Fed up, pro-education candidates step up

TEXAS LEGISLATURE

Fed up, pro-education candidates step up
Believing lawmakers won't give schools a fair shake, some educators will try to take their jobs instead.

Rodolfo Gonzalez/AMERICAN-STATESMAN
(enlarge photo)
Education activists with the Texas Parent PAC hope to raise $125,000 to support candidates in the March primaries, said Chairwoman Carolyn Boyle, right, here with Treasurer Staley Gray. 'Our hope is that a typical contribution will be $5,000 to $10,000 per candidate,' Boyle says.

By Jason Embry, Robert Elder
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, October 23, 2005
WAXAHACHIE — At a recent Rotary Club meeting in nearby Midlothian, Q.D. "Duke" Burge had planned to deliver an energetic speech for his campaign for the Texas House. The day before, he was told that the club doesn't allow political speeches. Undeterred, Burge sat down at the club's piano and knocked out a five-song set that featured indirect jabs at the Legislature.

"Whatever it takes," Burge said over lunch at the Applebee's near his computer services business.

Burge is in his sixth year on the Midlothian school board, so he's no political novice. But he's punching in a new weight class, challenging 13-year incumbent Jim Pitts, the well-funded chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, in the Republican primary in March.

An impossible dream? In most years, yes, and probably in 2006 as well.

But Burge hopes to tap a well of frustration over lawmakers' repeated failure to improve public schools while also lowering property taxes.

Burge, in fact, is just one of about 15 candidates with education ties, either as school board members, administrators or teachers, who are planning to run for House seats next year. That's an unusually high number, and more candidates are likely to emerge in the next couple of months. Many are counting on unprecedented turnout and financial support from education-minded voters.

Beyond the Legislature's lack of policy solutions, some educators are infuriated by what they see as lawmakers' disregard for their opinions and contempt for how they do their jobs. In August, for instance, House Speaker Tom Craddick characterized the school system as a "bottomless pit" in need of reform as much as new funds.

"The difficult thing for all of us is not to take this personally," says Mary Ann Whiteker, superintendent of the Hudson Independent School District and president of the Texas Association of Mid-Size Schools. "You just walk through the Capitol thinking, 'Why do they hate me so much?' "

"Of course," she adds, "I think there were times where legislators thought we hated them."

All this is more than name-calling. Control of the education agenda in the Legislature affects how much money schools have — and who is going to pay more taxes as a result. The state ranks near the bottom nationally in high-school graduation rates and Scholastic Assessment Test scores, and it's in the bottom 50 percent in teacher pay and per-student spending. School districts are plagued by reports of cheating on standardized tests and concealing dropout rates, among other governance issues.

Long term, the health of the state economy rides on the quality of public education. The friction between legislators and educators raises questions about the chances for reaching consensus on the way forward.

School lobbying groups of every stripe prided themselves on maintaining a solid front this year at the Capitol. They fought off proposals for private tuition vouchers, a plan to let voters veto tax increases by school districts and a funding proposal they deemed inadequate.

But a political campaign is a more individual pursuit, and the emergence of the new House candidates has been far less organized. Education groups seem unlikely to unify behind them, considering that these candidates stress varying issues — to the extent they've laid out agendas at all.

View from the top

State District Judge John Dietz last year declared the Texas system of paying for schools unconstitutional. His ruling that schools do not have the money to meet state and federal mandates emboldened school leaders, who have borne the weight of legislative funding cuts and tougher state tests.

Legislative leaders entered 2005 trying to comply with the part of Dietz's ruling that told the school finance system to rely less on property taxes.

But they largely ignored his calls for huge increases in state funding, instead offering a smaller funding boost — the House wanted $3 billion more over two years, about a 4.5 percent increase in total funding — paired with education reforms that made school leaders nervous, such as incentive pay for teachers and requiring school districts to hold elections in November instead of May. School officials regularly lined up at meetings of the House and Senate education committees to assail the school finance plans, pleading for more money with fewer strings attached.

Rep. Bill Keffer, a Dallas Republican on the House committee, says he tuned out education lobbyists who said they would rather have no funding increase than what the House was offering. "After I heard about the 10th person say that, it almost became pointless for those folks to come testify before the committee, as far as I was concerned personally, because I didn't feel like they were participating in the process in good faith," he says. The Senate fought off some of the most controversial elements of the House proposal, such as moving school board elections to November and capping the amount of money that districts with extremely high property values must share with the rest of the state.

In part because of educators' objections, the two chambers didn't complete a plan during their 140-day regular session or two 30-day special sessions. That made a total of five fruitless sessions since 2003.

Keffer likens education groups to the Luddites, English workers who destroyed manufacturing equipment to slow the Industrial Revolution.

"I imagine someone sitting around, hoisting a mug of ale after busting the printing press thinking, 'Well, we took care of that, didn't we?' " he says. "Well, that lasted for however long it lasted, but it didn't stop progress."

House Public Education Committee Chairman Kent Grusendorf, R-Arlington, says not all educators opposed the plan. House members behind the plan included former teachers Dianne Delisi and Glenda Dawson, former principal Martha Wong and Rob Eissler, a former school board member.

