Will Anna Eastman, Greg Meyers duke it out for Houston ISD school board presidency next year?

A battle for the presidency of the Houston school board appears to be looming.

Trustee Anna Eastman announced her desire to lead the Houston Independent School District governing body months ago.

“I am interested in serving as president (next) year,” Eastman told Texas Watchdog. If successful, she would replace current President Paula Harris.

But a faction of the nine trustees who oversee Texas’ largest school district – and the seventh-biggest in the nation, with a $1.6 billion budget and about 203,000 students – has asked Trustee Greg Meyers to run against her.

“I’m considering it,” said Meyers, who was first elected in 2004 and served as president last year. “We’ll see at this point. I haven’t made any determinations.”

Trustees are scheduled to vote for their next chief officer during the Jan. 12 monthly board meeting, said Suzanne Harrison, HISD’s board services manager. Trustees nominate candidates and the presidency is decided by majority vote. The board members follow the same process for each individual trustee officer position.

Meyers said he would run “only for the right reasons.” When asked for an example, he replied, “I can’t pinpoint one in particular. It’s something that has to come from within yourself.”

Yet he acknowledged that though “the board is moving in the right direction, there’s still a lot of work to do.”

Meyers did not reveal who requested that he oppose Eastman.

Instead, he emphasized that the board “frankly, is never about one person, and shouldn’t be.” If Meyers became president for the second time in three years, “there would be a delineation of what we’d want to do together as a unit, as a team to move forward in a collaborative way,” he said.

HISD board presidents serve for one year and may be elected for consecutive terms, according to district policy, but that is rare.

“In my experience, so far, the decision has been made through

You can read the rest of this article at: http://www.texaswatchdog.org/2011/12/will-anna-eastman-greg-meyers-duke-it-out-for-houston-isd-school-board-trustee-race/1323793381.column

Posted by TexasReportAdmin on January 2, 2012. Filed under Corruption. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry