METROPOLIS School Board Voter Guide

Beware of dark money — and candidates with children who don’t even go to school in their own districts.

BY STATIC

As a rule, in politics, you can’t trust anyone without some skin in the game. Rule No. 2 is, you can trust them only as much as that skin is worth or how expendable it is. As anyone who’s been to a casino can tell you, money comes and goes. There’s no emotional attachment there, so to see how much skin a politician really has in a school board race, it’s best to do some emotional accounting. Children, friends, time spent serving the community — all that is irreplaceable. When choosing school board candidates — the trustees we trust to protect the future of our children — that’s the money to follow.

Given the heated controversy involving book bans, gun control, vouchers, and teacher shortages, there is much at stake in this year’s election, and it’s even more pronounced since at least one far-right company pumps tons of dark money into local school board elections. In last year’s vote, cell phone provider Patriot Mobile and its Super PAC Patriot Mobile Action spent $2 million supporting far-right candidates, and 11 of them won. Following the national trend, Patriot Mobile’s goal is to dismantle public schools so that privatizing education is the only option, which would severely limit or completely thwart upward mobility for millions of mostly minority students. Because racism, duh. All these Patriot Mobile clowns and their trustees/minions are whiter than rice.

People in the business of buying and selling property are also playing a role in school board elections. The Texas Ethics Commission says Realtors donated more than $390,000 to right-wing candidates last election cycle alone. Apparently, when test scores influence where families choose to live, Christian Nationalists would rather sabotage their own public schools than expose what’s been really going on in the classrooms. Or, y’know, help their kids score higher on tests, but that would require a respect for knowledge and information that has somehow eluded these fake Christians/non-fake Nazis thus far.

Vouchers were not popular in the lege this session, so now the right is focused on the “Guardian Rule” that would require all teachers to carry handguns in class. Never mind that nearly every school shooting is conducted with an assault-style firearm that sprays clouds of bone-shattering bullets. But, sure, a handgun fired by a fortysomething mother of two who just learned how to load the thing should do the trick.

Since conservatives never offer any solutions, just hot air, the book bans and the CRT nonsense are just distractions from real problems. One of the biggest is that Texas spends $4,000 less per pupil than the national average. The state is to blame for this, not the federal government. Fed funds make up about 7% of per-pupil spending whereas state and local governments comprise more than 90% of the total. It makes sense that in a red state, continued on page 8 public school students would be so underserved. The right’s entire philosophy is “Fuck them poor darkies, we’re eating.” Though there’s no way to verify, we’d bet a shiny gold bar plucked from the belly of the Titanic ’s remains that every Republican politician’s kid goes to a private school. Every one. Private schools as private businesses mostly have no standard of education/accountability, so it seems we have entered into a new era, one where the rich get richer but also dumber at a steady pace until the meaning of capitalism has gone entirely through the looking glass into a postmodern definition of theft, indifference, and lethargy.

One school district taken over by Patriot Mobile’s Christian Nationalists is Carroll. Grieving parents in Southlake are now watching their children suffer as the second richest town in Texas crumbles under the weight of a massive debt created by Patriot Mobile’s hand-picked trustees and their imaginative bookkeeping. The school district recently sent out a newsletter to middle-school parents stating that their kids would be double-blocked this year, meaning they will be forced to learn the same accelerated math and language arts curriculum in half the time due to a teacher shortage. As expected, Carroll teachers actually make disturbingly less than their peers in surrounding areas like Fort Worth. According to job posts on Indeed, Carroll teachers start out at $15/hour whereas Fort Worth’s bring home a whopping $36. For all the money flowing in and around Southlake, you’d think the city would take care of the people in charge of their most prized possessions for most days, every day. But you would be wrong. It’s no wonder educators are resigning en masse from Carroll.

The Fort Worth school district is not immune to the Patriot Mobile virus. The company sent out mailers endorsing Patricia Carlson for District 2, Valarie Navarez for District 3, and Josh Yoder for District 5. If you have a brain and a heart, do not vote for any of them under any circumstances.

Carlson is running against incumbent Tobi Jackson, who has 13 years of experience as a trustee and a high-transparency public presence. She is highly involved with the district and runs the after-school program SPARC. In a recent print interview, the 74-year-old Carlson, who co-owns a business with her husband but would not disclose its name, believes in vouchers a la Greg Abbott and, when asked how she would resolve disagreements among fellow trustees, said, “Absolutely!” #uhwhat?

Quinton Phillips is the incumbent in District 3. He is a professor at TCU and runs an empowerment after-school program for kids in the community. He has a high-transparency public presence and is a proud graduate of his district. Patriot Mobile-backed challenger Navarez is 22 years old, has no experience, and has a mostly private social media account, showing only church endorsements. Martayisha James, 27, is also running against Phillips. She is president of an environmental coalition and has lived in the district for 18 years.

In District 5, Carrie Evans is the incumbent. Evans, 45, is a lawyer and has served on the board for five years. She is being challenged by Kevin Lynch, 41, who has very little public presence and is the dad of five kids not enrolled in the district. The Patriot Mobile-backed Yoder wants to make sure all teachers are packing heat. The only thing on his social media is bragging that his PAC outspent the Dems and advocating for book bans and Jesus.

