Convention of States survey helps constituents 'decide for themselves' in upcoming school board election, COS president says

The school board election is approaching and the Convention of States Foundation (COS) wants all Houston ISD voters to be as informed as possible this year. 

COS surveyed the candidates seeking any of five up-for-grabs board seats, quizzing them on hot-topic opinions such as critical race theory (CRT) curriculum, COVID vaccine mandates and mask requirements. 

"[School board elections and fights] have become a hot issue in the American public," COS President Mark Meckler told Houston Daily. "And what that means for me and our COS folks, it's a hot issue for [us]."

Meckler says he hears frequently – and has experienced firsthand – that the platforms of school board candidates are usually not widely known and can be difficult to find. What statements Meckler has been able to find from the candidates, he stated, have been generic and vague. 

"I'm being a little bit exaggerated here, but generally speaking, [the candidates] say 'I love kids and puppies and I'm going to do what's best for everybody,'" the COS president said. "What that means for folks who decide they're really interested in their school board election is it's now very hard to find out where [the candidates] stand on issues."

To bring that information to constituents, COS launched the survey, the results of which were emailed to COS members within the Houston area. Six of the 13 board candidates responded to COS' inquiry, which sought opinion on six questions: allowing students to use bathrooms/locker rooms based on their identified gender rather than at-birth gender; requiring teachers to use a student's preferred pronouns; supporting Social Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculums including CRT; supporting The 1619 Project; and supporting district-wide COVID vaccine and mask mandates.

The primary mission of COS, Meckler said, is to serve self-governing people who want to take charge in their own communities at every level of government. 

"That starts with fundamentally being able to be educated on who you're voting for," he stated, "and so we just wanted to help provide the information to folks so they could decide for for themselves based on sufficient information to cast their votes."

Of the six respondents, all stated that they did not support the issues outlined in the survey, except for District 7's Lee "Mac" Walker who indicated support for a district-wide mask mandate. Other respondents included Caroline Walter (District 5), Greg Degeyter (District 6), Bridget Wade (District 7), Gerry Monroe (Dist. 9) and Joshua Rosales (Dist. 9).

The Houston ISD off-cycle election is on Nov. 2. Early voting ends Oct. 29. 

Meckler says COS has big plans to use this survey approach beyond the Houston school board election. 

"Looking at the response to this and how excited people are, I think we're going to use this as a model," he said. "We're going to start to do it all over the country, and not only are we able to do these surveys, but we have the folks in place on the ground that can go ask the questions."

Even when candidates don't respond to an email requesting participation in the survey, COS will make every effort to make the candidates' opinions known. 

"We have these folks all over the country that are engaged and willing to go to meetings, go to candidate forums and go to school board meetings, and meet these folks to ask them the questions," Meckler said. "So my goal is to spread this out and do it all over the country in as many places as we possibly can."