From the Texas Tribune: Texas’ traditionally sleepy school board races are suddenly attracting attention — and money

Local school board elections are coming up soon:

- AISD.
- PISD. 
- HISD.
- From the SOS: Important 2022 Election Dates.

For the story, click here.

Venture out about 20 miles northwest of Austin and you’ll eventually find Lake Travis — the favored boating and recreation destination. The pickup trucks and SUVs pulling boats are an easy tipoff this time of year. What you won’t be immediately aware of is that the Lake Travis Independent School District, which serves about 11,357 students, is getting ready for a tense school board election.

Pre-pandemic there wasn’t much interest in spending Wednesday evenings at a Lake Travis ISD school board meeting — or much close attention paid to how members voted. Lake Travis ISD would consistently rank high in academic performance, keeping most parents pretty happy.

Before 2020, the biggest issue grabbing parents’ attention was the occasional personnel matter. And most recently, the community might be asked to consider approving bonds to pay for another high school as the district continues to grow, attracting some of the influx of new residents flocking to Austin.

But now, two years later, there’s a laser focus on school board races as angry debates over masks, race and sex have unfolded between parents and school boards on weekday nights all over the state.

And in Lake Travis, Erin Archer, candidate for place 3 on the Lake Travis school board, has seen her community become more engaged with the school district and how it operates — more than she’s seen in the last 15 years.

“Pre-pandemic and [before] the new focus on cultural issues, I would say our school board was pretty quiet,” Archer said.

Just last September, Lake Travis ISD made headlines when a parent furiously confronted their school board about the book “Out of Darkness,” a novel set in East Texas in the days before the 1937 natural gas explosion at New London School, one of the worst disasters in U.S. history. The parent claimed the book promoted anal sex to middle schoolers, something the author, says is completely false.