Janette Garza Lindner
From Ballotpedia
This page was current at the end of the individual's last campaign covered by Ballotpedia. Please contact us with any updates.
Janette Garza Lindner ran for election to the Houston Independent School District to represent District I in Texas. She lost in the general runoff election on December 11, 2021.
Garza Lindner completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2021. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Janette Garza Lindner was born in Brownsville, Texas. Garza Lindner's professional experience includes working as a management consultant. She earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1999.[1]
Garza Lindner has been affiliated with Arts Connect Houston and the Houston Cecilia Chamber Choir.[1]
Elections
2021
See also: Houston Independent School District, Texas, elections (2021)
General runoff election
General runoff election for Houston Independent School District, District I
Incumbent Elizabeth Santos defeated Janette Garza Lindner in the general runoff election for Houston Independent School District, District I on December 11, 2021.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Elizabeth Santos (Nonpartisan)  | 50.5 | 2,223 |
 | Janette Garza Lindner (Nonpartisan) | 49.5 | 2,175 | |
| Total votes: 4,398 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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General election
General election for Houston Independent School District, District I
Incumbent Elizabeth Santos and Janette Garza Lindner advanced to a runoff. They defeated Matias Kopinsky in the general election for Houston Independent School District, District I on November 2, 2021.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Elizabeth Santos (Nonpartisan) | 41.6 | 3,940 |
| ✔ | | Janette Garza Lindner (Nonpartisan) | 35.0 | 3,315 |
 | Matias Kopinsky (Nonpartisan) | 23.5 | 2,225 | |
| Total votes: 9,480 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Endorsements
To view Garza Lindner's endorsements in the 2021 election, please click here.
Campaign themes
2021
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Janette Garza Lindner completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2021. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Garza Lindner's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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I am a wife and working mother to two children in HISD schools. I have worked as a management consultant for 20+ years where strategic planning, board governance, and budget management for multi-million dollar programs are just a few of the things I regularly do for my corporate clients. I have never held elected office. I was selected to the Arts Connect Houston leadership committee in late 2019, where I serve as the main community representative, shaping and leading strategic decisions that have helped ensure more students have access to the arts as part of a complete education. I was selected as a Latinos for Education board fellow in 2019 where I learned how to effectively serve on a non-profit education board. I am also a 10+ year member of the Houston Cecilia Chamber Choir.
- STUDENTS FIRST. Our children must have access to the education they deserve, even as the pandemic continues to disrupt daily life. The quality of our schools must be equitable for all students in the district. Our most vulnerable students must not be overlooked and must receive the resources and support they need.
- BALANCED BUDGET. Pass a fiscally responsible and realistic budget based on the needs of students that reflects the vision and values of our community. We have allowed our fund balance to grow unusually large instead of serving our students through additional services or giving teachers raises. The board must operate in an open and transparent way that allows the community to have input into the board decision-making process.
- TEACHER PAY. Managing the budget in a fiscally responsible way will enable the district to raise teacher salaries to competitive levels. Teachers are the district’s most important asset. HISD must hire, retain, and nurture the best teacher talent in our region. If we are to improve student outcomes we must raise salaries and create conditions to allow our teachers to effectively respond to the needs of their students. We have left money on the table that has been allotted by the state (House Bill 3 2019) to pay our best teachers an incentive to teach at our most struggling schools through the Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) program. HISD elected to start this in Spring 2022.
In addition to education, a few other policy areas I am passionate about include health care, especially removing the stigma from mental and emotional health services; agriculture and food policy, including improvements to ensure the nutritional value of our food supply is improved and regenerative practices are more widely used; and our country’s energy policy, especially innovation in generation, transmission and storage to meet our country’s needs for the next 100 years.
