A politically charged environment, rapidly shifting student populations and potentially seismic changes to Texas’ school funding model are all driving the upcoming races to oversee Bexar County’s local school districts and community colleges.
The Alamo Colleges District and four Bexar County-area school districts will elect board members this year in Texas’ May 2 uniform election.
In some districts, those leaders will be responsible for executing large bonds and planning for future growth. In others, district leaders are figuring out how to scale down their operations in ways that are the least disruptive to the community.
Early voting runs April 20 through April 28 for the uniform election, though polls will be closed on Friday, Feb. 24 for the Battle of Flowers Parade.
Polls will be open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on election day, Saturday, May 2. (Note, this election is separate from the May 26 primary runoff election).
Here are the top education races the reporters and editors of the San Antonio Report are watching this spring.
North East ISD
Of all the independent school districts serving Bexar County, none have struggled with the effects of national and state politics on local classrooms — particularly around issues like parent choice and book bans — more than North East ISD.
After a trustee died in 2023, the remaining six members were split evenly between those backed by the parent-teacher associations plus local Democrats and those backed by conservative groups trying to replicate the success they’ve had across North Texas.
The factions locked horns frequently, but with five seats on the ballot last year, conservatives were shut out across the board, leaving just two incumbents who were elected with the support of the right-leaning Parents United for Freedom PAC, Diane Sciba Villarreal (District 3) and Marsha Landry (District 7).
This year Sciba Villarreal is seeking a second four-year term in District 3, and faces a challenge from Michael Adam Wulczyn, who has the support of the North East Education Association and the North East Bexar County Democrats.
In a sign of the times, Sciba Villarreal has grown more vocal in her opposition to the Republican state leaders who have been putting more pressure on school districts.
Landry, meanwhile, isn’t seeking reelection.
Two candidates are running for her District 7 seat, including Cheryl “Cheri” Ann Eltinger, a realtor who framed the race as “a battle for our children — not just academically, but spiritually, mentally, emotionally,” in a recent social media post.
Her opponent, Caprice Garcia, is a stay-at-home parent who spent her career working for congressional representatives and as a staffer in different public offices. She’s held a variety of PTA leadership roles in the district and completed the district’s Leadership Northeast Program, which the administration puts on to train future leaders.
Like Wulczyn, Garcia has the support of the parent-teacher groups and the North East Bexar County Democrats.
The Parents United for Freedom PAC, meanwhile, was dissolved after the last NEISD election, according to a campaign finance report filed after the last election.
A separate PAC, aligned with the San Antonio Family Association, still plans to make endorsements this year, according to its co-founder, Patrick Von Dohlen, who is also the Republican nominee for Bexar County judge in November.
The first campaign finance reports for this race, which detail money raised and spent by candidates and outside groups, are due April 2.
Alamo Colleges District
Texas has long treated higher education as a political football, and that’s ramped up considerably since President Donald Trump returned to office in January of last year.
The state has put tough restrictions on which types of courses public universities can offer, installed conservative former lawmakers as university presidents, rooted out campus diversity efforts and threatened to withhold funding from schools that push back.
Against that backdrop, the 9-member Alamo Colleges District Board, which oversees policy direction for five independently accredited community colleges, has already had to make some tough changes to comply with state law.
Last year they restructured the faculty senate, and they’ll soon have to decide the future of courses and majors that may no longer be in compliance.
They’re also under pressure to accommodate tremendous growth in student demand, deliver a workforce that meets local industry needs, and execute a nearly $1 billion bond that voters approved last year.
The board’s members serve staggered, six-year terms, and two of those up this year, Lorraine Pulido (District 4), and Clint Kingsbery (District 8), are unopposed.
But a third member, attorney Leslie Sachanowicz, who represents District 9 on the Northeast side, drew three challengers who say he hasn’t been a strong enough voice on the weighty issues the board faces.
Last year a Democratic activist made similar complaints about a longtime board member in a heated District 6 race, but the early-career challenger fell far short of her seasoned opponent.
