Because of redistricting, all 15 seats on the Texas State Board of Education will be up for grabs in the November 2012 elections. The results of those elections will determine whether the religious right’s corrosive influence over public education will weaken or grow as the board considers what the next generation of public school students in Texas will learn about sex education, social studies, science and other subjects. We plan to publish on TFN Insider candidate announcements for a seat on the SBOE. We will publish announcements in no particular order, and their publication does not constitute any sort of endorsement by TFN. We will redact requests for contributions or mentions of fundraising events from the announcements, but we will provide links to the candidates’ websites (if available).
Andres Muro, District 1, D-El Paso
(Current District 1 Board Member: Carlos “Charlie” Garza, R-El Paso)
Andres Muro, the director of the Community Education Program at El Paso Community College, is running for the District 1 SBOE seat currently held by Republican Carlos “Charlie” Garza, who is running unopposed in the Republican primary. Muro’s website is andres4sboe.com.
Andres Muro’s career as an educator spans 25 years. A former middle school math and science teacher, he has also taught adult English as a Second Language and Citizenship classes, and since 1995 has directed the Community Education Program at El Paso Community College, supervising approximately 40 employees annually. Approximately 2,000 students in his program have earned a GED certificate. The migrant GED program, one of several that Muro oversees, has been the top performing program nationwide for the past two years.
Muro has procured and administered nearly $10,000,000 in educational grants and contracts from private foundations as well as federal, state and local governments. He is the author of several articles; Raices, a GED textbook for immigrant students, and he oversees the EPCC student literary journal Memorias del Silencio: Footprints of the Borderlands.
Muro has a B.S. in Biology and an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Texas at El Paso. He is currently a Ph.D. student, working on his dissertation, in the Teaching, Learning, and Culture program at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Sign that boy up!!!! He looks like a real cowboy to me!!!! We need a man on the Texas SBOE that looks like he won’t take no excrement from nobody—and he looks like THE MAN FOR THE JOB.
Somebody send that man a hat and an Eastwood stogie. Welcome Dr. Muro. Yep, I’ll go ahead and give it to you whether your dissertation committee likes it or not. You look like a man that deserves it and will do the kids of Texas proud.
Thanks Charles! I’m signing you up as my dissertation committee chair. They have no mercy.
Appears to fall in the Sensible Party part of the spectrum.