Bend County Democratic Party (but currently votes Republican) got her butt kicked by Jenny Bailey who received 4467 votes (55.83%) to Glover’s 3534 (44.17%). Glover had a super-charged, Jesus-blessed rubber stamp on her desk. Glover handily won in her 2009 race for what was an open position.

Bailey is noted for her active engagement in the Ipad controversy, a done deal they say, where thousands of 8th graders will receive expensive Ipads from the district in order to bring education technology to a new level. Glover supported the plan.

Most people hate the idea and view it as just another gimmicky thing like the previously proposed Global Science Center.

Me? I was rather looking forward to purchasing one of these Ipads off of eBay from one of these 8th graders.

1 comment:

Anthony said...

Hal-

You crack me up!!!