Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District elections (2015)

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2015 Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District Elections
General Election date:
May 9, 2015
Runoff Election date:
June 13, 2015
Table of Contents
About the district Method of election Elections What was at stake? Key deadlines Additional elections External links
See also
Texas Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District Tarrant County, Texas ballot measures Local ballot measures, Texas

Two seats on the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District Board of Trustees were up for general election on May 9, 2015.

In the Place 1 race, three challengers — Mark Assaad, Mindy McClure and Kathleen Thompson — competed for the seat since incumbent Kimberley Davis did not file for re-election. Since neither McClure or Assaad was able to garner 50 percent plus one of the vote, they headed to a runoff election on June 13, 2015. McClure won election over Assaad in that race. In the Place 2 race, incumbent Becky St. John faced off against challenger Jesse Hoffman. St. John won in that race.

Incumbent Becky St. John and challengers Jesse Hoffman, Mindy McClure and Kathleen Thompson participated in Ballotpedia's 2015 survey of school board candidates. To read their responses, check out the "Ballotpedia survey responses" section.

About the district

See also: Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District, Texas

Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District is located in Tarrant County, Texas.

Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District is located in Tarrant County, Texas. The county seat of Tarrant County is Fort Worth. Tarrant County was home to an estimated 1,911,541 residents in 2013, according to the United States Census Bureau. Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District was the 82nd-largest school district in Texas, serving 13,510 students during the 2011-2012 school year.

Demographics

Tarrant County outperformed the rest of Texas in terms of higher education achievement in 2013. The United States Census Bureau found that 29.5 percent of Tarrant County residents aged 25 years and older had attained a bachelor's degree, compared to 26.7 percent for the state as a whole. The median household income in Tarrant County was $56,853, compared to $51,900 statewide. The poverty rate in Tarrant County was 15.2 percent, compared to 17.6 percent for the entire state.

Racial Demographics, 2013
Race	Tarrant County (%)	Texas (%)
White	75.7	80.3
Black or African American	15.9	12.4
American Indian and Alaska Native	0.9	1.0
Asian	5.0	4.3
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander	0.2	0.1
Two or More Races	2.2	1.8
Hispanic or Latino	27.6	38.4

Presidential Voting Pattern, Tarrant County
Year	Democratic Vote (%)	Republican Vote (%)	Other Vote (%)
2012	41.4	57.1	1.5
2008	43.7	55.4	0.8
2004	37.0	62.4	0.6
2000	36.8	60.7	2.5

Note: Percentages for race and ethnicity may add up to more than 100 percent because respondents may report more than one race and the Hispanic/Latino ethnicity may be selected in conjunction with any race. Read more about race and ethnicity in the census here.

Voter and candidate information

The Grapevine-Colleyville Board of Trustees consists of seven members elected to three-year terms. While members are elected to specific places on the ballot, they serve the district at-large. There was no primary election, and a general election took place on May 9, 2015. Since neither candidate receives 50 percent plus one of the vote in the Place 1 race, they headed to a runoff election on June 13, 2015. Two seats were on the ballot in May 2015.

School board candidates submitted paperwork with the school district secretary by February 27, 2015. Each candidate must be at least 18 years old, a registered voter and a resident of the district for at least six months. Members filed two campaign finance reports with the district clerk prior to the election unless they did not receive or spend $500 during the campaign.

Place 1

Mark Assaad		Mindy McClure		Kathleen Thompson
	2014 candidate Bachelor's degree, Texas A&M University Master's degree, University of Phoenix Civil engineer		Bachelor's degree, Texas A&M University Law degree, Texas Tech School of Law Licensed lawyer (not practicing) Homemaker		Bachelor's degree, University of North Texas Writer and volunteer

Place 2

Becky St. John		Jesse Hoffman
	Incumbent Bachelor's degree, Stephen F. Austin State University Former archeologist and park ranger		Bachelor's degree, University of Texas at Austin Law degree, Dedman School of Law Lawyer

Election results

Place 1

Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District, Place 1 Runoff Election, 3-year term, 2015
Party		Candidate	Vote %	Votes
	Nonpartisan	Mindy McClure	54.6%	1,461
	Nonpartisan	Mark Assaad	45.4%	1,217
Total Votes				2,678
Source: Tarrant County, Texas, "Cumulative Report - Official," accessed June 13, 2015

Place 1

Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District, Place 1 General Election, 3-year term, 2015
Party		Candidate	Vote %	Votes
	Nonpartisan	Mark Assaad	36.9%	2,384
	Nonpartisan	Mindy McClure	34%	2,196
	Nonpartisan	Kathleen Thompson	29.2%	1,886
Total Votes				6,466
Source: Tarrant County Clerk, "Official Results," accessed June 1, 2015

