Voting starts in less than one week and we have candidates on the ballot across the state and across party lines who will support public schools and employees. We’ll have our Election 2018 page ready tomorrow with our entire list of endorsed candidates, but here are two more profiles of candidates that deserve our support
In HD 121 in San Antonio, Texas AFT has endorsed Steve Allison, a business attorney and former School Board president in Alamo Heights. Steve is running to replace Joe Straus (who served as speaker of the Texas House) as a moderate Republican focused on school funding equity and relieving the upward pressure on local district funding that has caused property taxes to rise.
As a former school board president, Steve has had to make hard choices due to the state’s failure to properly fund school districts, and he will fight to increase education funding so that school districts are no longer put in a position where they have to cut because of a lack of state support.
In the Dallas area in the State Board of Education District 12, Suzanne Smith is running for an open seat in this year’s election.
Suzanne is the daughter of career educators and adjunct professor at University of Texas, Arlington and has built a career advocating for changing the education system to better address the problems related to poverty.
She also has made her mark civically, working on a number of boards in Dallas, including the Dallas Mayor’s Task Force on Poverty and the city’s Library Board. As a member of the State Board of Education Suzanne will be a strong voice for curriculum and materials that relate to the experiences of students.