Five trustees, including four new faces, were sworn into office for the North East Independent School District Board of Trustees this week — a changing of the guard for the seven-member panel, which conservative education groups targeted in all five electoral races earlier this month but were shut out.
The politics of the district were on full display just one day earlier, as outgoing trustees heard from dozens of parents and community members about hot-button issues like inappropriate content in school libraries and a sex education curriculum that is still being edited.
Outgoing trustee Steve Hilliard, who lost his seat in the election, requested both of those topics to be placed on the agenda for discussion during the first regular board meeting held by the new trustees.
Hilliard and the other outgoing trustees also agreed to give board-appointed members of the School Health Advisory Council until the end of June to complete a review and edit of the eighth-grade sexual education curriculum, which has been in the process since last year.
Parents, community members and losing candidates spoke during public comment about the library books, which have been discussed on and off over the years as the board removed books for review in the past and refined a process for parents to challenge books for review or restrict certain books from being checked out by their children.
The next day, David Beyer — the sole incumbent to be reelected — was selected as the new board president in a unanimous vote by the new board, taking the reins of a district that has seen its share of controversy in recent years, a trend that shows few signs of abating.
Now even the legitimacy of the May 4 election, during which a slate of candidates backed by the local Democratic Party and public education advocates bested their conservative opponents, is being called into question by a candidate who came up short on Election Day.
Election integrity questioned
Multiple losing candidates spoke during public comment at the last meeting of the old board, including Jacqueline Klein, the chair for the Bexar County Chapter of Moms for Liberty.
Klein, who lost bids for a seat on the board in the last two elections, listed off the names of 11 voters she alleged had either cast multiple votes in the race, lived at different addresses or voted from P.O. boxes, which she said she took from a random sampling of ballots. She also called for the board to halt the certification of the election.
“I don’t think this election should be certified,” she said. “I think we need to canvass these votes. I think we need to take a closer look at who voted and I think the Attorney General needs to take a closer look at what happened at this election in NEISD.”
Despite publicly airing her claims, Klein told the San Antonio Report later that she was still reviewing evidence — and that any election complaints, if they are brought, “will be factual and substantiated by evidence,” and that she does not “want to assert unfounded allegations.”
Klein did not say whether she would be submitting an official complaint.
Jacquelyn Callanen, the Bexar County Elections Administrator, said by phone Thursday that she hadn’t heard of the assertions previously and would need an official communication to be submitted in order to investigate.
“We’re going to have to get some documentation from [Klein] or from NEISD, so then we can start looking into it,” she said.
District officials clarified during the meeting and later in a statement that the district is not in charge of verifying ballots, referring questions to the Bexar County Elections Department.
Deb Caldwell, the Executive Director of External Communications for NEISD added that the ballot and early voting boards are “absolutely verifying the accuracy,” pointing to a reconciliation report on Bexar County’s website.
The Texas Secretary of State requires that report to be filled out by the presiding judge of the central counting station after all counting has been completed for an election. According to the state website, the reconciliation report compares the number of voters who cast valid ballots with the number of ballots counted by the tabulation system. Rejected ballots, or those pending action by a voter like signature verification, are noted.
According to that preliminary report, 138 mail-ins and six provisional ballots were rejected as of May 4, pending review or voter action.
Caldwell stopped short of saying the report could disprove the allegations.
“I cannot speak to whether or not the names mentioned tonight on those ballots are part of the ballots that were rejected,” she said during the meeting.
Trustee Diane Sciba Villarreal, one of two remaining conservatives on the board, said during the same meeting that she has concerns about moving forward with certifying the election given the questions raised by Klein.
“One of our speakers brought up a very disconcerting possibility that our election for this board has been tampered with, and I’m very concerned,” she said.
The discussion is reminiscent of unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud by former President Donald Trump in 2020, which preceded the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to halt the certification of the presidential election. Administration officials and dozens of courts found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the years since.
Closer to home, similar concerns over election integrity have driven Texas state officials to redouble efforts to investigate voter fraud, but resulting cases have unraveled.
As one of the last moves as a trustee, Hilliard requested that the new board discuss and take “possible action on the books that were discussed for age appropriateness, legal compliance and educational benefit.”
Library content debates return
More than a dozen parents and community members, including two local pastors, lambasted district leaders and the outgoing board during its public meeting, reading excerpts from books that described detailed erotic scenes, contained profanity and referenced sexual assault.
Tara Petsch, the Texas ambassador for Moms for Liberty, read an explicit scene describing various sexual acts from The Empire of Storms, a fantasy novel that is currently available in middle schools, according to the district’s online catalog.
Luis Cabrera, a local pastor, read excerpts from the book Push, which inspired the Oscar-winning film, Precious, pointing out the use of slurs, repeating those slurs without abbreviation or censorship in front of the board.
“All these books are evil and wicked,” he said.
District spokeswoman Aubrey Chancellor said Thursday that screening books for content is an ongoing process.
“When we become aware of questionable books, then we can take action,” she said. “We appreciate people bringing it to our attention and ask that they continue [to] do so.”
The district has nearly 800,000 books, according to Chancellor, who added that the district “will continue to improve our collection and comply with the law.”
Texas’ House Bill 900, passed in 2023, restricts certain content from school libraries by requiring a rating system to be put in place, although the law has faced challenges in the courts leading to it not being enforced.
There’s also an online system where anyone concerned, whether students, parents or teachers, can submit the book title — and the district will move that book to the top of its review list. In addition, parents can opt out of specific book selections and view which books their children have checked out.
In the last year, only one book, Black Boy Joy, was challenged in NEISD and moved from elementary school to middle school as a result, according to a district website on the reviews, which was updated earlier this year when the San Antonio Report inquired about the process.
Trustees, including Sciba Villarreal, said they were caught off-guard about the books read by parents in the meeting still being stocked in NEISD libraries, interjecting during public comment.
“I was under the impression that these books had been removed from our schools,” she said. “What the heck is going on? This is revolting. I wouldn’t even expect to read these in Penthouse if they still publish that trash.”
The fresh board will grapple with these issues, as well as a massive $39 million budget shortfall in the first meetings they hold next month.
Despite the challenges, outgoing President Shannon Grona told the San Antonio Report that she feels that the district is in good hands.
“I can remember my first year going through that, you’ve got wide eyes and it’s really hard to understand,” she said. “They are going to have some hard discussions with the deficit budget that we’ve got right now. … They just need to make sure that they ask the questions and prepare for board meetings and [aren’t] afraid to use staff to help them understand.”
