After facing a heated school board race in San Antonio Independent School District, Mike Villarreal and Jacob Aaron Ramos knocked incumbents in districts 1 and 3 from their seats.
San Antonio ISD, serving around 45,000 students in the heart of the city, faces a $51 million structural deficit, HVAC issues and possible state takeover after the Texas Education Agency’s 2023 accountability ratings showed several schools score a D or an F.
Last year, SAISD closed several schools in a “rightsizing” effort and is considering closing more campuses if it doesn’t get more funding from the state.
In recent years, extreme weather spells have proven challenging for the district as frigid temperatures led to heating failures in classrooms, and HVAC systems struggled to keep up with record-breaking heat.
Seasoned state politician takes school board seat in District 1
Villarreal, a longtime state politician and co-founder of two software companies, took the seat from single-term trustee Sarah Sorensen with nearly 54% of the vote.
“This is just the beginning,” Villarreal told the Report. “Now we do something even bigger: we transform and create more schools that children love.”
Receiving large support from local business leaders and several elected Democrats, Villarreal ran his school board campaign calling for district efficiency. To address the district’s budget shortfall, Villarreal said he wants to make SAISD’s Central Office as lean and efficient as possible.
Villarreal also intends to address possible school closures head on, saying school closures are inevitable to maintain a healthy budget, but disagreeing with the way SAISD went about closing 15 schools last year during an April 11 interview.
Rather than focusing solely on enrollment numbers, Villarreal wants to factor in academic outcomes — a big focus of his campaign — when it comes to possible closures.
One of his goals is to get more students reading on grade level, improving academic outcomes overall.
“We need to help cultivate a love for reading in our children. We need to not obsess about standardized testing, but we certainly need to do better,” Villarreal said. “It’s a foundational priority…our goal should be 100% of our kids reading on grade level.”
Raising more than $30,000 for his campaign — an unusually high amount for a school board race — Villarreal faced heavy criticism from the San Antonio Alliance, a teachers and staff union that supported and largely funded Sorensen’s campaign.
In the weeks leading up to election day, the union released attack ads criticizing Villarreal’s ties to in-district charter school network CAST Schools, where his wife, Jeanne Russell, is the executive director.
Three CAST schools operate within SAISD, hiring from within and outside the district’s teachers union.
Villarreal has previously said he would recuse himself if CAST schools were ever subject to discussion or voting by the board.
SAISD parent ousts school board incumbent in District 3
Ramos, an SAISD parent and Marine Corps veteran, unseated Leticia Ozuna, a former city councilwoman elected to the board in 2021, with nearly 60% of the vote.
Backed by the San Antonio Alliance, Ramos has two children enrolled in the district and is a member of SAISD’s Budget Committee. Staunchly against the district’s recent school closures, Ramos said he wants to “prioritize staff and students.”
Ramos could not be reached by the time of publication.
Ramos said the district’s biggest challenge is school vouchers, also known as education savings accounts, which allow families to pay for private school tuition and other education-related costs as long as they unenroll from their public school districts.
Ramos raised about $12,000, receiving $4,000 from the district’s teachers and staff union.
Andrea Drusch contributed to this report.
