Lee Macerlaen Walker

This page was current at the end of the individual's last campaign covered by Ballotpedia. Please contact us with any updates.

Lee Macerlaen Walker

Nonpartisan

Elections and appointments

Last election

November 2, 2021

Education

Bachelor's

Duke University, 1992

Graduate

McCombs School of Business, 1998

Personal

Birthplace

Houston, Texas

Religion

Christian

Profession

Small business owner

Contact

Campaign website

Campaign Facebook

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Lee Macerlaen Walker (also known as Mac) ran for election to the Houston Independent School District to represent District VII in Texas. He lost in the general election on November 2, 2021.

Walker completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2021. Click here to read the survey answers.

Biography

Lee Macerlaen Walker was born in Houston, Texas. He earned a bachelor's degree from Duke University in 1992 and a graduate degree from the University of Texas, McCombs School of Business in 1998. His professional experience includes working as the small business owner of a group fitness facility. Walker previously worked in business process consulting and management consulting. He has served on his children’s PTO, including serving in the budget and finance role.

Elections

2021

See also: Houston Independent School District, Texas, elections (2021)

General runoff election

General runoff election for Houston Independent School District, District VII

Bridget Wade defeated incumbent Anne Sung in the general runoff election for Houston Independent School District, District VII on December 11, 2021.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Bridget Wade (Nonpartisan)	53.7	6,705
		Anne Sung (Nonpartisan)	46.3	5,790

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	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 12,495
= 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.
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General election

General election for Houston Independent School District, District VII

Bridget Wade and incumbent Anne Sung advanced to a runoff. They defeated Lee Macerlaen Walker and Dwight Jefferson in the general election for Houston Independent School District, District VII on November 2, 2021.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Bridget Wade (Nonpartisan)	40.8	6,118
✔		Anne Sung (Nonpartisan)	36.8	5,509
		Lee Macerlaen Walker (Nonpartisan)	19.6	2,944
	Submit photo	Dwight Jefferson (Nonpartisan)	2.8	413

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	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 14,984
= 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 Walker's endorsements in the 2021 election, please click here.

Campaign themes

2021

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Lee Macerlaen Walker completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2021. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Walker's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Expand all | Collapse all

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

I am a native Houstonian from Sharpstown and attended HISD schools my entire life. I have been married for 21 years, have three children, and I am a current HISD parent. Education is important to me because my education was instrumental in helping escape my own challenging upbringing. With encouragement from high school teachers and football coaches, I became the first in my family to graduate from high school. I went to Duke University, majoring in mechanical engineering, and later received an MBA from the University of Texas. In my professional career, I spent decades in consulting and entrepreneurship, and currently own a small business. I intend to use my unique combination of diverse life perspectives and business experience to school board. Education was a life changing force for me and I feel compelled to do what I can to extend that force to today’s students.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

• HISD is in crisis due to almost a decade of weak leadership
• I will restore integrity to the board and bring my diverse life and business experience to provide bold leadership.
• Our new Superintendent provides a great opportunity for positive change, but he must have a bold board to support him. If not, nothing will get done.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

To me, education reform starts with the belief that the relationship between teacher and child is the most important. HISD has a challenge hiring and retaining teachers. Part of this is due to the fact that HISD teachers are among the lowest paid in the area. We must improve how we hire and retain great teachers. Therefore, I am passionate about insisting the Superintendent figure out how to identify, recruit, and retain great teachers for every classroom.

If we hope to get great teachers in every classroom, I believe the district needs strong financial stewardship. Strong financial stewardship is the lifeblood of any business, and it is no different when operating a school district. The board has a large role in this regard. With the Superintendent, we can decide what activities we should stop, we should start and we should continue.

As far as control goes, I believe qualified principals and teachers on the frontlines are best positioned to make decisions for the unique needs of their school community. I have seen the negative impact of creeping HISD centralization at my child’s school. We need a complete review of the way we fund schools and how the district controls who spends our dollars.

With these few things in place, I believe that the Superintendent will have the tools he needs to get nearly every child to grade level achievement.

What qualities do you possess that you believe would make you a successful officeholder?

Integrity, work ethic, ability to communicate, diverse life experiences, intellectual curiosity, business background, and passion for helping children.

What do you believe are the core responsibilities for someone elected to this office?

You have to put in the time. Many view a school board position as a “part time” job, but I don’t see how that is possible.

