| With much of the focus of the May elections in Austin on the hotly contested City Council races, there has been relatively little coverage of the race for Place 1 of the Austin Community College Board of Trustees. Board members serve as volunteers for the quite lengthly 6 year terms so we are stuck with who we elect for some time.
There are currently 3 people running for the seat: Tim Mahoney, Mike Reid, and Harrison Keller. Tim is a well know community leader and Democratic activist, and Mike is an ACC student.
The third candidate is more troubling. In press materials and his website, Harrison Keller describes himself as an independent, an education specialist, and the Director of Research for the Texas House of Representatives. What he leaves out of this description is that he was hired by and works directly for Tom Craddick. "Harrison is an excellent fit for research director," Craddick said when hiring Keller. "[He] will continue to be incredibly useful to me and to our staff when making policy decisions."
Further research shows he has been a policy orientation panelist and written policy papers for the pro-voucher Texas Public Policy Foundation. His writings advocate more funding for charter schools and basing teacher pay and school funding on test score results.
He describes himself as an independent, but his voting history shows he's voted in the last 3 Republican primaries.
According to UT Watch, he was also the "mastermind" behind tuition deregulation at state universities saying, "Students should pay whatever the market will bare." Just his week, the UT Board of Regents increased tuition by an average of 5% thanks to deregulation. So we can thank Mr. Keller for skyrocketing tuition that is making education at our state schools increasing out of reach for the middle class.
His involvement in a movement that is attempting to strip government services to nothing and replace them private, for-profit solutions is disturbing and begs more questions of why Keller would work with these individuals.
ACC is the education system that supposed to be accessible to the entire community. Is this the sort of person we want making decisions about how our Community College is run and how much students should pay the next 6 years? |