In Keller, incumbent Beverly Dixon will defend her place against yokel Chris Coker, who is proud of pulling his kids out of the district when COVID happened and is a fan of book-banning, guns in schools, and, yes, vouchers. Dixon is the ideal candidate. She is a Navy vet of 21 years, mom of two kids in the district, and is heavily — and we mean heavily — involved in the Keller community. She has countless endorsements by administrators who vouch for her work and love her generous spirit on her social media page as well as many videos and pictures of her being honored by the community for her volunteer work. Coker sent out a message about her letting kids get hurt by “woke” politics, and everyone in the community had a good laugh about that.

Basically, there are some red flags when considering which locals will represent us on our school boards. No public service experience? Red flag. No public presence? Red flag. No kids in the district that the trustee hopes to represent? Yewj red flag. Endorsed by Patriot Mobile? Don’t even go there.

The election is Saturday. Get movin’. l

This column reflects the opinions of the editorial board and not the Fort Worth Weekly. To submit a column, please email Editor Anthony Mariani at Anthony@FWWeekly. com. He will gently edit it for clarity and concision.

Boycott Texas!

Boycott its blue cities, its red rural towns, its tony exurbs. Don’t choose Texas for your vacations, staycations, or conventions. Don’t worry. The Riverwalk will still meander through downtown San Antonio without you. Austin’s 6th Street will always echo with boisterous drunks with or without your help. Houston’s moveable feast of world cuisines won’t disappear entirely. It will still be there when and if Texas ever returns to sanity.

Do not send your young people to Texas for higher education. Our Republican Party is at war with the young because Zoomers — having spent too much time under their desks in lockdown drills — don’t buy into the GOP’s insane AR-15 idolatry. Boycott the state universities, but don’t stop there. Boycott the private ones, too. Texas wants to make it hard for college students to vote, take away a woman’s right to bodily autonomy, flood our streets with firearms, and overregulate what can be taught. The legislature knows it can get away with that with no cost at the ballot box. Make it pay in this way.

Boycott Texas products — American Airlines, ExxonMobil, Southwest Airlines, Dell, all of them. Boycott all things Texas because the state has become a beachhead of far-right, white, Christian Nationalist blowhards whose true mission is to serve the wealthy while joyfully scapegoating the most vulnerable: the poor, the homeless, minorities, immigrants, and trans teens.

Texas is No. 1 in banning books and is home to one of the most draconian anti-abortion bills, the most gerrymandered political maps, the most anti-immigrant laws, the most lax gun safety legislation, and the most anti-LGBTQ+ laws. Some bills that could pass the legislature this session include SB 1933, which would give Texas’ Secretary of State the power to take and directly administer elections in any county, and SB 1029, which makes it extremely difficult for transgender Texans of any age to obtain gender-affirming care.

We have a governor who’s in competition to out-crazy Florida’s for the Republican presidential nomination. We have a radicalized state government gripped by three toxic ideas: sTOp ThE sTeaL, anti-immigrant, and anti-trans. What makes this especially heartbreaking is that we have real issues that the legislature should be dealing with. We’re the No. 1 emitter of toxic substances into our waterways. We also have the most people without health insurance, worst access to mental health care, and lowest overall well-being for children. Texas is failing our youth while its legislators whine about wokeness, whatever the hell that is.

I don’t propose boycotting Texas idly. I hate the thought of small businesses suffering and vulnerable service workers losing their jobs, yet I don’t see any other way to hurt all the lords and ladies in Austin. We live in a one-party state. Who can we beseech to moderate Texas’ John Birchy Republican Party? Can we convince the fundamentalists who now believe in a religion so at odds with the traditional Christianity of mercy, humility, and compassion that you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s the opposite of Christianity? Nope.

Can we reason with rural voters who though they’re hurt by hospital closings in their areas still back the Republicans whose refusal to expand Medicare is the cause of those closings? No.

Can we convince those ensconced in the far-right news silo of the rightness of our positions? No way, despite what the rest of us now know about all the brainwashing b.s. coming from Fox “News.”

Can we convince Second Amendment fanatics that continuing to inundate our country with weapons, leading to an increase in mass shootings, suicides, and gun deaths, hasn’t been such a great idea after all? They won’t listen. They’re fine with the mutilated bodies of elementary school-aged children just to never be slightly inconvenienced by common sense gun regulations.

Who can we convince? While Texas is home to a good number of rich rapacious rednecks who are all in on right-wing authoritarian governance, many large and small business owners don’t buy into the angry and hateful rhetoric of today’s Republican Party. We can’t blame the momand-pop shops. What are they gonna do? Pick up and move to Vermont? But you can bet the big boys, all the mega-corporations, love conducting business in a low-tax, anti-regulation state. They may or may not be embarrassed by all the crazies. As long as their bottom lines aren’t hurt, maybe they’re OK with all the hate and scapegoating. If we boycott them, they might not develop a conscience, but they, by the power of their vast money and influence, might moderate Texas’ far right Foxified Republican Party.

— Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue l

This column reflects the opinions of the author and not the Fort Worth Weekly. To submit a column, please email Editor Anthony Mariani at Anthony@FWWeekly.com. He will gently edit it for clarity and concision.