At least one of the educators now seeking a House seat says he, too, found the leadership plan "acceptable."

Republican Kelly Hancock has been on the Birdville school board near Fort Worth for 13 years; he also owns a chemical distribution company.

"I'm a businessman, strong conservative, that happened to be involved in education for 13 years," says Hancock, who is running for a seat being vacated by Bob Griggs, R-North Richland Hills.

The parent PAC

Carolyn Boyle is a former PTA president at Doss Elementary School in Austin. For eight years she coordinated the Coalition for Public Schools, a leading voice against vouchers, which would use public money to send students to private schools.

Vouchers failed again this year. Even with that victory, Boyle says she became fed up with what she saw as a Legislature that did not listen to educators or parents. She and a handful of like-minded parents formed the Texas Parent Political Action Committee to dole out campaign contributions to candidates whom they consider pro-education.

The PAC has received donations from 150 people. Boyle declines to give a total raised so far but has set a goal of $125,000 for the March primaries.

"Our hope is that a typical contribution will be $5,000 to $10,000 per candidate, plus a group of parent volunteers recruited by Texas Parent PAC," she says. Though Boyle's anti-voucher work had made her a thorn in the side of many Republicans, she expects GOP candidates to receive much of that support. That's different from the approach taken for the 2004 primaries by the state's four major teacher groups, whose political committees stuck to incumbents or gave most of their money to Democrats.

In heavily Republican districts, though, the GOP primary is the only race that matters.

The groups that focused their money on Democrats say that could change if they find the right candidates. "As Republican party politics mature, we probably will become increasingly involved in Republican primary races," says Richard Kouri, public affairs director for the Texas State Teachers Association. The other group is the Texas Federation of Teachers.

"Let's just come up with some new talent," Boyle says. "Clearly, the talent that's there couldn't get the job done."

Grass roots

If Boyle is a familiar insider at the Capitol, Frank "Bo" Camp is a field soldier. On a Tuesday night early this month, Camp, clad in sweat pants and a T-shirt, perspires mightily as he sets up tables and chairs inside the sweltering Former Students' Association Building in the small East Texas town of Gladewater. Camp's wife, Carmen Camp, is a special education teacher in the nearby Longview Independent School District.

Both are also brand-new political activists. They are two of the founders of a group called No Texas Teacher Left Behind, which is holding the fifth in a series of rally-the-troops meetings, mostly in East Texas.

Sitting on a folding chair, Bo Camp thumbs through thousands of pages of e-mails the group has received since June through its Web site. "We can't even answer them all," he says.

"We're degraded; we're laughed at by legislators," says Bo Camp, a former trustee of the Teacher Retirement System of Texas. "It just blows my mind that those people feel the way they do about public education."

Two middle-school teachers in Gladewater, Jan Doerr and Martha Wright, established the group as the regular legislative session endedin the spring.

"We're full-time educators who decided that just whining is not our style," Wright tells the group of about 70 people.

No Texas Teacher's agenda calls for a $4,000 teacher pay raise, a cost-of-living raise for retirees, who haven't had one since 2001, and more state money for the underfunded Teacher Retirement System.

Showing a PowerPoint slide on the generous pensions for veteran lawmakers — a lawmaker with just 12 years of service can draw a $34,000 annual pension — Wright peers over her glasses and says, "Let's help these legislators reach their retirement goals" by throwing them out of office.

The group is trying to marshal the votes and financial strength of the state's 1.1 million active and retired educators — roughly one of every 20 Texans.

Mesquite Fire Department Lt. Chuck Tull is there with his wife, Susan, a fourth-grade teacher. He is challenging two-term House member Dan Flynn of Van in the GOP primary.

Voters know "we've not really accomplished anything" on education at the Capitol, Tull says as his wife grades papers nearby. "I think we're going to have a few fresh faces" in the next Legislature.

Fighting history

In 2004, all 12 Republican House members who had primary challengers walloped them, each getting more than 60 percent of the vote.

Republican political consultant Craig Murphy predicts that no GOP candidate would win in 2006 running against the party's education position. "I don't know what the major issue is going to be in March, but it's not going to necessarily be the same one that was a major issue in July," Murphy says.

Retired Lewisville school Superintendent Clayton Downing ran for the House in 2002, saying he would use his experience to improve the school finance system. Incumbent Mary Denny beat him by 19 points in the Republican primary.

Downing figured he had a strong support base because the suburban Dallas district included part of the school district where he was superintendent for 18 years. He said longtime friends who were active in GOP politics told him they had to publicly support Denny because she had the support of the party establishment.

"I worked my tail off and could not get people to vote," said Downing, who today heads the Texas School Coalition, a group of districts with high property values. "It was just really hard to focus in and get people to really give it the attention that I thought it deserved."

Downing said a challenger running in the primary "doesn't have a prayer" without unifying all of the education groups, such as those representing teachers, parents and administrators, in their districts.

But pulling all of those forces together for a House campaign is unheard of, he said. "I think it could happen, but I sure haven't seen it happen," he said.

Groups that present a united front to all of the legislators in the Capitol see their influence diluted when it is spread among 254 counties and 150 House districts, and the burden falls to local officials and teachers who often do not have an interest in politics, he said.

Challengers are bound to be underfunded, as well. If the Texas Parent PAC, for example, were to contribute $10,000 to Burge, that would be small beer compared to Pitts' fundraising muscle. In 2004, against a 21-year-old Democratic opponent, Pitts raised about $300,000 and won 72 percent of the vote.

But former Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff said the school community could be a force.

"That is the great unanswered question, whether this sleeping giant of PTAs, school boards and teachers will ever organize enough to make their presence known" at the polls, says Ratliff, who advises the Texas Association of School Boards. "I do think it's a sleeping giant, though."

What the Legislature liked, educators didn't

Proposals that leading lawmakers supported, and many educators opposed, during this year's legislative sessions. Included in broader school finance legislation, they ultimately died when the Legislature failed to reach a consensus on the finance issue.

Voter-approved tax increases

Legislature: Wanted school boards to seek voter approval before boosting tax rates beyond the state cap, arguing that it would give taxpayers more control.

Educators: Said the elections would hurt children in areas that regularly defeat tax increases; said other political bodies, such as the Legislature, do not need voter approval to increase taxes.

Incentive pay for teachers

Legislature: Said principals should be able to reward teachers with higher salaries if they take challenging assignments or if their students show marked improvement.

Educators: Teacher groups say incentive-pay programs concentrate raises in the hands of a few teachers.

November school board elections

Legislature: House leaders said November elections would produce higher turnout in school board elections, giving more taxpayers a say in choosing their boards. Turnout is always higher in November, when there are more high-profile races than in May. Senate leaders showed much less enthusiasm than their House counterparts for November board elections.

Educators: Said school board candidates, now elected in May in most districts, would be lost among the many partisan races held in November and would be asked by voters' groups to answer questions on topics unrelated to education, such as gun control and abortion.

Instructional spending

Legislature: Said schools should spend at least 65 percent of their operating budgets on instruction, up from 63.8 percent.

Educators: Argued that the mandate, without a significant increase in overall funding, would tie school boards' hands and trigger cuts in areas such as counseling, transportation and food services.

(Note: After this failed to clear the Legislature, Gov. Rick Perry ordered the Texas Education Agency to write and implement a 65 percent rule.)

New to the game

Groups formed in the past 13 months to promote education issues.

Texas Parent PAC

Headquarters: Austin

Mission: political action committee for "pro-public-education" candidates

Goal: Raise $125,000 for 2006 primaries

Leader: Carolyn Boyle, former lobbyist for Coalition for Public Schools

Size: 150 donors to date

No Texas Teacher Left Behind

Headquarters: Gladewater

Mission: "Restore respect" from lawmakers and the governor for public educators

Goal: Generate widespread activism and voting among educators

Leaders: Martha Wright and Jan Doerr, middle-school teachers in Gladewater

Size: Undetermined; group is processing membership applications and sorting through 4,000-plus e-mails

Friends of Texas Public Schools

Headquarters: Rockwall

Mission: "Strengthen the public's faith in public schools"

Goal: Apolitical public relations campaign and polling to boost public support for school system

Leader: Scott Milder, vice president of an architectural firm that designs school facilities

Size: 500 individuals ($25 minimum contribution) and about 35 business ($500 minimum) have donated money

From schools to the campaign trail

Candidates with ties to education are emerging at a faster-than-usual pace to run for the Texas House. Many are frustrated by the political stalemate over school finance. But they're not a slate of candidates in the traditional sense, and they hold varying views on education and tax issues. Other candidates are likely to emerge before the end of the candidate filing period in January.

District Name Party Education tie Incumbent
2 Graham Sweeney Democrat Boles superintendent Rep. Dan Flynn, R-Van
2 Chuck Tull Republican Edgewood school board Rep. Dan Flynn, R-Van
10 Duke Burge Republican Midlothian school board Rep. Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie
48 Donna Howard Democrat Formerly on Eanes school board Rep. Todd Baxter, R-Austin*
48 Kathy Rider Democrat Formerly on Austin school board Rep. Todd Baxter, R-Austin*
52 Kelly Felthauser Democrat Substitute teacher Rep. Mike Krusee, R-Williamson County
54 Jimmie Don Aycock Republican Formerly on Killeen school board Rep. Suzanna Hupp, R-Lampasas*
63 Anne Lakusta Republican Formerly on Lewisville school board Rep. Mary Denny, R-Aubrey
72 Drew Darby Republican school site management committee Rep. Scott Campbell, R-San Angelo
72 Kevin Housley Republican Christoval school board Rep. Scott Campbell, R-San Angelo
91 Kelly Hancock Republican Birdville school board Rep. Bob Griggs, R-North Richland Hills*
98 Bill Skinner Republican Retired teacher, administrator Rep. Vicki Truitt, R-Keller
129 Sherrie Matula Democrat Teacher Rep. John Davis, R-Houston
133 Barbara Larson Republican Formerly Spring Branch school board Rep. Joe Nixon, R-Houston*
* Incumbent is not seeking re-election


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