This story has been updated.
Despite challenges from familiar faces, the makeup of the school board at Southwest Independent School District won’t see any shakeups this year.
Incumbents James Gonzalez took 35.91% of the vote and Jose Diaz took 35.54%, finishing in the two two spots in a four-way race.
SWISD uses at-large elections for its seven-member board, meaning all candidates’ names are in the same race and the top two vote-getters win outright.
First elected in 2023, Gonzalez and Diaz drew challenges from the two trustees they unseated in 2023: Yolanda Garza-Lopez, who served on the SWID board from 2008 to 2023 and works for a health nonprofit, and Pete Bernal, a veteran advocate who served on the board from 2020 to 2023.
Saturday night’s results showed Garza-Lopez with 16.57% of the vote, and Bernal took 11.97%.
Since being voted off the board in 2023, Garza-Lopez and Bernal have been railing against current leadership, fueling the growth of a Facebook group called We Are Southwest to amplify the complaints.
On a board where most members are longtime incumbents, with four of them having served since the early 2000s, Gonzalez and Diaz are two of the newest members.
Gonzalez is a Frito-Lay sales rep and Diaz owns and operates a trucking business.
Besides regularly lobbing criticism at Gonzales and Diaz, the We Are Southwest group also helped draw attention to the district’s unusual election system that limited voters to a small number of polling locations — which the district has now reversed, allowing voters to use any of Bexar County’s vote centers.
The change didn’t boost voter turnout, however, and there were only two open voting centers within SWISD’s boundaries on election day and none for early voting. The district covers 115 square miles.
In an interview after early voting results came out, Garza-Lopez said getting SWISD’s races on the Bexar County ballot was a win in itself, even if she and Bernal lost again.
She lamented that there were fewer voting sites this year, potentially suppressing voter turnout.
In total, 1,086 people cast their ballots this election, compared to 1,104 last year for school board races that wouldn’t have appeared on the county’s ballot.
Garza-Lopez said she and Bernal would keep advocating for more voting access in their district.
On a different issue, SWISD is also dealing with “unbalanced” enrollment, as schools inside Loop 1604 see fewer and fewer students and schools outside the loop see enrollment climb.
Recently, the district decided to close Sky Harbour Elementary School at the same time it plans to open a new campus on the far South Side.
