Two incumbents are facing challengers in the May 6 Ector County ISD Board of Trustees election.
Donna Smith, Position 3, will square off against Wayne Woodall and Dennis Jones, Position 7, will face Robert Thayer and John Dietz Rabenaldt. Attempts to reach Rabenaldt were unsuccessful.
Early voting is 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. April 24 to April 28 and 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. May 1 and 2 at the Ector County Courthouse Annx, 1010 E. Eighth St.
Smith, 67, graduated from Odessa High School in 1974. She earned a bachelor’s from Texas Tech, her master’s from the University of Texas, and her PhD from Texas Tech. At Odessa College, she taught English, and retired last year after 41 years there. She has been on the school board since 2006.
“I want to run again because after a long time of struggle, the district is finally on an upward arc, and I want to protect that positive growth since it’s relatively new and thus fragile. We are a B district now, with exciting growth in multiple areas. I bring knowledge, stability and 17 years of experience, which means that I know what things to protect, what things still need attention, when to press and question, and when to hang back and let the district do its work,” Smith said.
She added that she thinks the district still needs a bond because many schools are overcrowded and many students have to travel too far every day to get to school.
“Also, our schools are aging and have infrastructure problems that are too great to address from a normal yearly budget. Hand-in-hand with our ability to pass a needed bond is the need to do better at garnering goodwill with our community so that it will support us,” Smith said.
“As a district, we need to do a better job of customer service, treating parents and other people who come into our schools as valued partners in children’s education, acknowledging problems and working with people to come up with solutions. In addition, there are still a variety of challenges and frustrations teachers face in the classroom, ranging from over-crowded classes to frustration with curriculum implementation and professional development issues so that people feel overwhelmed and under-supported,” she added.
”The delay in getting students tested for special education in the early grades creates a stress on teachers and students alike, which is a problem caused by too few diagnosticians in the district. In addition, there are dangerous illegal drugs circulating in our community, affecting our children and linked to their struggles in school and later in life. I think the district is at an inflection point. We have to protect and nurture the gains we’ve made while continuing to identify, acknowledge and address the problems we still struggle with,” she said.
If she’s reelected, Smith said she wants to protect the gains ECISD has made, see the district continue to grow and systematize some of the promising and innovative programs, such as blended learning, Opportunity Culture, and outcomes-based, high dosage tutoring as well as the pipelines built to try to meet our district’s personnel needs, such as the need for more teachers and diagnosticians.
“I want to continue the work in early childhood education, providing appropriately staffed and supported pre-k 3 and pre-k 4 classes for all children who need them; I want to continue the work to find qualified teachers and grow our own so that each school is fully staffed with well-trained, qualified teachers who have appropriately and reasonably sized classes,” Smith said.
“Though we are addressing the delay in testing kids for special education accommodations by helping people to become diagnosticians through our diagnostician pipeline (where the district actually pays for the training of these individuals), I believe that we need to look for creative interim solutions while those people are being trained to reduce the time it takes to diagnose and offer special education services. That will lessen the burden on teachers with kids in their classes with undiagnosed special education needs and more importantly, it will help kids get help sooner in their academic career,” she added.
Smith said she wants to see the district do a better job of strategic staffing, so that high-poverty schools have more resources to deal with that challenging population of children and parents.
“Those schools need strong, experienced, successful teachers as well as specialized training in how to serve high-poverty families and access to a strong wrap-around social support system to help these families be better able to help their children. I want the district to look for opportunities to partner with others in the community to help combat the rise of dangerous illegal drugs in the community,” she said. “Though I’m proud that we offer the highest starting salaries in the area, I’d like to see our salary schedule meet or exceed the regional average at every level.”
Smith said she also wants to pass a bond that addresses needs in all parts of the county.
“Along with a couple of other board members, I’ve begun visiting campuses to talk with teachers, staff, and parents to hear concerns, and I want to continue that practice because I believe it’s the best way to know what’s working and what’s not. It’s also a good way to build trust and connection and to show that I want to help make things better. “
She is having work days to block walk, call and address mailers April 15 and 29.
“We have tentatively scheduled April 2, April 23, and May 4 as ‘Dial Days,’ where we meet and make phone calls. I know that some people are trying to organize a candidate forum, but that event hasn’t been finalized yet,” Smith said.
Woodall, 45, is the lead Life Skills Teacher at Midland High School. His father is former board member Doyle Woodall and he has not run for school board before.
His father, Doyle Woodall, was forced to resign from the board following a controversy over social media posts he made.
”I am running for School Board because I believe being a teacher who is still currently working with students on a daily basis gives me a real life common-sense perspective that the current board is lacking,” Woodall said.
If elected, his goals are to:
- Bring some strategies to improve classroom discipline.
- Improve our teacher retention, by providing the best and safest environment to teach.
- To bring back a focus on the individual needs of the students not on just getting them ready for a standardized test.
The biggest issues he sees facing ECISD are poor teacher retention, student apathy, the need to improve discipline, the need to listen to the public, failing schools and poor reading levels across ECISD.
Woodall is an Odessa High School graduate and went to college at West Texas A&M in Canyon and Sul Ross State University in Alpine where he earned a bachelor of science degree in kinesiology with a minor in history.
