An Inside Look at the State Board of Education’s Mission
The Georgetown View was pleased to visit with Tom Maynard, distinguished member of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) for District 10, which includes 27 counties and most of Williamson County. Members of this pivotal elected board play a critical role in overseeing and shaping the educational standards and policies that impact the state’s public schools. The SBOE is constantly working to improve educational outcomes for the state’s 5.5 million public school students.
As a parent and grandparent, Mr. Maynard is particularly invested in the challenges and triumphs of the state education system. His strength as a board member is additionally born of his experience as a CTE teacher, executive director of the nation’s largest state FFA association, and local school board trustee. That experiential balance has given him expertise and a passion that enable him to prioritize educational needs with the values of Texas families in an ever-changing societal landscape.
Mr. Maynard notes the SBOE may be the most misunderstood elected body in the state. “A common misconception is that we have direct authority over schools or districts. In today’s intensely political environment, frustrated people are looking for solutions and want to believe SBOE members can direct changes in schools, but SBOE members do not have authority to force decisions at the local level.”
“Local school boards answer to local voters,” he says. “State law defines the duties of the SBOE and State Commissioner of Education and what is not expressly or explicitly given in law to the SBOE or commissioner is given to local school boards. We are a local control, limited government state.”
Developing and Revising Educational Standards
One of the primary tasks of the SBOE is to develop standards that drive curriculum design, instructional materials, and assessments. These Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) define what students should know and know how to do in each grade level and subject area. State law prohibits the SBOE from dictating teaching methodologies or time for specific lessons.
“The ongoing battles over TEKS are significant because they are about what will be taught to the next generation,” Mr. Maynard says. In the last few revision cycles, he recalls heated battles over health education standards, including a 16-hour public testimony marathon. “Among myriad proposals, most had to do with human sexuality and gender ideology,” he says. “But we kept those things out of the standards.”
Mr. Maynard notes content and material related to human sexuality are, pursuant to state law, the domain of local school boards working alongside a School Health Advisory Counsel. “State law was written to ensure local discretion on that subject,” he says, “so if you read or hear something that claims SBOE acted on sex ed, you know it’s misinformation.”
He also noted that recently adopted science standards took a more measured, reasoned approach to climate change, adding language that prompts students to consider a cost-benefit approach to proposed climate solutions.
SBOE and the Book Wars
Many readers may remember some highly publicized textbook wars at the SBOE. They still occur but not at quite the same intensity, because the Legislature changed the rules of engagement. Until 2011, the SBOE held absolute authority over every textbook in every public classroom. All of that changed with the passage of SB 6 by the 82nd Legislature.
“SB 6 threw the door open, created an open-source environment allowing school districts to purchase whatever they wanted as long as they certified what they were buying with the instructional materials allotment covered all TEKS,” he says. “We still had an adoption process, but schools were not obligated to purchase from our list. In fact, a school could buy and use materials that we rejected.”
Mr. Maynard observes that there have been unintended consequences to this approach. “Some school districts have done a good job vetting and purchasing high quality materials, but some left it to their teachers to find their own. Much of this material is not high quality and some is not written at grade level.” Mr. Maynard says he and other SBOE members were co-collaborators on the writing of HB 1605, which created a ratcheted-up process for reviewing instructional material.
HB 1605 also directs the SBOE to create reading lists for certain classes. “Your readers will remember being assigned books to read in class; these were generally classic works in particular literary eras or in particular genres,” he says. “Not textbooks, but assigned reading, and recently we have observed what amounts to a culture war on western literature, which is a part of a larger war on western civilization,” he says.
He also points out that HB 1605 also requires material vetted through this process to have a parent portal, guaranteeing 24-hour parental access to what is being presented to students.
Protecting Students
One of the SBOE’s key achievements is its involvement in the legislative process concerning library standards. Recently, many Texans became aware of school library books with graphic sexual content. SBOE members worked alongside Representative Jared Patterson to produce HB 900, a significant revision to the READER (Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources) Act, which directed the Texas State Library and Archives Commission to create library collection standards that apply to school and classroom libraries.
For the first time, the SBOE had a voice in the process. “Prior to HB 900, the SBOE had no voice related to school libraries,” he says.
Financial Stewardship
Another critical but less discussed aspect of the SBOE’s responsibilities is the management of the Permanent School Fund (PSF), the state’s $55 billion endowment, which funds instructional materials and technology and is part of the overall school funding. Mr. Maynard has chaired the board’s School Finance/PSF Committee since 2019 and in 2021 led an effort to bring the fund out from under the Texas Education Agency and into an agency similar to UTIMCO, a governmental corporation that manages the Permanent University Fund.
Mr. Maynard says, “The PSF now has the ability to operate more like the private sector,” he says. “The fund has returned 7.25 percent over the past three years, adding $2.5 billion in value while distributing $6 billion, but we think we can do even better – generating more resources for Texas schools and perhaps alleviating the taxpayer burden.”
He is also proud of his efforts to rescue the PSF’s bond guarantee program from a federal regulatory logjam that had stymied the fund for years. The PSF guarantees local school district bonds, ensuring that taxpayers pay the lowest possible interest rate. “That program saves Texas taxpayers $300-400 million in interest payments,” he says.
However, the IRS rules had limited capacity of the PSF to guarantee bonds, based on a 2009 valuation of the fund. Mr. Maynard led a bipartisan effort to have legislation filed to exempt the program from these regulations and allow state law to govern it. “We had nearly the entire Texas congressional delegation on board as co-sponsors and were able to leverage that to get the IRS commissioner to yield on the matter,” Mr. Maynard says.
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