School board hopeful petitions court to put him on ballot

An aspiring candidate for the Houston school board has asked an appellate court to force the district to put him on the November ballot, claiming he was wrongly excluded.

Anthony Madry, a former administrator in the Houston Independent School District, filed a petition with the 14th Court of Appeals this week after HISD rejected his application to run for the school board.

Amanager in the school board office, Veronica Mabasa, sent Madry a letter, dated Aug. 28, that she was rejecting his application under the state’s election law because it was incomplete.

Madry did not list the specific board seat that he was seeking on the application.

In his petition, Madry argued that he should have been given a chance to correct the omission. He submitted his application to the HISD board office on Aug. 21, five days before the filing deadline of Aug. 26.

State law says that applications must be reviewed within five days. The fifth day was the day of the filing deadline.

Attorneys for HISD said the district was correct in dismissing Madry’s application.

“Mr. Madry’s failure to identify the office he wished to run for, combined with his decision to file close to the filing deadline, is the reason that his application was properly rejected as required by law,” attorneys David Thompson and Lisa McBride said Thursday.

There was some confusion about Madry’s application at first. Minutes after the filing deadline, HISD’s media office sent out a list that included Madry running for the District IX seat being vacated by Larry Marshall.

Madry’s status changed after HISD’s attorneys reviewed the application.

Madry said after the rejection that there was confusion over which seat he was seeking, and that’s why he didn’t list the number on his application. He said he first thought he lived in District IX, but he lives in District VI, where incumbent Greg Meyers is the lone candidate.

“Anthony is an excellent candidate,” said his attorney, Anthony A. Shepherd. “There’s a lot of constituents out there that want to see him on the school board.”