Bay Area Houston

Just saw a pic on Facebook from Misty Dawson who is running for the CCISD school board. She is working hard to follow the Republican Party playbook of misleading and scare tactics.

A couple of things:

• The Appraisal District [the Appraisal District is a separate office than the Tax Assessor] accesses taxes based upon home values. It’s not like they willy nilly raise the assessment. Home sales are through the roof for reasons unknown. Tax rates have not changed. She might want to contact the Galveston County Tax Assessor for accurate information. (The Assessor is a republican)
• CCISD has NOT considered eliminating the homestead exemption. As part of their budget process this is always on the table, as it should be, but has never been considered especially in the most recent years. When the State has cash strapped the school districts sometimes drastic cuts or considerations must be take but not this time. So this is nothing more than a scare tactic addressed towards the ill informed.
• She claims she will fight for keeping the homestead exemption, something that isn’t being considered, again catering to the ill informed. 
• And BTW….CCISD’s M&O is at the lowest rate allowed by law and the State actually penalizes school districts for not taxing enough. Go figure.

There is something seriously wrong with this.

In a race that requires a couple of thousand dollars, a handful of signs, and attending meet and greets with education professionals and the community, Scott Bowen has broken the bank. His own bank.

According to his 30 day campaign finance report Bowen raised over $25,000……sort of. Bowen loaned his campaign a staggering amount of $20,000. Many candidates for CCISD in the past have loaned their campaigns money but $20,000 is outrageous much like State Representative Money Mayes Middleton who self financed his campaign with over $2.5 Million for a race that should have cost $500,000 if it was competitive. (it wasn’t) 

This self financing is the latest tactic being used by wealthy republican candidates. Eric Dick a republican for County Treasurer self financed his campaign for over $250,000. (he lost) As I have reported before:

Much like Kathaleen Wall who invested $6 Million for a Congressional primary (and lost), and David Mayes Middleton who invested $1.5 Million [$2.5M total]  for his State House primary win, Huffines invested $6 Million for his primary win for a State Senate seat. Out of his $7.4 fundraising haul 81% came from his own pocket!

$20,000 for a school board race is obscene. There is more to this. Bowen’s Treasurer left right after the 2019 election. Currently he does not have a Treasurer on file and will have to explain that to the Texas Ethics Commission. There is more concerning the mailer he sent with pictures of kids which he did not have permission to do but that is for later.

His remaining donations of about $5000 includes $1300 from Kevin Odit who ran for CCISD back in 2021 and a $2000 donation from Thomas McNutt from Corsicana Texas. McNutt is another extreme far right candidate who the party rejected in the 2022 primary for State Representative.

The Clear Lake Chamber of Commerce held a forum for the CCISD candidates. The entire forum can be viewed at the I45Now channel here. 

The Good. Jessica Cejka and Krysten Garcia. Out of the five these are two very outstanding candidates. Clearly both are very knowledgeable in education matters. Both showed confidence, poise, and were very comfortable answering questions. Watching them answer the questions you could tell they could easily talk in detail about any subject. Both were very impressive. As former educators they would bring a wealth of knowledge and applicable experience to the board.

The Bad. Carl Nunn. Chief Nunn has spent his career in law enforcement but he has had trouble transitioning to being a candidate for a school board. He was clearly having trouble answering some questions. As an example at about 52:45 he took a considerable amount of time to think about the question then simply punted and could not answer. Would he be better than the current board member? Absolutely. 

The Ugly. Misty Dawson. Ms. Dawson is clearly out of her element. At about 31:15 on the question of property taxes her opponent took the entire minute to answer the question while Ms. Dawson took a whole 5 seconds to simply agree. She is self financing but stated candidates should take money from partisan organizations. She had trouble answering questions. At about 58:15 she had to pass on answering since she did not know what “at risk student” meant. According to the moderator “at risk student” is actually defined by the Texas Education Agency. 

Scott Bowen. He is great at pandering to the audience and cloaking his extreme, right wing, partisan, views when necessary. Bowen is one of the reasons we have parents coming to the School Board meetings causing unnecessary trouble on non-existent issues. He seems to enjoy being the instigator of chaos. He should take these skills and run for a partisan office where they will be appreciated.

