Jesse Hoffman

Jesse Hoffman

Education

Bachelor's

University of Texas, Austin

Law

Dedman School of Law

Personal

Profession

Attorney

Contact

Personal website

Jesse Hoffman was a candidate for the Place 2 seat on the Grapevine-Colleyville Board of Trustees in Texas. He lost the general election on May 9, 2015.

Hoffman participated in Ballotpedia's 2015 survey of school board candidates. To read his responses, check out his 2015 campaign themes.

Biography

Email editor@ballotpedia.org to notify us of updates to this biography.

Hoffman has his bachelor's degree in political science and English from the University of Texas at Austin and his law degree from the Dedman School of Law. He has a private practice in Dallas. He has also worked as a substitute teacher.

Elections

2015

See also: Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District elections (2015)

The general election on May 9, 2015, in the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District featured two seats up for election. In the Place 1 race, three challengers — Mark Assaad, Mindy McClure and Kathleen Thompson — competed for an open seat since incumbent Kimberley Davis did not file for re-election. In the Place 2 race, incumbent Becky St. John faced challenger Jesse Hoffman. St. John won the Place 2 seat, while Assaad and McClure headed to a runoff election for the Place 1 seat. McClure triumphed over Assaad in that election on June 13, 2015.

Results

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

Funding

Hoffman reported $125.00 in contributions and $24.33 in expenditures to the Texas Ethics Commission, which left his campaign with $100.67 on hand as of May 1, 2015.

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.

Endorsements

Hoffman did not receive any official endorsements for this election.

Campaign themes

2015

Ballotpedia survey responses

Hoffman participated in Ballotpedia's 2015 survey of school board candidates. The following sections display his responses to the survey questions. When asked what his top priority would be if elected, the candidate made the following statement:

“	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)

Hoffman also included the following statement with his responses:

“	The term "school choice" is used in a prior question, and I want to clarify that there are several dramatically different definitions for the term. I am a big proponent of permitting families in our district to attend different schools than the ones they are assigned to whenever it is feasible for the district to accommodate their requested move. Similarly, with respect to GCISD's specialized educational programs that are only offered at certain schools, such as ASPIRE Academy or STEM, I believe those programs should be available to every student who qualifies and desires to enroll in them. There are logistical concerns that may not prevent a student from attending a campus outside of his or her assigned school, but generally speaking, the option of selecting a different school within our district should be made as accessible as possible to our parents.	”
—Jesse Hoffman (2015)

Ranking the issues

The candidate was 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 this candidate's rankings from most to least important:

Education policy
Click here to learn more about education policy in Texas.
Education on the ballot

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

Positions on the issues

The candidate was asked to answer 10 questions from Ballotpedia regarding significant issues in education and the school district. The questions are in the left column and the candidate's responses are in the right column of the following table:

Question	Response
What is your stance on implementing Common Core standards?	"They should not be implemented."
Should your district approve the creation of new charter schools?	"No - GCISD accomplishes the same thing as charter schools by integrating programs such as STEM, AVID & Aspire Academy into our own schools and directing students to the schools housing their program of choice. Having these programs integrated into the existing schools is more efficient than operating a separate facility and isolating those students from the rest of the children in the district."
Should the state give money to private schools through a voucher system?	"No."
Are standardized tests an accurate metric of student achievement?	"No."
How can the district ensure equal opportunities for high and low achieving students?	"Opportunity is a product of access and information. To provide access, GCISD needs to ensure that each of its unique programs are able to support every student who applies for enrollment in them. But to generate enrollment, GCISD needs to inform the community about the available programs. Parental involvement is fairly high in GCISD, so effectively informing parents of these opportunities will go a very long way in our district. However, if a student is underachieving, he or she may may require a more direct contact to generate interest in a potentially beneficial program. Our educators are in the best position to make that effort. We need to fully inform our educators about these programs, and truly generate excitement about them by allowing educators to see them first hand and in detail. The teacher will then be able to identify students who are well suited for one of GCISD's unique educational programs, and the teachers can communicate with the student directly to encourage his or her interest in enrolling. By maximizing access, and uniformly informing students about GCISD programs, we can ensure equal opportunities for every student to enroll in the programs best suited to educate that student."
How should expulsion be used in the district?	"Many of the above. Expulsion should be the last possible option, only in exceptional circumstances when necessary to prevent continued unacceptable behavior, and only after having attempted all available options for correcting the student's behavior without expulsion."
If a school is failing in your district, what steps should the school board take to help the students in that school?	"A school could be "failing" for a wide variety of reasons and there is no "one size fits all" answer to correcting a hypothetically failing school. It will always require a methodical approach, and an exploratory process to solve a problem as complex as a failing school. The first step would be a thorough review of the available data about that school, and directed correspondence with the teachers, administrators and parents in that school to identify the unique problems that may be preventing the school from succeeding. Once the problems are identified, the board and district administrators must work together in an educated process of trial and error to help that school overcome its barriers to success."
Do you support merit pay for teachers?	"Yes in principal. That said, having spoken with teachers on this topic I realize there are significant problems with our ability to measure merit for a merit pay system. So I am excited at the prospect of continuing our discussion of better ways to truly identify meritorious teachers, but I would require a great deal of teacher input in the process."
How should the district handle underperforming teachers?	"All of the above. Teachers should be given every training and mentorship tool we can give them to improve their abilities as educators. Every teacher in GCISD was hired because he or she impressed another qualified educator at some point with their background and abilities, so the proper assumption is that each of our educators is talented and motivated to overcome any difficulty they may have encountered. Of course if a teacher has lost that motivation to teach or suitability to educate children, there is a point at which the teacher must be terminated; though any such termination should always be preceded by a probationary period with a real opportunity for the teacher to correct those issues."
How would you work to improve community-school board relations?	"GCISD has established extensive communication networks for our schools to communicate with parents and students. I would have the board utilize those networks to communicate important developments in our district, with a particular emphasis on any school board discussions/votes that will dramatically affect the community or the way we operate our schools. The best recent example is the District's large scale effort to explore a complete redrawing of the feeder patterns that control which neighborhoods will attend each school. If a similar matter came up for debate I would inform the community early in the process so they could be involved at an early stage, and I would provide frequent updates on the matters in which our community has expressed a significant interest."

Recent news

The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms Jesse Hoffman Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.

Jesse Hoffman - Google News

See also

• Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District, Texas
• Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District elections (2014)
• Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District elections (2015)
• Decreased success for school board incumbents in Texas; 1/3 defeated in largest districts (May 11, 2015)

External links

Suggest a link

• Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District
• Campaign website
• Campaign Facebook page