If McAllen Independent School District trustees wanted a diverse list of applicants to apply for the Place 7 vacancy on their board, they certainly got one last week.
A total of 31 individuals applied to serve in that position by last Friday, the deadline.
Those applicants want to take the seat of long-serving Trustee Sam Saldivar, Jr., who resigned suddenly in mid-May.
Saldivar’s decision to step down came as a surprise to district leadership. He hasn’t so far commented publicly on what motivated him to resign with a year left on his term, didn’t appear to explain that decision to board leadership before he did so and he didn’t even attend the meeting on May 20 when trustees formally accepted his resignation.
The board had hoped to settle the question of his successor as soon as Tuesday.
Trustees were even confident enough they’d be able to appoint someone that they planned to swear in their pick the next day.
That didn’t happen because a trustee had a family member die Saturday, and the board canceled their Tuesday meeting because the memorial service was the same evening.
Delaying the decision leaves the Place 7 seat in a bit of limbo.
Trustees still met Wednesday and spent the better part of four hours talking about their budget.
The meeting started off with the Place 7 seat empty (the district’s already removed Saldivar’s biography from its website), but who should walk in half-an-hour into the conversation but Saldivar himself.
He took part in the rest of the discussion because, under Texas law, he’s entitled to.
“A school board member holds the rights and obligations of the office until he or she is replaced by a duly qualified successor,” guidance from the Texas Association of School Boards based on Article XVI, Section 17 of the Texas Constitution.
Trustee Sam Saldivar, Jr. Courtesy photo.
The board hadn’t as of Thursday morning scheduled another meeting to discuss its options for Saldivar’s successor.
Whenever trustees do meet to make that decision, they’ll be sifting through an incredibly diverse list of candidates.
The majority of the people who threw their name into the ring are either businesspeople of some type or educators, but there’s really no defining theme to the names.
The educators — some retired, some not — range in employment from high school teachers to a vice president at South Texas College.
The businesspeople are just as varied and include everything from a banker to an Uber driver.
A handful of attorneys submitted applications as well, along with a couple of nonprofit advocates and a pair of medical practitioners.
The applicants’ resumes and cover letters tend to describe a significant amount of professional and civic involvement, though they vary.
One resume is a hefty 11 pages long. Another runs to a grand total of two sentences.
The personalities and perspectives behind those resumes are pretty varied too.
There’s MAGA-adhering local Republicans in the pool shoulder to shoulder with a former teachers union member who criticized Governor Greg Abbott’s pandemic policies a couple years back.
Some of the applicants have previously found themselves on opposite sides of the fence regarding local civic issues or politics with their fellow applicants — or sitting board trustees.
At least four of the applicants are former McAllen ISD trustees, and several others have run for a spot on the board or on McAllen City Commission in recent years.
Individuals who applied to serve on the McAllen ISD school board include:
>> Michael Gabrielson, an insurer
>> Hilda DeShazo, a substitute teacher and assistant principal
>> Hershal Patel, a hotelier
>> Lazaro Ramirez, a retired assistant superintendent
>> Samira Mohamed, a doctor and physician executive
>> James F. Farrell, a purveyor of firefighting equipment
>> Javier Cavasos, a high school teacher and coach
>> Lucia Thompson, an attorney
>> Mark Murray, a collegiate department chair
>> Mario Lozoya, a businessman and consultant
>> Daniel “Danny” Vela, a pharmacist
>> Joanna D. Sanchez-Edwards, a college professor and policy researcher
>> Jose M. Trevino, a high school JROTC instructor
>> Carlos Manrique de Lara, an ophthalmologist
>> Beverly Bradburn Avila, a small business owner
>> Clarissa Riojas, a program director at a nonprofit
>> Robert Carreon, a vice president with Teach For America
>> Richard Moore II, an accountant
>> Carlos M. Garcia, an attorney
>> Joe E. Garcia, an attorney
>> Mark Magnon, a banker
>> Jesus “Jesse” Barba, an attorney
>> Miguel Garcia, a health technology businessman
>> Matthew Hebbard, a collegiate vice president
>> Don Delaney, an Uber driver
>> Chris Henderson, the owner of a produce company
>> Conrado “Ito” Alvarado III, a pharmaceutical sales representative
>> Armando Arechiga, a high school teacher
>> Timothy Wilkins, a property tax consultant
>> Zachary Suarez, a collegiate executive director
>> Rojelio Aleman II, a veterans advocate
