Schulenburg ISD Drops Out of the Texas Association of School Boards

The Schulenburg ISD Board of Trustees has dropped out of the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) in favor of an upstart rival, Texans for Excellence in Education (TEE).

TASB has been a trade group of sorts for school district leaders since its founding in 1949. The organization provides all sorts of services to school boards such as leadership training, cooperative purchasing access, legal advice, and perhaps most importantly, policy recommendations.

TASB drew the ire of some conservatives in Texas starting in 2021 after the National Association of School Boards sent a letter to the Biden Administration saying America’s public schools were “under an imminent threat” of violence and intimidation. At the time, school board meetings across the country were seeing more and more angry parents speaking out against vaccine and mask mandates, remote schooling and critical race theory. The NASB called for the Biden administration to use the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and Secret Service to combat these alleged threats.

Conservatives saw the letter as an attack on parents. In Texas, Republican lawmakers called for TASB to leave the national association. It eventually did after mounting pressure eight months later. Some Texas Republicans also accused TASB of promoting policies that would allow male students to join female sports teams and use female restrooms and locker rooms.

The Republican Party of Texas even drafted a resolution asking school boards to disassociate from TASB.

Schulenburg ISD decided to do just that last year. Superintendent Julie Motomura said TEE gave a presentation to the school board at the end of last school year. The board approved the transition to TEE last summer, and the official change happened in September.

“The board felt as if some of the policy recommendations from TASB were politically driven,” Motomura said.

So far, Schulenburg ISD is the only school district in Fayette County to switch to TEE.

TEE touts itself as an education- first organization.

According to its mission statement, TEE is “committed to delivering all children in Texas a high-quality education focused on the core competencies of math, science, reading, and writing and transparency between public schools, parents, and taxpayers. TEE seeks to implement and provide guidance to the current public school policy frameworks, training, organization, and other resources to aid Texas independent school districts, their boards, administrators, and teachers in achieving these critical objectives. We believe parents should be principally involved in the education and instruction of their children and school board trustees are elected to govern public schools and are accountable to the taxpayers. Transparency should be practiced in word and in action. Education should always be at the forefront of the agenda.”

TEE criticizes the “Team of Eight” concept promoted by TASB. The Team of Eight refers to the seven school board members plus the superintendent that leads each school district in Texas. TEE calls it “nothing but a gaslight to gut school boards and transfer power to the superintendent and their team.”

According to a TEE document titled The Case for Leaving TASB and Joining TEE, “TASB teaches that once a school board trustee gets elected, they are responsible to and work for the district, not voters that sent them.”