Seven running for Southwest ISD board seats
Seven candidates, including two incumbents, are vying for three seats on the Southwest ISD board in the May 1 election.
The board has seven trustees who each serve three-year terms. They are elected at-large, rather than from single-member districts, so the three candidates with the most votes will win.
Incumbents Florinda “Flo” Bernal and James Sullivan Jr. are facing five challengers: Daniel Carrillo, Jeanet Reyes-gomez, Stefanie Salinas, Terri Solis and Raul Leonidas Nuques.
Keith Byrom, 72, is not seeking re-election after serving 37 years on the board.
The district’s enrollment has been growing and candidates have also focused on the changes that arose during the coronavirus pandemic.
Bernal, 58, is a homemaker whose children graduated from Southwest ISD. She was first appointed to the board in 2006 and has repeatedly won re-election since.
Bernal currently serves on several district committees, and is the board’s representative to the Southwest ISD Education Foundation, the district’s nonprofit fundraising arm.
If re-elected, Bernal said, she would like help create a smoothas-possible transition for students returning to classrooms as the pandemic eases and ensure that the district provides the proper remediation to get them caught up.
The board will need to continue overseeing ongoing bond projects, such as the construction of the district’s long-awaited natatorium, in response to the area’s growth, Bernal said.
“Our district is growing fast, tremendously,” Bernal said. “We need to focus on ensuring that we reserve properties in these areas for the schools that we are going to need … I don’t want our students in certain schools exceeding capacity.”
Sullivan is a sales representative, according to his latest board application. He declined an interview request. He was first elected to the board in 2005 and currently serves on the calendar committee. Sullivan is the current president of the Atascosa Rural Water Supply Corp. board, according to its website.
First-time candidate Salinas, 45, was an assistant retail manager at a Disney store until it closed this spring. She worked for 22
years for the Army and Air Force Exchange Service. Salinas and her family moved to the area in 1998 through the military and decided to stay.
Her two sons graduated from Southwest ISD and she now has three grandchildren attending the district — and keeping them at home for virtual classes due to the pandemics gave her a perspective on the district's challenges and opportunities for improvement, she said.
“I saw a lot of struggle, a lot of opportunities to be better,” Salinas said. “Watching us as a community kind of do this on a whim, to say the least, it gave me that little nudge in my heart to step forward and make a difference.”
One of her goals if elected would be to broaden access to new academic programs, for “not just one child to be successful, all children to be successful.”
Also in the running is a newly retired educator,
Solis, 64. She was born and raised in the area, attended Southwest ISD schools and spent most of her 25year career in the district, where she worked as a teacher, vice principal and principal.
She deemed the opportunity to serve on the board her “next chapter” in education and a way to use her experience in the classroom and as an administrator.
“After 25 years, I'm not ready to quit,” Solis said. “I want to continue serving and working for the students in my community.”
One of her main focuses if elected, would be to help find a way to close learning gaps that have only gotten wider during the pandemic, she said.
First-time candidate Carrillo, 43, is a network administrator specializing in intrusion detection. His family moved to the area through the military when he was in third grade, and after joining the Air Force and living out of state, he decided to return to raise his family in the district.
“I could have moved anywhere, but I decided to move back into the district because everyone in the district is so willing to help,” Carrillo said. “And a lot of that went into my decision to run.”
Carrillo made it a point to remain involved in the district by helping coach his children's teams and serving in the Athletic Booster Club at Legacy High School for the past four years.
Now that one of his children has graduated high school and two of them are nearing graduation, Carrillo said it was a good time to deepen his contribution by serving on the board.
He hopes his military and career experience, his ability to work in a team and his knowledge of the community will help him understand the district's needs and opportunities.
Reyes-gomez, 34, is also a first-time candidate for the board who grew up in the school district and now has children in its schools. She said she works in customer services, but declined to name her employer.
Reyes-gomez's decision to run is tied to her volunteer work as a community organizer focusing on atrisk youth, she said.
Her hope is to bring that experience to the board to help it create an inviting and encouraging environment where every student can feel supported. This would include improved outreach to parents so that they know what the opportunities and options for their children are, she said.
“I remember what I felt that could be better when I was a student,” Reyes-gomez said. “I just want to make sure that the upcoming generations are heard as well … the students, the teachers, the parents, I want to be inclusive with everybody.”
Nuques, 44, ran for the Southwest ISD board in 2020. He is an educator with 17 years of experience as a teacher, assistant principal, principal, director of special education and superintendent.
He was fired in 2016 by the Hearne ISD school board after serving as superintendent there for seven months, according to media reports.
Nuques declined an interview request but provided a written statement and biography that said he wants to put his experience in educational administration to use if elected.
In the biography, Nuques recounted being an immigrant student in Brooklyn, N.Y., who was placed in special education for not learning English within two years, until a teacher took the time to teach him.
Since then, he wrote, “my educational philosophy has always had a focus on the ‘power of one.' … I believe one person can make a difference.”
Early voting begins April 19, and the district will have two locations open for early voting and five voting locations on election day. Locations and hours of operation are listed on the district's website.