There are many people that I look up to so I will list just a sample: Stacy Abrams for her inspirational work and call to action for more people (like me) to pursue public office; Lina Hidalgo for her tireless work in the face of constant challenge and criticism; Warren Buffett for acknowledging the advantages that helped him grow his early investments into a massive fortune and criticising the systems (such as our tax code that taxes lower incomes at a higher percentage than higher incomes) that provide unequal benefits to our citizens; and meteorologist Joe Bastardi, whose entertaining hurricane coverage inspired me as a young girl to want to pursue this as a career (and thumbs down to the “how much math do you need for this job” poster on my 6th grade classroom wall for discouraging me from pursuing this as a career.)
I am a thoughtful, passionate leader who works tirelessly to solve problems and serve others. My commitment to improving access to high-quality education for our Houston students is driven by a belief that all children deserve an education that lets them live the future they choose. I am also driven by a belief that every child can learn, and when we enable and support our teachers, we can help them effectively educate every child no matter their background. I am a lifelong learner and avid reader. I believe the most important thing we can teach our students is HOW to learn effectively to enable them to be successful as our workplaces become more complex and the need to adapt in our careers continues to increase.
A school board trustee’s primary responsibilities are to represent the vision and values of our community, hire and manage the superintendent, and set the budget for the district in order to improve student outcomes. These must be informed by active engagement with the community, and continuous learning about the issues impacting our students’ educational attainment and the systemic challenges that board members must understand when making decisions.
I remember watching the Challenger shuttle explosion on TV at school. I especially remember a teacher in our school who cried so hard because she was a finalist in the Teacher in Space program. I can’t imagine the feeling of almost being the one on that shuttle and watching it explode with your colleague on it.
When I was 15 I started working at HEB, a well known Texas grocery chain, as a cashier. I worked there for 3 years until I graduated from high school and I left town to attend college at University of Texas at Austin.
Cats Sit on You by the Story Pirates.
A school board trustee’s primary responsibilities are to represent the vision and values of our community, hire and manage the superintendent, and set the budget for the district in order to improve student outcomes. These must be informed by active engagement with the community, and continuous learning about the issues impacting our students’ educational attainment and the systemic challenges that board members must understand when making decisions.
My constituents are all the students in Houston ISD, their families, and our community.
Through active communication, listening, and learning from our students, their families, our faculty and staff, and our community; continuous learning about the issues that matter most to these groups; and leveraging the resources available to me as a board member to make well-informed decisions that consider the impact of our diverse Houston population.
My job as a trustee is to represent the vision and values of our community. The broader community includes the civic, education, social service, and business organizations that all have a stake in the benefits that a well-educated student population will bring. I will build relationships by being available to these groups via community meetings and forums, and any other means of communication as appropriate.
Yes, and I would approach this by understanding the underlying reasons why we are challenged to recruit diverse talent. For example, ane area that is well understood is teacher pay, but what is not commonly understood is how low teacher salaries contribute to the low number of Latino and Black teachers. We have to understand the root cause of systemic problems to design appropriate solutions.
The biggest issue in the way of quality education is adults who put their priorities above student outcomes. When we are brave enough to make tough decisions that are for the benefit of students first, our education system will move in a direction that benefits our kids.
Teacher evaluation is a difficult and fiercely debated topic. I expect the superintendent to work with administration and principals to develop and evolve an evaluation system that promotes teacher quality, that avoids surprises and encourages a culture of growth, collaboration, and continuous improvement. I don't have the solution but I do believe it should contribute to a teacher’s growth and professional goals and help support a positive interaction with their students, peers, and administration. I am a working mother who designs and conducts performance evaluations for my firm, so I believe evaluations should measure a variety of factors to consider the whole teacher experience and should absolutely factor in the specific situation for a given teacher, e.g., middle school ESL teachers in a school with a high population of immigrant students cannot be fairly compared with middle school gym teachers in an affluent neighborhood with a stable student population. Metrics should include student performance based on standardized test growth and results, but a teacher's performance is multi-faceted and should consider skills that differentiate great teachers, including professionalism, collaboration, organizational skills, preparedness, strong communication skills, maintaining a high standard for their students, and showing respect for students and their families. By doing this, advanced teaching approaches will be supported and encouraged.
