Michelle Palmer has run for the Texas state school board twice before, but this time she felt different.
“From day one, I heard people who hadn’t really been politically active before were concerned about education,” Palmer said.
Voters were upset about a number of issues, including a voucher program signed into law by Greg Abbott, the governor, that sent $1 billion in public money to private schools. They were concerned about new social studies standards that critics say promote Islamophobia and downplay the impact of slavery. They had seen students detained by immigration authorities and Abbott threatened to defund the district if students protested ICE. And they were angry about a curriculum incorporating Bible verses that seemed “imposed” on schools, Palmer said.
In an August poll, 45% of Texans disapproved of their state’s handling of K-12 education, while only 28% approved.
“People don’t like to have their children disturbed,” said Palmer, who teaches history and government to 11th and 12th graders. “I really think that’s a big part of why what happened here in Texas happened.”
Palmer won his race last Tuesday, helping give Democrats a likely majority on the state board of education for the first time in more than 30 years (a race has yet to be called). His victory was accompanied by victories by Gina Hinojosa, who made education a major part of her campaign for governor, and James Talarico, a former teacher who criticized the inclusion of the Bible in public school curricula.
“Public education was on point and voters made their voices heard clearly,” said Thomas Ray Garcia, a Democrat and community college professor who will join Palmer on the board in January.
Newly elected Democrats will have their work cut out for them if they want to reverse the effects of years of Republican control, many say. The Texas State Senate remains in Republican hands, which will limit Hinojosa’s ability as governor to overhaul the voucher program.
But the state’s new board members, several of whom are current or former teachers, say they hope to refocus public education in Texas on student learning, rather than what they describe as “culture war” issues that have garnered attention in recent years.
“I think we can turn to local control, put educators back at the table and make sure that every decision we make at the Texas State Board of Education is based on research and the science of learning, not what I call political science,” Garcia said.
Growing anger over education in Texas
Texas lawmakers and education officials have made headlines across the country in recent years for their efforts to align the state’s public education with Christianity and conservatism. In 2024, the school board approved a program called Bluebonnet Learning, which incorporates Bible verses and stories, including a kindergarten lesson involving the Sermon on the Mount. Although the program is not mandatory, districts receive money from the state to adopt it, which critics say can make the material impossible for underfunded schools to refuse.
The following year, the state legislature passed a law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms. And earlier this year, the Board of Education approved two controversial curriculum changes: Texas’ first-ever statewide required book list, which included excerpts from the Bible as well as Margaret Thatcher’s eulogy for President Ronald Reagan, and new social studies standards, which critics say downplay black and women’s history and present Islam in a negative light.
“It’s just not representative of all the students who live in this incredibly diverse state,” Palmer said.
Proponents present these changes as a way to teach students morality, or simply to introduce them to the Bible in the form of literature. But the changes have irked many voters in a state where test scores in many areas lag behind the national average, experts and candidates say.
Texans have been unhappy with the new book list, as well as a 2021 law intended to discourage the teaching of “critical race theory,” said Jonna Perrillo, an education historian and professor of English education at the University of Texas at El Paso. “A lot of Texans are really upset about the focus on these kinds of issues when they know it’s not the cause of our low test scores and low student achievement.”
“Many people whispered softly to me: ‘As a Christian, I don’t believe the Ten Commandments should be taught in public schools,” said Kimmie Fink, an education activist and mother of two in Liberty Hill, Texas. “There was this fear that people would talk about it publicly.”
The voucher program, created in 2025, has also sparked resentment in a state that ranks 47th nationally in education spending per student. By encouraging families to leave the public school system, vouchers can cause public schools to lose enrollment or even close, critics say.
“Where I live in El Paso, the student population is declining,” Perrillo said. “We simply don’t have enough students to fund our schools, and so vouchers only exacerbate that problem.”
Hinojosa got his start in education, fighting against the closing of his son’s school in Austin and then running for school board. One of his main campaign promises was to “end the voucher scam.”
That helped propel her and others to victory, as voters turned out blue for state offices, sometimes for the first time in a generation. In Texas this election season, education was “THE question,” said Dana Van De Walker, a Democrat and community college administrator who ran to represent her district on the state board of education.
Van De Walker received about 600 more votes than her opponent, Audrey Young, a Republican incumbent, with some provisional ballots remaining to be counted. If his victory is final, Democrats will have an eight-to-seven majority on the board in January.
Fink, who testified before the state board against the Bluebonnet program and the book list, had become accustomed to seeing her advocacy efforts fail. But she continued to work. This year, she became a member of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, a Christian group that opposes religion in public schools. “I did everything I could to get people to vote in the midterms,” she said.
Now, her previous experiences on the state board seem less like losing and more like “playing the long game,” she said. “We went out there and we fought and we told our stories, and I have to believe that played a role in what we saw last Tuesday.”
What happens next in Texas schools
The question now for Democrats is how much they can do to reverse years of Republican policies and adopt their own agenda. The book list and social studies standards have not yet gone into effect, and newly elected Democrats are optimistic that they will be able to change them, especially since Hinojosa, as governor, will be able to appoint a new board chairman.
Given the election outcome, “it’s hard for me to see this book list going into effect,” Perrillo said.
Getting rid of the good ones will be more difficult. The Board of Education does not control the voucher program, and any changes would likely have to go through the state Legislature, which remains partially controlled by Republicans. Hinojosa “is going to be surrounded a little bit by the Texas Senate,” Perrillo said.
However, newly elected Texas Democrats see this election as a sign that voters across the state, regardless of party affiliation, are tired of how their leaders have handled education.
“I never thought of myself as a Democrat first and foremost. I saw myself as an educator first, and I think that resonated with a lot of Republicans,” Garcia said. “They felt like their party was prioritizing private interests and culture war issues over real issues impacting their children’s education.”
Fink, for his part, hopes Hinojosa will refuse to fund any expansion of the voucher program, even if she can’t end it entirely. But she also has a broader hope for the state of Texas: “My vision is just that place where children of all identities, all faiths and all families can go to school, feel safe, welcome and realize their potential.”
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