Ron Hansen (Place 4)
“Introduce yourself, do you have any children attending ISD in Coppell, why are you running for this office?”
“Thank you everyone for being here tonight. I appreciate this crowd uniquely. My wife served as PTO President in every school we served in, Wilson, West etc. I can honestly say, we had four kids go all the way through CISD, our family, our kids wouldn’t be the same if it had not been for this community and these schools. Incredible. In a summary, we have four CHS grads, three college grads, three Eagle Scouts, two West Point grads, two Army officers, one schoolteacher, and one college freshman. I appreciate it. I am running because I do care about the community, I’m a businessman, I’m into budgets, I do consulting with companies all over the country, and I have a great debt of gratitude. I wouldn’t be running if I didn’t think I could make a difference. I like facts, I like details, I have questions about education, I have questions about finances, one of the biggest hurdles we face in our community is this evil character called Robin Hood. It’s been worked on, negotiated since 1993 with no success. We’ve got to try something different folks. I’ve made contacts in Austin, other coalition people around, there’s a lot of people that are uniquely concerned with this, and we have got to try something different because what’s it called when you try the same thing over and over and get a similar result, we really have to try something different, and I think I am uniquely positioned professionally. I don’t have kids in the district, and honestly that’s a huge advantage to me at this point, what I want to do. I’m grateful to this community, and you giving your service. I want to promise you, it does make an incredible difference. I thank you.”
“Can you tell us about the organizations who are endorsing your campaign and approximately how many CISD Board meetings you’ve attended in the past?”
“In terms of the Board meetings, I’ve counted probably 10, 15 over the years. I’ve been interested in those. In addition to that, the work sessions etc. uniquely at Coppell ISD, we don’t record work sessions, and I think we should. There’s a lot of things that go on there, when you get to the Board meeting they’re just saying the final version that gets voted on. As you probably know, our Board members don’t do a very good job of voting no or stating their feelings in an open Board meeting. I think there was only one single no vote cast in the past two years, could’ve gone back five, I got bored of looking. I think we need to have more transparency, more openness with those meetings. Who endorsed me? The first person who endorsed me, who reached out to me was state representative Matt Rinaldi. Young, bright lawyer, two session, very innovative, he’s respected, and he can make things happen. Just walked away from a school funding bill which would have put an $8.1 billion dent, including money out of the rainy day fund. We need a special session on education funding. A group called Empower Texas, I completed every questionnaire that came my way. I completed them, I sent them in. When I ran for Board last year I completed it, they nixed me, great. I heard later that 15, 20 people dropped out of the group because they said if Ron doesn’t get endorsed by you guys, something must be wrong. My feelings don’t change for anyone, but they did endorse me this year. Most importantly though, it doesn’t really matter, my feelings don’t change about what has to happen in this ISD. We are in a serious predicament financially, growth, and we need to handle that appropriately. Appreciate the question, thank you.
”How can we keep our best and brightest teachers and administrators on our campus?”
“Thank you. Since 1985 I’ve been a consultant, and one of the things that I do mainly is I help large companies create programs to attract and retain key employees. Differeinting good companies and great companies is how well they can retain that talent. It’s a big deal, and there a lot of things you can do that are not necessarily monetary, although monetary certainly helps. A couple of things that concern me in Coppell ISD: The first thing that we need to do is appreciate our teachers. As Vara said, I said this last year, to me the term teacher is almost as deity, it’s an incredibly important think, yet we don’t even call our teachers, teachers anymore, we call them facilitators, I don’t like that. We pass rules, the district of innovation, it’s also called by certain teacher groups the district of exemption. A couple of things we do, we now hire non-certificated teachers. We now can raise class sizes without notice, and that really concerns me. We can’t be doing anti-teacher type things and expect to attract and retain our key employees. I believe that we could maintain our finances correctly, we could actually maintain people. I think they help You may or may not be aware, but the next couple of years the state’s going to turn TRS Care, the health plan, back to the districts. It belonged to the districts for many years, they district’s they couldn’t handle it, the state took it over, now the state it’s getting too expensive, they’re kicking it back. If we don’t handle that thing correctly, it will be a noose around our necks. Everybody knows the costs of those, they don’t necessarily have to be. With that, attract and retain compensation well, and above all appreciate them, because as an army dad, they are what I will call the boots on the ground. You need to make sure that they are taken care of appropriately, they are happy, and they feel like they are contributing.”