Sachanowicz’s challengers are coming from a slightly different place, including one former faculty senate leader at Palo Alto College, Carolyn DeLecour, who was a professor at Palo Alto College for 27 years, chaired the department of communication and served as faculty senate president.
Other candidates include Joe Jesse Sanchez, a retired educator who previously held the seat from 2017 to 2020, and Robert Garcia, a certified public accountant who earned an associate degree from Northwest Vista College and who said financial stewardship is at the center of his campaign.
If no candidate takes at least 50% of the vote on May 2, the race will advance to a runoff between the top two vote-takers.
Alamo Heights ISD
Alamo Heights ISD doesn’t frequently have contested races for its school board positions, but this year two incumbents on the Board of Trustees drew challengers amid consternation with its handling of a new “parents’ rights” law.
AHISD received backlash from parents a few months ago for canceling an author visit to its elementary schools after two parents complained about the contents of one of the author’s books mentioning the LGBTQ+ community.
District leaders said they were being cautious in the wake of the new state law, known as Senate Bill 12, which, among other things, restricts discussions of sexual orientation and gender in the classroom.
The school board hasn’t adopted an official policy on the portion of the bill restricting LGBTQ+ expression, citing a lack of guidance from state agencies. But some parents took issue with the district’s strict interpretation of the law, including Bianca Cerqueira, who has two children enrolled in AHISD and decided to run after the author issue.
Cerqueira, a neuroscientist who works on federally sponsored biomedical research, is challenging Place 4 trustee Hunter Kingman, a civil engineer and real estate developer who was appointed to replace former board president Stacy Sharp in 2024.
Place 3 trustee Ty Edwards, a financial adviser who has served on the Alamo Heights ISD board since 2023, also faces a challenge this year, from Lindsey Saldana, an assistant principal at Loma Park Elementary in Edgewood ISD.
Southwest ISD
At Southwest ISD, two former board members are again attempting comebacks. The district also changed a controversial voting policy this year, allowing people to cast their ballots for school board races at more locations.
The seven-member board serves staggered, three-year terms, and includes many longtime incumbents. Four of them have served since the early 2000s.
But two incumbents were voted off in 2023, Pete Bernal and Yolanda Garza-Lopez, and have been railing against current leadership in the years since, fueling the growth of a Facebook group called We Are Southwest to amplify the complaints.
Both Bernal and Garza-Lopez ran again in 2024 but lost. Now they’re challenging the members who unseated them three years ago, James Gonzalez, a Frito-Lay sales rep, and Jose Diaz, who 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.
“SWISD voters will be able to go to any early vote or election day site for this election,” said Jorge Fernandez, a technical support manager for the Bexar County Elections Department.
The board’s leaders have long said the limited approach helped filter out voters who aren’t familiar with local school board issues. But it also created a higher bar for participation, forcing residents to cast their school board ballot at one location, and go to another to vote on municipal or countywide issues.
In the district’s 2025 board elections, only 1,102 votes were cast.
Garza-Lopez and Bernal are promoting the change in ads, encouraging voters to “take advantage of the opportunity we fought for.”
Medina Valley ISD
Unlike most school districts in the Bexar county region, Medina Valley ISD has been quickly growing in enrollment as development booms on the far West Side of San Antonio and Castroville.
The school district is currently searching for a new superintendent after Scott Caloss announced his retirement last month.
The MVISD board consists of seven members, two elected at-large and five from single-member districts. This year, the two at-large positions and the District 5 seat were up for grabs, but all four candidates signed up for the at-large seats.
The two incumbents up for reelection are Nathan Fillinger, an architect at USAA who is the current board president, and Blane Nash, a former firefighter and paramedic who was first elected to the Medina Valley school board in 2023.
Their challengers include Andrew Carawan, who taught social studies at Medina Valley ISD and was a VFW National Citizenship Education Teacher Award winner, and Toby Castillo Walters, an academic dean at Northside ISD who ran unsuccessfully for a position on the board in 2025.
Appearing all on the same ballot, the two top vote-takers will win the seats outright.
