A trustee on the Edgewood Independent School Board of Trustees who made adhering to state policies a top priority won her seat on the troubled seven-member board.
Place 4 trustee and board president Martha Castilla prevailed against Dorothy Borjas with 62% versus 38% of the vote in early returns.
But Richard Santoyo, the Place 7 incumbent who also backed state policies, has fallen behind with only 39% of the vote compared to Sergio Delgado’s 61%.
In early returns, retired law enforcement officer and Rudy Lopez is leading with 55% of the vote to college student Jubilee Pena with 45% for the Place 5 seat.
Borjas and Pena are allies of embattled Trustee Michael Valdez.
“I really support independent thinking for a school board,” Valdez said of his support for Pena and Borjas. “I support people that aren’t 100% supporting the superintendent’s majority. I really support people that want to bring different perspectives to governance.”
The board’s dynamic changed in 2023 when Valdez, a recent high school graduate and the son of one of the district’s most vocal critics, was elected on a platform of scrutinizing the administration and status quo on the board.
In January, the board of trustees voted to sanction Valdez for violating board policies, citing a “pattern of disruptive and disrespectful conduct.” Valdez denied the charges, calling them retaliation for his young age and for opposing Edgewood Superintendent Eduardo Hernández.
In January, the Texas Education Agency ordered Edgewood ISD to enter a corrective action plan after the district had submitted inaccurate information about how many students left the district in the 2021-22 school year.
The mistake occurred when the district transitioned to a new attendance software and suffered a previously unreported network outage that took systems offline for months.
The district had only recently regained control of its school board after the state took over in 2016. Some of the current board members date back to that takeover.