Place 2

Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District, Place 2 General Election, 3-year term, 2015
Party		Candidate	Vote %	Votes
	Nonpartisan	Becky St. John Incumbent	63%	3,735
	Nonpartisan	Jesse Hoffman	37%	2,198
Total Votes				5,933
Source: Tarrant County Clerk, "Official Results," accessed June 1, 2015

Endorsements

Mark Assaad was endorsed by the Metroplex bureau of Texans for Fiscal Responsibility. Kathleen Thompson was endorsed by the Taxpayers Against GCISD Feeder Pattern Changes.

Campaign finance

See also: List of school board campaign finance deadlines in 2015

Candidates received a total of $10,801.29 and spent a total of $12,331.43 as of June 5, 2015, according to the Texas Ethics Commission.

Candidate	Receipts	Disbursements	Cash on hand
Place 1
Mark Assaad	$2,530.54	$1,600.00	$930.54
Mindy McClure	$600.00	$5,176.29	-$4,576.29
Kathleen Thompson	$5,799.80	$5,043.84	$755.96
Place 2
Becky St. John	$1,745.95	$486.97	$1,258.98
Jesse Hoffman	$125.00	$24.33	$100.67

Texas school board candidates and officeholders must file semiannual reports, which were due on January 15, 2015, and July 15, 2015. In addition, candidates in contested elections were required to file 30-day and 8-day pre-election reports, unless the candidate chose modified reporting.

Candidates in contested elections who did not intend to exceed $500 in contributions or expenditures, excepting filing fees, were eligible for modified reporting. If they exceeded the threshold before the 30th day prior to the election, candidates were required to submit the 30- and 8-day reports. If they exceeded the threshold after the 30th day prior to the election, they were required to file a report within 48 hours of exceeding the threshold and participate in regular reporting for the rest of the election cycle.

Past elections

Information about earlier elections can be found by clicking [show] at the right.

2014 Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District, Place 5 General Election, 3-year term, 2014 Party Candidate Vote % Votes      Nonpartisan Jesse Rodriguez Incumbent 54.5% 2,184      Nonpartisan Troy Greisen 45.5% 1,823 Total Votes 4,007 Source: Tarrant County Elections, "Cumulative Report-Official," May 21, 2014 Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District, Place 6 General Election, 3-year term, 2014 Party Candidate Vote % Votes      Nonpartisan Leon Leal Incumbent 100% 2,973 Total Votes 2,973 Source: Tarrant County Elections, "Cumulative Report-Official," May 21, 2014 Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District, Place 7 General Election, 3-year term, 2014 Party Candidate Vote % Votes      Nonpartisan Jorge Rodriguez Incumbent 52.1% 2,088      Nonpartisan Mark Assaad 47.9% 1,917 Total Votes 4,005 Source: Tarrant County Elections, "Cumulative Report-Official," May 21, 2014 2012 Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District, Place 1 General Election, 3-year term, 2012 Party Candidate Vote % Votes      Nonpartisan Kimberley Barber Davis 63.9% 1,830      Nonpartisan Julia Guzman-Henderson 26.5% 759      Nonpartisan Rick Hinckley 9.5% 273 Total Votes 2,862 Source: Tarrant County Elections, "Official Election Results," May 25, 2012 Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District, Place 2 General Election, 3-year term, 2012 Party Candidate Vote % Votes      Nonpartisan Becky St. John 55% 1,563      Nonpartisan Gary Harrison-Ducros 32.4% 920      Nonpartisan Michael McCoy 12.7% 360 Total Votes 2,843 Source: Tarrant County Elections, "Official Election Results," May 25, 2012

What was at stake?

2015

Ballotpedia survey responses

Four candidates in this race participated in Ballotpedia's 2015 survey of school board candidates. The following sections display the responses to the survey questions from incumbent Becky St. John and challengers Jesse Hoffman, Mindy McClure and Kathleen Thompson.

