While this newspaper is not in the business of endorsing candidates, and this screed is not meant to take that approach, I felt it necessary to highlight a race that is down the ballot in November, but of serious importance.
What follows is my observations on two candidates for that race, including the tale of how one of them apparently blocked me on social media for asking simple questions.
In any other era, the contest for the District 7 seat on the Texas State Board of Education might revolve around the straightforward question of which candidate is most prepared to confront the actual problems facing Texas public schools?
The candidates on the ballot include Tiffany Perkinz, a former English teacher from the Beaumont area, who is running as a Democrat. Perkinz has made a campaign based on academic freedom, a strong literacy curriculum, teacher autonomy and sticking to real issues that face educators in Texas. I heard Perkinz speak at a candidate forum in Woodville a while back, and it was a breath of fresh air, to say the absolute least.
Perkinz argues that teachers should be trusted to teach approved curriculum without political intimidation, and that culture wars have no place co-opting time and resources regarding the state of public education in Texas.
Perkinz’ opponent, Julie Pickren, who is running as a Republican, is a horse of a different color.
Before we go any further, I need to disclose that Pickren blocked me from her campaign’s Facebook page. Me, a constituent, who asked simple questions germane to the office she holds. It seemed, to me, to carry more than a whiff of mean girl energy, but that’s her prerogative, I guess, to ignore constituents, and according to a SCOTUS ruling, candidates can do that under certain criteria.
Pickren, who was famously ousted from the Alvin ISD Board of Trustees in 2021 after it surfaced that she attended the protests at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Pickren, of course, conveniently blamed Antifa for the pandemonium that occurred that day, in public comments to Facebook. The District 7 seat which Pickren currently occupies covers a large swath of the region, including Fort Bend County, Brazoria and Galveston counties, and eastward to cover Liberty, Orange, Jefferson and Tyler counties, as well. It is one of 15 seats on the State Board of Education, which has a huge amount of power in what goes on in the state’s public schools. The members serve four-year terms, and vote on setting curriculum standards and instructional materials, including textbooks.
Since 2022, when all of those seats were up for reelection, and a wave of Republican candidates took over school board seats throughout the state in districts far and wide, the emphasis on our public school policies seems to have drifted away from teaching the basics and making sure that our “future,” as my grandfather used to refer to our youth, are educated in a safe, nurturing environment, to utter culture war nonsense, which includes, but is not limited to: book bans, critical race theory and the idea that Trans people exist and could possibly play school sports.
A statement from the common sense educational advocacy group Moms for Public Education sides with Perkinz’s views, and endorsed her candidacy, and in a post to its socials, stated “Let’s be clear: teachers aren’t indoctrinating kids to have sex change surgery…we can’t even get them to do their work most of the time.” The cheeky pronouncement added that while there are no litterboxes in the bathrooms of public schools, “your little angels are probably trying to vape and sneak their phones in there.”
All of these culture war planks have contributed to increasingly heated discussions among school boards, and it is, from all accounts, the kind of stuff that Pickren specializes in. During a recent SBOE debate on social studies curricula, Pickren reportedly walked out during testimony from Shaimaa Zayan, a former teacher who represents the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and argued that Muslims have been traditionally underrepresented in how social studies and history is taught in Texas.
Pickren subsequently said that her constituents did not care what a “terrorist” had to say. Although Gov. Greg Abbott had designated CAIR a terrorist organization, the federal government does not. When I heard about this incident, it spoke to the larger current of Islamophobia that seems to be a nascent obsession with the state GOP. None of this political haymaking does a single thing to address the improvement of educational outcomes for Texas public school students, though.
It boggles my mind that in a position as important as the State Board of Education that someone like a Julie Pickren could get elected. According to a myriad of metrics, Texas ranks anywhere from 25th to 41st, nationally, for overall education, measured on a number of factors to determine the overall number. That should be of concern to anyone entrusted with helping shape educational policies in Texas, not the politics of outrage.
It is really beyond exhausting to see individuals in such positions focus attention on issues that are designed to generate outrage, instead of actual meaningful policies that could help our schools. Indoctrination is indoctrination, whether it’s couched in a left-leaning perspective or from the right.
Does focusing on supposed Islamic terrorist groups or Trans people improve reading or math proficiency? Will those issues help move Texas into a higher number for educational rankings, nationally? Will required reading of certain Bible passages help better prepare our students for college, careers or the military?
Perkinz, on the other hand, is campaigning on what is actually happening inside of classrooms, instead of performative ideology.
Pickren put out an ad attacking Perkinz recently, which claimed that Perkinz “is standing with” those who would want to bring about the collapse of the United States, to which she responded on her Facebook campaign page with a clip of a character from a movie saying “that is the stupidest f----ng thing I’ve heard.”
In her own words, Perkinz further stated that parents in Texas “are tired of culture wars and distractions dominating the conversation around Texas schools,” and that parents also want well-funded schools with highly qualified teachers and safe classrooms, strong academics, fine arts, career pathways and actual support for our kids.
Perkinz believes that teachers should be trusted to teach the approved curriculum without political intimidation and that students need an actual sustained reading and writing education instead of endless tests and technological shortcuts. That, to me, seems logical. Those are issues that deserve the attention of the state’s Board of Education, not a focus on issues that excite only a segment of the population and build a personal political brand. We as Texans should expect more from those who are entrusted with a seat of the SBOE.
When I could still look at Pickren’s Facebook page, I noticed a prominent photograph of her standing next to President Donald Trump. While that may trumpet her bona-fides in the more right-leaning circles, it doesn’t say much to me in terms of the practical work of helping improve public schools in Texas. Call me old-fashioned, but I, for one, am far more concerned with the crisis of a declining literacy rate than I am with non-existent sex change operations in public schools.
So, the question for voters in District 7 as to the SBOE is this: should the governing body for the state’s public schools by a front in the country’s culture wars or a body devoted to actually fixing the problems afoot in public schools and one that fights for optimal conditions for Texas teachers and students?
Our public schools face immense challenges, and our leaders in that fight should be able to address them and offer forth reasonable solutions, not just blind loyalty to ideology or a national political figure.
Chris Edwards is editor of the Tyler County Booster, a sister newspaper in the Polk County Publishing Group. He can be reached at cedwards@polkcountypublishing.com.