The Texas Republican Party at their latest Executive Committee Meeting has endorsed Scott Bowen for another term of “conservative values” of disrupting the school board and inserting extreme party politics into CCISD schools and the school board.

This is significant. An endorsement like this comes with support, money, and free advertisement. It is sad that they are playing political games in our district.

According to the video of the meeting Bowen was endorsed by the Harris County Republican Party in 2019 and the resolution states the TRP will endorse if the county party does so again. It states Bowen was responsible for getting other extreme partisan candidates on other local school boards. That could include Cy-Fair ISD Trustee Scott Henry, who was endorsed by the Harris County Republican Party, made racist comments at his first school board meeting. He has now lost his job with a software company out of California.

They claim Bowen is a rising star in the Republican Party and a conservative rock star on the board. He opposed COVID protections for teachers and kids. He opposed CRT  (critical race theory, which is not, and has never, been taught in k-12 since it is a college graduate course.) CRT is also code word for RDW, racist dog whistle.

There is another republican running in this race and there was slight opposition because of this. Also someone didn’t think it was right for the party to inject themselves in non party races like this. He is right.

The entire video concerning this resolution to endorse can be viewed here https://youtu.be/bSlOh2ohuSk?t=7611.

Background: Christine Parizo was a candidate for the CCISD School Board. She lost by 25 percentage points but she wanted a recount……. and lost again. That wasn’t enough for Parizo. She filed numerous open records requests including obtaining the names and addresses of every voter in the district who voted by mail. She attended the board meetings making unsubstantiated claims about her lost election. She claimed the Hart voting machines were compromised. She filed a complaint with the Texas Attorney General which was closed with no action. To top it off she was escorted out for disrupting a board meeting. She has since removed her campaign website. Hopefully she has ended her assault on the board.

Unfortunately it looks like another Parizo has emerged and has filed to run for the board. Misty Dawson made her announcement on her Facebook page and it looks like she will be following in the footsteps of Ms Parizo and Scott Bowen. She uses all of the political buzzwords including claiming to be a “conservative”, stopping CRT (which has not and will never be taught in school because it is a graduate course), and COVID then claims she wants to take politics out of the school board. Yea. Right. Her post is straight out of her political party playbook.

There are much better candidates running for these positions who have experience in the classroom, experience in education, and will focus on what is good for the district, the parents, the teachers, and the students. Hopefully the voters in May will put an end to the political assault on our school board and take Scott Bowen out and keep Misty Dawson off of the CCISD School Board. 

The application deadline is approaching for those interested in running for the two positions open on the CCISD School Board, At Large Position B and District 1. Deadline is 2/18/2022 at 5:00 PM. Visit the CCISD Election Central for details. At the moment there are 4 candidates:

District 1:

Dr. Laura DuPont was elected to the District 1 seat on the CCISD school board in May 2013. As of today she is not running for re-election. Dr. DuPont has served as the secretary of the board. We thank her for her many years of excellent service to the district, the kids, and the parents!

Misty Dawson. From her Facebook page: Education, not Indoctrination: We need to keep politics out of the classroom. In the current political climate, it can be hard to find a way of talking about politics without facing criticism or heckling. Discussion on these issues should happen in the home, not in school–where students are more likely to feel judged for their views. They are in class to learn, not to be divided, and divisive curriculum such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) should be kept out of CCISD. We should be bringing people together, not finding ways to split children apart for political reasons.

At Large Position B:

Carl Nunn. From his Facebook Page: “I’d like to introduce myself, my name is Carl Nunn, and I’m running for CCISD Trustee At-Large this May. Trustees fundamentally need to earn the trust of the parents and teachers in our district, so I’d like to tell you why I’m running. I think It is time to refocus on our students’ needs and invest in the recruitment and retention of our teachers. We can only do this by keeping the politics and side shows out of our district by staying away from the already banned programs and being the voice for our parents rather than their enemy.”

NOTE: I am very partisan but I do not believe partisan politics belongs in our schools or our boards. I have no idea of the partisan nature of the members of the board, except for a few, and that is how it should be.

It doesn’t matter what party you belong to or if you even belong to a political party. The kids of CCISD deserve board members who are concerned about education, believes in science, accounting, math, and can display common sense when making decisions. Political stupidity needs to be taken out of the CCISD board.