I believe school board members are obligated to continually research and observe best practices from other districts around the US, to reach out to parents to understand what they desire for their children’s education, to engage business and community members who want to aid in the development of their future work force, to identify and develop future board members and contributors, to visit schools and listen to the teachers and principles on the frontlines, and to work with the Superintendent on the formal board responsibilities. These things take a tremendous amount of time to do them adequately.

What legacy would you like to leave?

I realize it is not exciting to harp on budgeting and accounting, but the reality is that the Superintendent and other board members cannot get anything done unless they can manage taxpayer money well. So to that end, I would like to be the person who starts instilling a culture of strong financial stewardship. To ensure it continues after my time, I think it is important to recruit and develop future potential board members to fill my role. If I could accomplish this, I think it would go a long way towards solving the district’s problems.

What is the first historical event that happened in your lifetime that you remember? How old were you at the time?

When I was probably 9 or 10, I remember waiting in gas lines for what seemed like hours. It continued for months, as I recall, and all of the adults around me obsessed over gas prices the entire time. I remember my dad saying there had been a cutback in oil production. My curiosity led to me asking dozens of questions about the control of oil. All I really remember taking away from the conversation was this it seemed a lot more complicated than it needed to be.

What was your very first job? How long did you have it?

I worked at Jack and the Box from the time I was 15 until I was 17. They started me in the back cooking, but after 6 months in, I was working the register and every other position. It paid for my clothes and my first guitar. More importantly than the money was the life experience that comes from working with the public. I usually worked the closing shift on the weekends, so I dealt with a wide variety of customers and issues.

If you could be any fictional character, who would you want to be?

John Galt.

What was the last song that got stuck in your head?

Take Five, by Dave Brubeck! Even though I listen to many other genres besides jazz, for some reason that song gets stuck in my head all the time.

What is something that has been a struggle in your life?

Growing up in a low-income home with hardly any parental involvement was a struggle. Compounding that was the perpetual chaos that came from having a sibling with a heroine addiction. We moved a lot, as well, so there was always instability. I honestly don’t remember school ever being a focus until I was in high school. I simply had too much going on at home to make room for school. So I’d say my home environment was a struggle. But nonetheless, I was lucky enough to have some great teachers along the way and, in hindsight, they had a tremendous impact by planting seeds that would later take hold. I think this experience explains why I feel so strongly about the importance of getting great teachers into every classroom.

What is the primary job of a school board member in your view?

School boards should provide oversight and guidance. They should not operate schools. Their first and most important job is to select the Superintendent, the one who will actually run the district. Then, with community input, the board should work with the Superintendent to develop a vision for the district, complete with goals and metrics that the board can use to hold the Superintendent accountable.

Of course, the Superintendent cannot operate without a budget. Therefore, the other critical function that the board should provide guidance on is the development of the budget via the establishment of priorities. Ultimately, the budget is the Superintendent’s call, but the board has a role in ensuring the budget aligns with the agreed upon priorities.

What issues get in the way of quality education? How would you address these obstacles?

I’ll talk about ‘quality education’ in the context of a low performing student. Quality in that context means getting that child to grade level. And in those cases where a child is not, it is tempting to place blame on factors outside of the school’s control, such as an unstable home life or lack of parental involvement. However, multiple studies show that schools account for roughly 80% of a student’s performance. Further, HISD provides wraparound services to aid children whose basic needs are not met (albeit inefficiently in my opinion).

So believing that the school can provide a quality education for nearly every child is the first obstacle that gets in the way. I am not sure everyone believes that, or wants to believe that, because of the responsibility it entails. We all must believe that we can do more so that we actually find a way to do more.

The second obstacle is finding and retaining great teachers to go into every classroom, as I’ve said. This applies to the gifted and talented students as much as the lowest performing ones. Without great teachers, quality is impossible.

What strategies or plans would you advance to ensure the schools are properly funded?

Schools generally require a large, fixed cost to operate (‘overhead’ in traditional business parlance). In other words, a particular school’s cost may remain nearly constant whether there are 100 students in it or 1000. It is important to understand this basic fact when designing funding strategies.

Funding strategies that are based on school enrollment size penalize “low enrollment” schools, such as elementary schools. Given the clear and lifelong impact of early education, I would like to see elementary schools operate under a different funding model than middle and high schools. Elementary schools provide the foundation of all subsequent education for the child, so they need funding that ensure they have adequate teachers and resources in every classroom.

For overall funding, I think boards must insist on strong financial stewardship. Whether that requires modifying the budgeting processes, or conducting periodic audits, or evaluating how money is spent, I believe that most school districts waste a tremendous amount of money due to process design flaws.

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.

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Candidate

Houston Independent School District, District VII

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