Woodall also has a master’s of education degree in sports management from Hardin Simmons University in Abilene.
He is married to Jennifer Woodall and they have three children, one grandson and another grandson on the way this summer.
Jones, 63, was appointed to the board of trustees in May 2022 to replace Nelson Minyard, the previous trustee who had retired and moved from the district. The school board held a special meeting June 20 and trustees interviewed eight applicants for the spot.
Jones has lived and worked in Odessa for 17 years as a prosecutor, Judge and now a private practice lawyer. While working as a Municipal Judge for the City of Odessa he was actively involved in the truancy program for 13 years. He also has previous teaching experience at Angelina College and Odessa College.
Together, he and his wife have three children and five grandchildren.
“As the newest member of the board of trustees, I want to continue being a part of the improvements and growth that our students and staff are showing on a daily basis. I am excited for our future at Ector County ISD, and look forward to helping our students and teachers achieve greatness,” Jones said.
If reelected, Jones intends to continue the existing programs to maintain low vacancy rate of the district’s teaching positions, continue progress made on academic scores and becoming an A rated district.
“The largest issues as I see them are infrastructure, overcrowding and funding. The average age of district buildings is over 60 years. It is imperative that the community find a consensus on how to build forward. This ties in with the overcrowding of our traditional high schools and the overcrowding at each. I again think a community consensus on building new schools must be reached. Funding across all of Texas for public education ranks in the bottom 10 states of the nation. I believe it is essential for the state to get serious about improving funding for public education,” Jones said in an email.
Thayer is the lead pastor at Odessa Bible Church.
“I have a desire to do my part to help our community be all it can be. When I think of how I can help Odessa be better, serving on the School Board seemed like a natural progression. I have worked with kids for a very long time. I’ve been on campuses leading after school programs on two of our elementary schools and I’ve volunteered at Reagan and STEM,” Thayer said.
He added that he works with youngsters in his church and has gone to camps, coached teams and was a board member at Jim Parker Little League.
“I like to help and it seems that a common thread in my background is working to help kids,” Thayer said. “Each person must take inventory of his abilities, resources, experience and opportunities and then apply them for the greater good. We can all do something. I think the thing I can do to help our community is to serve on the school board.
If he’s elected, Thayer said he would like to help ECISD come up with innovative ways to solve some of the existing and coming issues.
“This is what we do as Odessans. Innovation is part of our community’s DNA. I would like to contribute to the innovation within our district. What we can do, we need to do and be the best at it. I would like to help maximize what we have as a district. We have a great legacy that has been entrusted to us that needs to be maximized. From our parents, staff and students, we need to explore new ways to maximize their potential. We need to strive to solve our solvable problems that oftentimes don’t require money, just determination. One of the areas we can maximize is our campus culture,” he said.
“For example, continuing to work hard at involving more parents in the education of their children at every level (Scott Randolph does great work), but there is more we can do with the kids on campus to change the culture. Penalizing bad (sometimes criminal) behavior with increased discipline and rewarding hard work can improve the culture and on-campus safety on each campus. This needs to be maximized,” he added.
“I would like to help focus our attention on the things we should be doing as a district. This is extremely difficult. We can do a lot, but what should we be doing. Things like math, reading, writing, science and history, for example, need to remain the top priority. This means we’ll have to learn to say ‘no’ to some things so we can say ‘yes’ to the most important things,” he said.
A big issue facing ECISD is a need to build, which means a bond is needed.
“However, we need extreme transparency and communication from our administration on the details. We have to do a better job in communicating with our community the who, what, where, and why of this massive project. We also need to think beyond just one mega campus. We all know smaller is better so why not consider building two smaller campuses rather than just one big one,” Thayer said.
“I estimate that it could take at least 2-3 years before whatever we build is finished. What are we going to do in between time to help our students and teachers be successful? Are there some ‘in-between’ solutions that will help our teachers teach and students learn,” he added.
Thayer said many things have changed since the nightmare of lockdowns.
“We learned a lot about education through that experience. Are there some take aways from that experience that we can employ to be more efficient, effective and excellent in what we do as district?” he said.
“The paper reported a few weeks ago that our district will decrease in population which will force us to evaluate some of our spending. This will be a coming challenge.”
Thayer said the primary role of a board member is to represent the parents to the administration and the administration to the parents. It is the go-between the two, helping communicate the needs, desires and expectations in both directions. This is why the board is “elected” by the community.
“I think this needs to be done more effectively. The two groups — administration and parents — have to work in concert to help prepare our students for tomorrow’s opportunities. We need our board to be effective in helping these two groups work together,” Thayer said.
Thayer is from Anaheim, Calif., and moved to Texas in 1994. While he wasn’t born in Texas, he has lived in Texas longer than he lived in California.
He attended Whittier Christian High School in LaHabra, Calif. He earned a bachelor’s degree in pastoral ministries from Christian Heritage College (now called San Diego Bible College) in El Cajon, Calif., just outside of San Diego.
Thayer attended Dallas Theological Seminary where he earned a master’s of theology degree, graduating in 2000.
