A new trustee was appointed to the Harlandale Independent School District Board of Trustees last week at the direction of Judy Castleberry, a conservator appointed by the state to oversee the district in 2020.
Erica Salazar, a former school district administrator who now works for a real estate company, was named to the seat.
The District 2 seat was left vacant at the start of the year after Christine Carrillo resigned following an arrest for being accused of physically assaulting her husband.
The move was a rare exercise of Castleberry’s authority to direct action by the board. She did not return a request for comment Wednesday.
The seat will be up for reelection in May 2025.
Prior to the directive, board members deliberated over the course of two meetings and failed to come to a consensus, instead deadlocking 3-3 two times over whether to appoint Salazar. Four residents applied for the seat, although one of them stepped down before the interview, according to district spokeswoman Mariana Veraza.
Immediately following the debate and Castleberry’s decision to make the appointment, Salazar was sworn in and joined other trustees on the dais, where she gave a nod to the other applicants vying for the role.
“I know the other applicants that applied would have done an amazing job,” she said. “But thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve my community.”
Salazar then took her first official action, making a motion to adjourn the meeting.
The district did not respond to a request for an interview with the new trustee Wednesday.
In a nod to some of the board member’s growing discomfort over the state-appointed conservatorship, two trustees made references during the discussion to pressure they felt to vote a certain way.
Trustee Elaine Anaya-Ortiz, for example, said before the deadlocked vote that she was “being forced on a vote,” which she said was “extremely difficult” and kept her up at night.
At the prior meeting, on Jan. 31, Trustee Juan Mancha said he would “not be told how to vote.” Mancha, Anaya-Ortiz and trustee Norma Cavazos all voted against the appointment.
Castleberry was appointed after the Texas Education Commissioner initially recommended the removal of the board in February 2020 following an investigation’s findings that trustees at the time failed to monitor district finances, acted individually on behalf of the board and violated the Texas Open Meetings Act with group text messages. The conservator was a less severe sanction that allowed the district to stay under local control.
By overriding the deadlock, Castleberry deterred what could have been a long and fraught selection process, like the one in the North East Independent School District, where the death of a trustee left a vacant seat that remains empty after months of disagreements over who to appoint and countless deadlocked votes.
The NEISD board agreed in November to send the choice to the voters in May’s election, which will be more than nine months after the seat became vacant.
