HISD trustees at impasse on leader
Houston ISD trustees remained deadlocked Thursday evening on whom to select as their 2021 board president, an unusual standoff that illustrated the lack of clear governing majority on the closely watched body.
After 10 rounds of voting on board president candidates yielded no resolution, trustees agreed to end a six-hour meeting and delay choosing a board president until Jan. 21.
Some trustees argued the impasse reflected a slate of strong candidates, while others expressed unease about the stalemate.
“I do believe one week of us resting and thinking things over will be a help,” said trustee Myrna Guidry, who joined the board in December and represented a potential swing vote.
HISD’s school board has grappled with infighting in recent years, resulting in embarrassing episodes that hurt the district’s reputation, but in 2020 trustees avoided major blemishes. Board members face multiple challenges
headed into 2021, including choosing a permanent superintendent, navigating the COVID-19 pandemic and dealing with ongoing litigation over the state’s effort to strip power from the elected board.
Although HISD’s board president has no additional voting power, the chosen leader often establishes the tone for the nine-member board. The president is responsible for setting meeting agendas with the superintendent, presiding over meetings and serving as a lead spokesperson for the board, among other tasks.
The annual vote to select a president often reveals allegiances on the HISD board, which sometimes lacks a majority faction. However, trustees have avoided prolonged debates during board meetings about who to select for the position, often amid lobbying ahead of the vote.
“I feel like one of the reasons we’ve come to this impasse is we’ve had such a history of real and perceived deal-making by the HISD school board,” incumbent board President Sue Deigaard said. “And for the first time, that didn’t happen. And that’s a good thing.”
This year, board members opened voting with three potential candidates: Deigaard, second-year trustee Pat Allen and fifth-year trustee Anne Sung.
Ultimately, each candidate voted for herself and received support at various points from three other trustees — falling one vote short of a majority.
Deigaard garnered votes from trustees Judith Cruz, Holly Maria Flynn Vilaseca and Dani Hernandez. Allen earned the backing of trustees Kathy Blueford-Daniels, Guidry and Elizabeth Santos.
Sung found support from Flynn Vilaseca, Santos and Guidry.
Board members tried to break the deadlock by holding nine more votes over the course of the night, to no avail.
After the 10th round of voting, board members agreed to the weeklong delay.
The disagreement over leadership positions marked a stark contrast from 2020, when the district’s four newly-elected trustees flexed their muscle and voted in a manner that ensured all three remaining board members who had participated in the quickly-reversed ouster of Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan did not receive top jobs.
This year, two of the four trustees — Allen and Blueford-Daniels — did not support giving Deigaard a second term as president, prompting the deadlock. In the past 20 years, no HISD trustee has served two consecutive full terms as board president.