Top priorities

When asked what his top priorities would be if elected, Hoffman stated:

Jesse Hoffman

“	The most important issue facing GCISD is its $6M per year deficit, as we cannot maintain the continued success of our academic programs if they are bought on borrowed funds. GCISD has sufficient savings to weather another year of deficit spending. I don’t want to see what happens after that, I want to get our budget under control today. Many of GCISD’s concerns began in 2011 when the State cut $5 Billion of education funding. Compounding the problem is a state program called “Robin Hood,” which redistributes a painful percentage of our local tax revenue in way which systemically incentivizes higher debt over balanced budgets. GCISD has two primary budgets, a Debt Servicing Budget (the "DS Budget") that can only be used to service debt, and a Maintenance & Operations Budget (the "M&O Budget") that pays for everything else. Robin Hood takes about half of our local tax revenue for the M&O budget, but not from the DS Budget. Consequently we have a surplus in Debt Servicing and a $6M deficit in M&O. The incentive is to prop up our M&O deficit with borrowed money, and carry it with the DS surplus, which only works until we’ve exhausted our DS Budget as well. We cannot afford to close our eyes and ignore the approaching ledge; we need to balance our budget. A portion of the 2011 education cuts are now slowly being restored, so there the pressure will begin to lighten, but we need a fiscally responsible plan to maintain course as this happens. We should consider directing more of our revenues to M&O instead of using them to feed a Debt Servicing surplus. We should also increase our focus on programs that may in fact generate income for the district, such as iUniversity prep if it proves successful. Finally, we need to be efficient in our spending to preserve funding for teachers and academic programs.	”
—Jesse Hoffman (2015)

Mindy McClure

When asked what her top priorities would be if elected, McClure stated:

“	Emphasizing and celebrating what we are doing well at GCISD, while working to avoid complacency and making continued improvement a priority. Also, to continue to encourage our community to email and call our state representatives about the fact that our funding is insufficient for the needs of this district.	”
—Mindy McClure (2015)

When asked what her top priorities would be if elected, Thompson stated:

Kathleen Thompson

“	GCISD is a destination district because of the quality of education. I will champion the district mission to be The Best. A recent DMN investigation ranked GCISD for transparency/accountability, graded A, B & F. We can do better. I will use modern communication tools to improve communication with families and taxpayers, and increase accountability by listing my direct email/phone information. Trustees serve the whole district, but representation matters. With open Place 1 seat, there are no trustees with children in GCISD schools zoned CHHS and I’m the only Place 1 candidate with children zoned CHHS.	”
—Kathleen Thompson (2015)

St. John did not provide an answer to the question, "If elected to the board, what would be your top priority?"

Ranking the issues

The candidates were asked to rank the following issues by importance in the school district, with 1 being the most important and 7 being the least important. This table displays the candidates' rankings:

Issue importance ranking
Issue	Hoffman's responses	McClure's responses	St. John's responses	Thompson's responses
Expanding arts education	1	6	7	6
Expanding career-technical education	5	5	5	2
Balancing or maintaining the district's budget	7	1	1	3
Improving college readiness	6	2	3	1
Closing the achievement gap	3	3	2	4
Improving education for special needs students	4	4	4	5
Expanding school choice options	2	7	6	7

Positions on the issues

The candidates were asked to answer 10 multiple choice and short answer questions from Ballotpedia regarding significant issues in education and the school district. A link to the candidates' responses can be found below.

• Jesse Hoffman survey responses
• Mindy McClure survey responses
• Becky St. John survey responses
• Kathleen Thompson survey responses

Key deadlines

The following dates were key deadlines for the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District election in 2015:

Deadline	Event
December 29, 2014	Deadline to post notice of candidate filing deadline
January 28, 2015	First day to file for place on general election ballot
February 27, 2015	Last day to file for place on general election ballot
March 4, 2015	Last day to withdraw from ballot
March 10, 2015	First day to apply for ballot by mail
April 9, 2015	Last day for voter registration with county clerk
	Campaign finance report due
April 27, 2015	First day of early voting
April 30, 2015	Last day to apply for ballot by mail
May 1, 2015	Campaign finance report due
May 5, 2015	Last day of early voting
May 9, 2015	Election Day
May 20, 2015	Final day for canvassing of votes
July 15, 2015	Campaign finance report due

Additional elections on the ballot

See also: Texas elections, 2015

The election on May 9, 2015, shared the ballot with other municipal elections in Tarrant County.

Recent news

This section links to a Google news search for the term "Grapevine-Colleyville + Independent + School + District + Texas"

Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District News Feed

See also

Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District	Texas	School Boards
Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District elections (2014) List of school districts in Texas	Texas school board elections, 2015 Public education in Texas Local ballot measures, Texas	School board elections, 2015 School board elections, 2014 School board election data analysis, 2015 School board election data analysis, 2014

External links

Suggest a link

• Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District
• Tarrant County Clerk
• Tarrant County, Texas
• Texas Secretary of State