Texas’ third-largest school district just rejected Christian extremism on the board of trustees
Glorious Way Church’s public endorsements backfired as Cypress-Fairbanks ISD voters rejected the Christian Nationalist agenda
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The third-largest school district in Texas is the Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, and for years now, the board of education has been engaged in fighting culture war battles instead of educating students.
That finally came to an end on Tuesday when three conservative incumbents were defeated by a slate of pro-education activists who worked together to bring a measure of sanity and maturity back to the district.
To understand how big of a deal this was, it helps to know what the Cy-Fair district had done in recent years ever since conservatives gained a majority on the board.
In 2024, the Board voted to remove 13 chapters from science textbooks because those sections covered “climate change, vaccinations, cultural diversity, depopulation and humans’ impact on the Earth and its ecosystems.” To put that another way, these conservatives acted like textbooks approved by the already-conservative State Board of Education were too woke for kids.
They fired half the librarians in the district, which resulted in many school libraries having to close multiple days a week.
They passed an unnecessary policy requiring any library purchases to go through a 30-day public review process first, so that parents could theoretically complain about books they didn’t like. (Normally, schools allow librarians to make those decisions using their expertise and their professions’ best practices.)
The board members gave themselves more power to directly ban books they didn’t like from school libraries.
When Texas gave school districts the ability to hire chaplains in lieu of trained social workers and counselors, the board voted against it (thankfully!) but there were two dissenters.
They unanimously approved Bible-based electives as options for students to take in high school.
They were sued over a Texas law requiring them to put up Ten Commandments posters in every classroom (though a judge blocked that law from going into effect before the posters could go up).
This is what the board prioritized instead of working to help students.
And it’s why, in late September, Associate Pastor James Buntrock of Glorious Way Church in Houston literally endorsed three members of the congregation—Radele Walker, George Edwards, and incumbent Natalie Blasingame—to maintain conservative control of the Cy-Fair Board. (Another church member on the school board was not up for re-election this year.)
BUNTROCK: We have some business to take care of this morning. I would like to invite our three school board candidates from Cy-Fair ISD to please come forward and take the stage. I want them to greet you for just briefly…
…
BLASINGAME: Good morning, everyone. I’m Natalie Blasingame, and I’m a mother, I’m an incumbent, I’ve been on the board serving you for four years, but more than anything, I’m a Christian.
…
I’ve been in schools for 32 years, and when God gave me an assignment—you talked about it—He literally told me on an airplane that the role was to tear down the over-interpretation of separation of church and state in our schools. As clear as day. And at the time, I was supervising high schools in Houston ISD, and guess what? I am one bold chick, okay? I can do things. But guess what? That actually gave me a little bit of trepidation. I was like, “God, that’s a big assignment.” And that was back in 2015, guys. We’re still in the war, but it’s now. It’s now. The time is now. I thank Glorious Way Church for your boldness to take a stand today.
…
BUNTROCK: You count Christine [Kalmbach, in the audience], and you count these three right here, and on a board of seven, just with what we have in the room, that would be a majority to get God’s mission accomplished in that school board…
You are officially endorsed by Glorious Way Church… But we are just taking the fight up another level. I don’t care what the IRS says about this. I don’t care about the Johnson Amendment. We’re endorsing candidates when we find the right ones. And so you’re officially endorsed.
With the Johnson Amendment killed off (for now), this church told its members to vote for three candidates whose primary qualification for running a massive school district was apparently their devotion to Jesus.
Well, it now appears that endorsement backfired.
The conservative candidates on the ballot, including Blasingame and board president Scott Henry, all lost their seats to a trio of educators who were fed up with their Christian culture war bullshit.
The three winners—Lesley Guilmart, Cleveland Lane Jr., and Kendra Camarena—ran as the “pro-public education” slate.
“We all have current students in the district. We all currently [have] skin in the game,” Guilmart said. “The other slate does not. The other slate is not entirely made up of educators, and they also, again, aren’t advocating to our elected officials for the level of funding we need.”
Four years ago, when Blasingame and Henry were first elected, Guilmart and other parents formed the nonpartisan group Cy-Fair Civic Alliance, now Cy-Fair Families for Public Schools, to “protect local public schools from political and religious extremists.”
“When our then six-to-one extremist board majority voted to cut bus routes and then spent the summer censoring instructional materials,” Guilmart said, “I just got really fed up and decided I wanted to run at that point.”
Maybe God was sending those church members a sign: The public school district isn’t the place for your religious zealotry. The people in the district were fed up being pawns in some spiritual game that ultimately made life worse for their kids.
In many ways, what happened in the Cypress-Fairbanks ISD wasn’t just a local election. It was a moral reckoning that’s been taking place in nearby school districts as well, with citizens pushing back against recent right-wing swings.
Voters looked at a school board hijacked by religious crusaders and said enough. They saw how a handful of self-anointed culture warriors traded science for scripture and replaced librarians with censorship committees. And then they did the only thing they could do: They took back their schools.
The conservative board members’ downfall may be the result of their own arrogance. They believe that public schools exist to serve their faith rather than their community. When a church publicly endorsed someone who vows to “tear down the over-interpretation of separation of church and state,” it’s clear everyone involved is openly declaring war on the Constitution itself. Their defeat is a reminder that people don’t like when their children are treated as soldiers in some church’s holy war.
The fight doesn’t end here, though. There are plenty of school districts still poisoned by conservative extremists using the same playbook. They are eager to whitewash history, dismiss science, treat teachers as enemies, and glorify their own ignorance. Their goal isn’t to prepare students for the future. It’s to control and indoctrinate them before they’re smart enough to think for themselves. Every victory for public schools must be defended again and again, because the moment attention fades, the zealots always return.
This victory is worth celebrating. One of the largest school districts in Texas now, once again, belongs to the people who want it to succeed. It took a lot of planning and grassroots organizing and people willing to step up and run for those seats. But it worked. They showed that ballots are more powerful than any sermon.
And this in Texas? Wow, maybe the times, they ARE a-changin.'
Or maybe the majority of people in this country just don't like xtian fanatics.
Tuesday was even better than I thought.