San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Judson ISD has two board seats up for grabs
Races for two seats on the Judson Independent School District board will be decided in the May elections and have attracted four candidates after two years of repeated turnover. Three incumbent trustees are running unopposed.
The May ballot will include the single-member District 4 seat, which has been vacant since November, and a special election for the District 7 at-large seat, which was filled via appointment in December after the resignation of a former trustee.
Looking to regain his spot on the dais is Jose A. Macias Jr., 50, who represented District 4 from 2010 to 2019 before being appointed
to the board of the Alamo Colleges District. He lost his election bid to the community college district board in November.
Macias is an Air Force veteran and the director of advancement at St. Paul’s Episcopal Montessori School. He has served on several advisory committees for the city of San Antonio and is a former nonprofit developer.
Also seeking the District 4 seat is Evette Livingston, 50, a former
pre-K and kindergarten teacher at the New Horizons School and former PTA president at Driscoll Middle School in North East ISD. She is currently the regional director of operations at the Rush Fun Park, a children’s amusement park in Live Oak.
Macias was Judson ISD’s board president in 2011, but was stripped of the title by his fellow trustees after six months in the role. A parent had accused Macias
of urging him to run for a school board seat against an incumbent and requesting a campaign contribution. Macias at the time said the allegation about the contribution was baseless and politically motivated, but acknowledged that the board was divided.
That rift was the result of several trustees at the time “not reflecting the values of our community,” Macias said in an interview this week, adding that conflict was “only part of the story.”
“If I was detrimental to the board or to the district’s success, I wouldn’t have won (re-election) in 2013 and I wouldn’t have been unopposed in 2017,” he said. “I have a strong record with community service and a consistent
record of serving my community.”
Macias said he thinks the current board and Superintendent Jeanette Ball have been doing “an exceptional job.” If elected, he said he wants to reduce barriers to academic success for students and improve teacher retention through professional development and incentives.
“I believe that my experience can really lend additional support to moving the district forward,” he said. “I want to help, and I believe I can.”
Livingston applied to be appointed to the District 4 seat after Macias left the
board in 2019, but was not selected. She said she was motivated to run because of Macias’ decision to resign in the middle of his third term to seek election elsewhere and her dedication to students, including her own children, who are or will be enrolled in the district.
“I’m not a career politician. I will not abandon my seat to advance my career for another board. People need to trust the person who is going to represent this seat and is there for the long haul,” Livingston said. “I’m ready to pull up my sleeves and do the work.”
If elected, she said, her priorities would be to address gaps in students’ academic achievement, to ensure that the district recovers from the effects of
the pandemic and is ready for the next one and to maintain a balanced budget while raising teacher salaries.
Incumbent Rafael Diaz, 37, is seeking election to the at-large seat the board appointed him to in December, called District 7 though it encompasses all of Judson ISD. Diaz was appointed to represent District 4 in 2019 after Macias left, but resigned in November to apply for the District 7 appointment because he planned to move outside of the District 4 boundaries.
Emilio Silvas, 50, is challenging Diaz. He is a former cancer researcher now doing product management for Parlevel Systems, a local tech company.
Diaz is a former policy dibalance
rector for San Antonio City Council members and served as the GED Testing Service’s director of corporate engagement. Now he is an executive at Aztec Software, an education technology company, and owns a small business . He is married to Marisa Perez-Diaz, a Democrat representing a San Antonio-area district on the State Board of Education.
“I’m offering everything that I have — my energy, my passion, my professional experience — to help drive a better system, better outcomes that are focused on students and not adults,” Diaz said. “The system needs to fit families and kids, not the other way around.”
Diaz said he wants to address the learning loss caused by the pandemic pushing students into remote learning, bolster programming by partnering with outside entities like non-profits or universities under a state law that provides extra funding for those arrangements, and improve teacher and student retention.
“This is a really fragile ecosystem that we’re facing,” he said. “It’s a delicate
and it requires having that vision for what a district can be and addressing the foundational issues.”
Silvas said he wants to see Judson ISD improve its state rating from a B to an A while recruiting and retaining staff and providing more educational opportunities for students, especially ones that prepare them for hightech jobs.
“I value education, not just as a formal education, but every opportunity to learn about something and move ahead in life,” he said. “You need a very strong program from the very beginning so that by the time you graduate you are really able to compete globally.”
District 2 trustee Shatonya King, 39, is running unopposed to keep the seat to which she was appointed in 2019. King graduated from Judson High School and is a counselor in North East ISD.
“I want to stay on the board because I want to be a voice for the community — the community I’ve known from childhood to adulthood, especially in times like these,” she said. “I want to make sure that we are creating an environment
where our teachers and students are successful and also comfortable being able to learn and do what is needed.”
In District 3, incumbent Debra Eaton, 65, also has no challengers. She was elected in 2017 and is a retired Army veteran and longtime community volunteer.
“I’d like to see us as a board be able to help the district continue to move forward,” she said. “I love San Antonio and I love the Judson school district, and that’s from the heart.”
District 5 trustee and board secretary Jennifer Rodríguez, 42, also is unopposed for re-election. A former teacher, Rodríguez is the head of programs at Teach for America. She was elected in 2017.
“In the last couple of years, since Dr. Ball has come on board, we’ve had a lot of momentum for positive change in our district and I want to see that through,” she said.
Trustees serve four-year terms. Bexar County residents can vote early April 1927. Election Day is May 1.