Three running for two San Marcos school board seats
Three candidates are in the running for two open positions on the San Marcos CISD Board of Trustees.
Incumbents Anne Halsey and school board vice president John McGlothlin are running for two at-large seats in the May 5 election, as is challenger James McCutcheon.
Halsey, who is the mother of three children in the San Marcos district, said the school board needs a parent’s perspective, and that was part of what motivated her to run in 2015.
“I feel very committed to this district,” Halsey said. “I think having that parent voice is very important. I think when I ran my main principle was focusing on putting kids first and I want to continue that focus moving forward.”
McCutcheon, a social studies teacher at the Charter School Hays County Juvenile Center for the past 9 years, says with the rise in frequency of mass shootings in schools, campus security should be a leading priority.
“I’m running because I think too often students and teachers don’t get represented as much as administration,” McCutcheon said. “One of the biggest things I think that needs to be improved is campus security. I know the constant dangers teachers face. Working inside a juvenile detention center ... I think it gives me extra teeth in this race.”
After 18 years as a child in the foster care system, McCutcheon says he enjoys mentoring students in the juvenile justice system who may come from similar backgrounds.
McGlothlin, a San Marcos attorney and founder of the John McGlothlin law firm, said he looks forward to doing more work on the six points he campaigned on in 2015, including increasing classroom capacity, improving teacher compensation and implementing longrange plans to improve college-readiness.
“I think this election should be a referendum on how we’ve done these past few years,” McGlothlin said. “We have put a new focus on academic achievement for all of our kids, put resources into the classroom by preventing class sizes from ballooning, given our teachers the largest compensation increase in any three-year period in the history of the district and hired a strong cabinet of top administrators with broad experience in curriculum.”