“We are a consensus board,” is a phrase Ty Edwards often uses to describe the Alamo Heights Independent School District Board of Trustees, in which he’s served on for three years.
Covering nine square miles in the cities of Alamo Heights, Terrell Hills, Olmos Park and a sliver of San Antonio’s North Side, AHISD serves around 4,800 students and has a B-rating from the state for “recognized performance” in student achievement.
Less than 20% of students are considered economically disadvantaged, and enrollment has stayed consistent for years, even as other neighboring districts keep losing students.
Alamo Heights ISD is what education experts call a “destination district,” consistently attracting families from outside of its boundaries.
Usually untouched by contentious elections or board disagreements, the AHISD board could face shakeups from two races on the general May election this year.
The two trustees up for reelection — Edwards in Place 3 and Hunter Kingman in Place 4 — both drew challengers from a group of parents concerned with AHISD’s handling of new “parents’ rights” laws.
In January, district officials canceled an author’s visit to its two elementary schools after a handful of parents complained about the mention of the LGBTQ+ community in one of the writer’s other books. The cancellation quickly drew backlash from families concerned that the complaints had an outsized effect on all students.
But officials said they were being cautious in response to Senate Bill 12, a parent choice bill passed during the 2025 state legislative session that limits classroom discussion of gender identity, sexual orientation, race and topics of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Unsatisfied with the district’s response, parents informally picked two moms from their ranks to run: Lindsey Saldana for Place 3 and Bianca Cerqueira for Place 4, who have been supporting each other’s campaigns.
Read more about the AHISD candidates in our 2026 Education Voter Guide.
Edwards, a financial adviser and parent of two AHISD grads, was first elected in 2023 in an uncontested race. Now, he’s running against Saldana, an assistant principal at a school in Edgewood ISD and an AHISD mom of three.
Kingman works in real estate development, is a district alumnus and father of four AHISD students. He was appointed in 2024 to fill a vacant seat, a position Saldana also applied for.
Following board policy, Kingman technically had to run for the seat in 2025, but was uncontested and thought he might run unopposed again until Cerqueira filed right before the deadline to get on this year’s ballot.
Cerqueira, a neuroscientist and mom of two AHISD elementary students, says she filed last-minute after encouragement from other parents who rallied around the author issue.
Politics of a nonpartisan election
While the author issue is the biggest to draw public attention recently, the district faces other challenges.
AHISD is ground zero for the current legal fight over whether or not to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms, following the passage of Senate Bill 10 in Texas.
Like most school districts in San Antonio, AHISD is also feeling the financial pressures of staying afloat amidst inflation and little increase to base public school funding from the state. Located in a property-rich area, the district had to pay the state back more than $20 million last year under what’s known as the “Robin Hood” program.
Running a deficit last year, AHISD had to cut 10% of its budget, about $5 million, to reach a balanced budget. This eliminated student programs and several staff positions, losses that were then offset by volunteers and a vast school foundation.
At the same time, AHISD is making progress on a $371 million bond from 2023 and trying to keep up with a diversifying pool of students.
This is all against the backdrop of an increasing number of state policies tightening in on classroom content, library book lists, hiring practices and more.
“The state is definitely trying to usurp some of our local control away from school districts. There’s no doubt that that’s happening,” Kingman said during a recent interview. “But our purview is very tight, and so our job is to interpret law and abide by law.”
Kingman’s campaign centers on overseeing the district’s bond projects, which have been tricky to complete as costs rise, and steering day-to-day operations like technology and academics.
Edwards’ campaing is similar. He says his role should be constrained to overseeing three things: board policy, budgeting and the superintendent.
“Everything else comes from the state,” Edwards said. “The politics should be in Austin, not at the school board.”
But the recent author controversy threw the board races into a spotlight incumbents weren’t expecting, drawing the attention of local political groups like the North East Bexar County Democrats, who quickly endorsed Saldana and Cerqueira and have also gotten involved in board races in the Alamo Community Colleges District and North East ISD.
The group wants school boards to push against state policies seen as a threat to public and higher education.
“The school boards are so important,” said Cameron Jones, the newly hired education campaign field director for NEBCD, during an April 11 event. “While the elections are considered non partisan, these issues are our issues… there are a lot of people that are counting on us to not be engaged and to not be involved.”
Fueled by the author issue, Cerqueira has centered her campaign on keeping religious ideology out of classrooms and maintaining academic freedom.
“I think our district’s interpretation of SB 12 is overly restrictive,” Cerqueira said during an April 14 candidate forum organized by the district’s parent-teacher organization. During the hour-long event in the auditorium of Alamo Heights Junior School, Cerqueira was the only one to talk directly about the author issue.
“The views of a single parent should not dictate the material that an entire district can access. As a school board trustee, I will vote against book bans,” she told the crowd.
During an interview the next day, Cerqueira said she’s religious but has purposefully refrained from disclosing her faith, because it’s “not the business of public schools.”
Kingman later said in an interview AHISD could’ve communicated better with families over the author issue, but “fully stands behind the administration’s decision,” and pointed to a recent internal survey that showed parents and students were largely concerned with technology and program cuts.
In a similar spirit to Cerqueira, Kingman said he will not say whether he’s a Republican or Democrat, maintaining that supporting public schools shouldn’t be a political stance.
A change to status quo
Outside the political cloud hovering over these races, incumbents and challengers also differ on how they would actually operate on the board, turning district communication and transparency into a hot button issue.
“I honestly do not see how there could be any more transparency. The district does an outstanding job of communicating,” Edwards said during the candidate forum, pointing to the internal survey results like Kingman.
Edwards views the board’s consensus as a strength, helping push collective decisions along.
But Saldana and Cerqueira feel like the board is afraid of having “uncomfortable” conversations.
“It’s a small district, right? So I feel like everyone is connected in one way or another” Cerqueira said. “I think there can be the mentality of like, ‘we’ve always done it this way.’”
Saldana, who filed to run at the last minute like Cerqueira, said it feels like the district sweeps disagreements “under the rug.” Increasing transparency and pushing harder on academics are her biggest campaigning points.
She said the district could do small things like adding attachments to board agendas and taking more detailed board minutes during meetings, a routine practice in other districts and a point she and Cerqueira have both brought up.
Recently, the district did attach slides and documents to their April 15 meeting agenda, a win in Saldana’s eyes, even if she doesn’t win the Place 3 seat.
The incumbents say communication and access to information aren’t issues community members tend to bring up.
“There’s always ways to improve upon communication. But it’s not a large complaint,” Kingman said. “Technology, for example, was a large complaint in our February feedback form.”
Elected at-large, all registered voters in the district will have a say on who takes the seat for Place 3 and Place 4 on the school board.
Early voting runs Monday, April 20 through April 28, with voting centers closed on April 24 for the Battle of the Flowers. Election day is May 2.