I want to ensure the arts are included as part of a complete education. I also want to see our curriculum focus on teaching students how to learn because that is what is needed to enable our children to be ready for the workforce. Our state’s businesses already struggle to hire qualified talent, and this need will only grow as jobs become more technologically complex.
We have to start with a realistic, fiscally responsible, balanced budget that our Board monitors closely. We also need to take advantage of state funds already available that we are not using to pay our teachers an incentive to teach at our most struggling schools. We must shrink our bloated central office and move that money directly to our schools. We should also leverage the thousands of nonprofit organizations in our region who aim to support our community in numerous ways. Through the careful establishment of partnerships with clear expectations and outcomes outlined, and metrics measured on a regular basis, we can help our students be ready to learn when they get to the classroom.
Students need to feel safe in order to learn. As a parent, I know there is only so much I can do to keep my children safe in an ever evolving and complex world. I must apply a multi-faceted approach to my children’s upbringing that includes creating safe spaces, teaching them to avoid risky situations, and teaching them what to do when in an unsafe situation so they may be able to help and protect themselves. Those principles would drive my view on policies for safe schools, with the added advice and input from experts to enable us to make the best decisions for all our Houston students, and always with the input from our students, their families, faculty and staff, and our wider community. We have to create spaces that are safe, but we also need to provide age-appropriate guidance that helps students feel they are enabled to solve problems and de-escalate and resolve conflict because it is impossible to plan for every possible situation. We must also urge our wider community to address the root-causes of our community challenges, and have a 2-way dialogue with local leaders so they understand what our students, faculty and staff are dealing with so we can devise solutions together that can continue to keep everyone in our schools safe.
The pandemic has brought challenges to students’ social and emotional health and has hindered their academic achievement. As a community we must acknowledge the severe impact that this has had throughout our community. We must enable our students to learn how to be resilient in the face of challenging events so they may thrive no matter what the future may bring. HISD must provide mental health support to kids so they can focus on accelerating their learning. Our students, faculty, and staff need access to quality mental health care, and principals must encourage a collaborative working environment where teachers and staff can support each other and students. Our district must bear the weight of all the societal challenges upon our school community; it is unfair for any district to be expected to meet all these needs alone. HISD must work with local leaders and organizations to collaboratively address the many challenges that get in the way of letting our children learn.
As an IT professional I see the impact and value of technology on the ways we live and work. Technology is central to our lives but must be considered a tool for teaching, not a means to an end. Highly-qualified teachers in classrooms with our students is still the best way to improve student outcomes. I would ensure that we are not using technology for its own sake, and consider the strain that adopting new technology in our classrooms puts on our faculty and staff. District-wide tools must be considered carefully and employed only after proven effective across varied populations, and with faculty and staff input. Our students must learn how to learn to keep up with ever-evolving technology and be prepared for the lifetime of learning that future careers will demand.
The pandemic has brought challenges to students’ social and emotional health and has hindered their academic achievement. HISD must provide mental health support to kids so they can focus on accelerating their learning. HISD teachers need access to mental health care, and principals must encourage a collaborative working environment where teachers and staff can support each other and students. We must address the significant learning loss experienced by all our students, and address the root causes for why our Black and Latino students experienced such severe learning loss compared to other students. How to do this starts by managing our budget well to pay higher salaries to our teachers. This will enable us to attract and retain highly qualified teachers for all our students, especially those in our most struggling schools. We must also enable our faculty and staff to address learning loss with the tools and approaches they know to work for their student populations. We must enable teachers, staff and administration to meet each student where they are at and personalize their learning as much as possible to help them close the learning gaps that were widened by the pandemic.
I intend to build a communication plan that ensures the busiest of parents and families still have ways to reach me easily and participate in meetings and information sessions. This includes leveraging technology to assist, including language and translation services, and being available via phone and email for those who cannot attend meetings.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2021 Elections
External links
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Candidate Houston Independent School District, District I |
Personal |
Footnotes
