The Fort Worth ISD trustees’ race — still two months away — has already heated up with the announcements this week that Ann Sutherland, who lives in Southwest Fort Worth, will run for the District 6 seat held by six-year board member Chris Hatch and, across town in District 2, Tobi Jackson of Eastern Hills is running to retire 20-year trustee Jean McClung. Sutherland and Jackson have the backgrounds to bring some serious intellectual debate to races that are often more boring than substantive. Both are well-known city and political activists with impressive educational bios. Both say they are throwing their hats in the ring to bring new and innovative ideas to everything from putting more kids, no matter their financial circumstances, on a path to college to restoring discipline in the classroom to providing strict financial accountability “for every taxpayer dollar spent,.” as Jackson said.
The latter may be the toughest to tackle, given the district’s current and past financial brouhahas. It is still reeling from its $1.5 million in overpayments it made last year to at least 2,000 employees and this week the board declared a “financial state of emergency” for the second year in a row because of a budget hole so deep the district may have to start laying off employees.
Whoever the winners are two months from now they will be facing not just a formidable financial crisis, they will be facing a demoralized staff of educators and support personnel many of whom are likely already dusting off their resumes.
Fort Worth Weekly will continue to cover this story as it gets closer to the election on May 8
It’s time for a paradigm shift in the FW ISD community. Tobi Jackson is just the person we need to move things in a positive direction!
The FW ISD needs the passion for education that Tobi Jackson brings with her.
OMG, a chance to get rid of the absentee Audit Chairman, Chris Hatch, and the Out-to-lunch Jean “I don’t return any phone calls” McClung. Sorry Jean, the Board of Education should not be a retirement home. Talk about addition by subtraction!!
The big picture of these two candidates is being manipulated by two very powerful puppetmasters on the board. THese same two men orchestrated the taking away of the voters ability to say who is our school board president. Now they are wanting to remove Dr. Johnson. THis will be detrimental for our district. I suppose they want a Tocco where we can just languish and have all kinds of corruption going on.