The Northside Independent School District board of trustees voted 4-2 Monday to appoint Homer Guevara Jr., a professor of government at Northwest Vista College, to the vacant seat representing District 2 on the school board.
Gerald Lopez, who held that seat previously, sent a letter of resignation to the board on March 18, stating that he would be running for a seat on the Alamo Colleges District Board, noting at the time that he was running unopposed and would win by default.
The appointment Monday was far earlier than the anticipated May 14 date shared by the board in a timeline regarding the process.
According to a bio shared by the district, Guevara has over 30 years of experience in education, including teaching at Concordia University and in the Edgewood and South San independent school districts. He is currently a professor of economics and government at Northwest Vista College, part of the Alamo Colleges District.
Guevara also serves as commissioner of the Historic and Design Review Commission for the City of San Antonio and has served as co-chair of the Education and Workforce Development Council for the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, on the boards of CPS Energy and the SA Energy Acquisition Public Facility Corporation and as a committee member of the Undergraduate Education Advisory Committee for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, according to NISD.
Guevara will serve on the NISD board until May 2025, when he can run for election.
Trustees Karen Freeman, Carol Harle, Corinne Saldana and Board President Bobby Blount voted for the appointment, while trustees Karla Duran and David Salcido voted for another finalist, Richard Delgado of Boeing.
Lopez, who technically remains on the board until he is sworn in to his new position, abstained from the vote.
Five candidates applied for the position, according to Blount.
Northside AFT, a union representing teachers and staff at the district, released a statement Tuesday criticizing the board for what they said is a lack of transparency around the selection of Guevara, citing closed-door interviews that occurred before the appointment.
Melina Espiritu-Azocar, the president of Northside AFT, said the move was disappointing. The union previously called for the seat to be filled via an election instead of an appointment.
“At the April 29th special called board meeting, the NISD Trustees conducted all interviews for the District 2 school board seat in executive session, cloaking the proceedings in secrecy,” she said. “No information was disclosed to the public regarding the candidates interviewed, the questions posed, or the criteria used to make the decision.”
Blount disputed that characterization Tuesday, saying the selection process was laid out and finalists were announced in open session. Interview questions were also provided to all candidates in advance, he said.
The executive session was used to discuss “personnel issues,” he said, and to conduct the actual interviews so that trustees “could get to know who [the candidates] are, but also for them to freely discuss anything related to the board and its possibilities as it impacts them individually and how they would support it.”
The vote also took place in open session.
Espiritu-Azocar said in a statement that by referring to the appointment as a personnel issue, the board was “treating the selection of the next District 2 Trustee as if it were a private hiring process rather than a position for an elected official.”
Vacancies on other boards in recent months have played out in a mix of private and public meetings.
A vacancy following the arrest of a Harlandale ISD trustee was decided by a conservator overseeing the district for the Texas Education Agency after board members failed to come to a consensus.
A prolonged process in the North East Independent School District involved a public portion, where finalists were interviewed about a range of topics. After failing to reach a consensus, however, the board ultimately decided to turn that decision over to the voters.
That vacancy is on the ballot during a special election Saturday.
