Mike Midler: Conroe ISD Board of Trustees Candidate
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Hello Woodlands gave the opportunity to candidates running for Conroe ISD Board of Trustees to complete a written interview including the same five (5) questions. View candidate’s responses to our questions, if provided.
The Conroe Independent School District election for Trustee Positions 1, 2, and 3 will be November 8, 2022. Board members are elected for four (4) year terms.
CONROE ISD BOARD OF TRUSTEES – 2022 CANDIDATE
Mike Midler is running for Conroe ISD Board of Trustees Position 1.
1. Share about yourself and your background.
After serving with the USMC in Vietnam, I returned home and attended Indiana University where I earned my bachelor’s degree in 1976. I had a double major in Forensic Science and Political Science, with minors in Education, History, and Sociology. Graduating during a recession, jobs were scarce. I had to move to Wyoming for my first job, teaching Government and Criminal Justice. I also became a coach. After 7 years I moved to Texas and had teaching positions in Alief at Elsik High School and in Austin at the International High School before returning to Houston to Aldine High School. These experiences provided me with extensive exposure to numerous real-life educational situations. At the time, Elsik had 5000 students and was the largest high school in the state. Aldine had 90% economically disadvantaged students. At the International High School, I taught 500 new immigrant children who represented 9 different languages. My lifetime Texas teaching certification is a Social Studies Composite with an ESL endorsement, so I was prepared for all these positions and enjoyed teaching the thousands of students I had over the years. I taught AP Government and AP Economics as well as ESL, and History, and Geography. My teaching and coaching career spanned 40 years. I was also a UIL certified basketball referee and softball umpire.
2. What motivates you to run for the Conroe ISD Board of Trustees?
My experience provides me with a perspective that is not currently represented on the school board. I have personally experienced many of the situations that students and staffs are experiencing. Safety and security concerns, limited input into how their schools are operated, financial shortcomings both in compensation and expenditures, state testing concerns, and pressure to do “more with less” when it comes to time and money. My motivation and only agenda item is to do what is best for the students, school communities, parents, and taxpayers.
3. What are 5 things that you want voters to know about you (personal, points, views, experience, etc.)?
I have the education, training, and personal demeanor to understand our educational system and work with other people who have various perspectives to bring about outcomes that are best for our students, staffs, and community. Parents have a right to influence their own child’s education, but agendas like mass book banning that affect other peoples’ children need to have a checks and balances system in place. Our current board has done this and we have a good system to protect individual First Amendment rights. We also have Title VII and Title IX regulations that protect against discrimination and bullying. Our current board policies reflect those protections. It is important that these policies be enforced on individual campuses. I view each school as a microcosm of our larger community, the entire school district. If you visit a campus, you will immediately notice the atmosphere present in each school. We need to keep all our schools working toward a developing a positive educational environment so that our students can feel safe and achieve the very best education possible. It is a constant challenge that requires a cooperative effort by students, teachers and staff, administrators, and parents. The responsibility of the school board is to implement policies that will promote this positive environment.
4. If elected, what would your top 3 priorities be?
SAFETY AND SECURITY: With $45 million being spent on security upgrades, I hope projected improvements will be made quickly, providing additional security measures for our students and staffs. A “panic button” in each classroom and reliable security cameras are needed. As we saw in Uvalde, a solid, a reliable radio system must be in place. Each classroom and staff member should have rapid access to a radio (busses as well). Each school should have a safety and security committee to identify any issues in their school.
ADDITIONAL COURSES: I taught Economics & Government for 40 years. Teaching Government was made more difficult because my students did not have a foundation in the basics of our system. As an Economics teacher I found that students needed some practical knowledge. You can’t become a productive citizen without a basic understanding of our governmental system and how our economy functions. As a member of the school board, I would encourage the adoption of both a Civics and Consumer Economics class in our high schools. The future direction of careers in this country dictates a need for more technical education as well. We should look toward implementing necessary courses in those areas also.
TRANSPARENCY: There is only one way to engage the public as a school board member and that is by being completely transparent. I have no agenda other than seeing to it that our students, staff, parents, and taxpayers all have input so that our schools can provide the best education available. You can’t do that behind closed doors. You can’t do that without allowing anyone who wants to speak before the board, be it a grievance or a kudo, to speak. And you can’t do that by formulating a bond issue without allowed every stakeholder to have input. And we might as well face the fact now that we are going to have to have another bond election during the next two years. Our growth rate mandates it. So, let me just address that now by stating that 1) Taxpayers pay a lot in property taxes and until the state legislature votes to properly fund public schools, we will have to do it ourselves through our school property tax and bond issues; 2) That said we need to “keep it real.” CISD is growing rapidly and we need school buildings and staff. We need to work toward keeping the next bond issue as low as we possibly can while meeting the needs of our student population; 3) No one should be excluded from the process of determining what goes into the bond election – Board members, parents, staff, those for the bond, and those against the bond – every stakeholder should have input so that we can all support the bond issue that results from that input.
5. Would you like to share any other words or message?
I want to say that I am not a fan of using the STAAR test, period. It is not a true measure of what a student has learned, and it is not something teachers should be “teaching to.” Every student is unique and using this one test to “measure” what they know is ridiculous. But until the State rescinds it as their measurement tool, we must live with it. That said, let’s look at our most recent scores, if only as a reference point. The first caveat to remember is that we are coming off a year that followed the pandemic and scores are going to be skewed a bit and difficult to fairly interpret. Scores are going to be even less meaningful to what a child has learned in my opinion. Let’s look at a couple of examples. The good news in English I is that CISD did 9% better than the state average in 2022. The bad news is that CISD scores in 2022 were down 7% over 2021. The state average was only down 3%. In English II, the state was up 1% and, while CISD was 7% higher than the state average, we were down 3% over CISD 2021 scores. The biology scores were also down a bit, but overall CISD scores were higher than the state average and, in many subjects/grades, higher in CISD in 2022 than in 2021. We could go through all the scores and note the deviations, but overall CISD did well. One positive I see is that with the new online testing format for 2023, students should feel more comfortable, and therefore more confident, this year. With less worry about COVID and schools being more secure, the stress level for students and staff should allow for a much more positive educational environment and more productive outcomes. In other words, my expectation is that our scores should go up in 2023. The role of the school board remains in providing incentives to hire the best possible teachers that will continue to provide our students with the quality education CISD is known for providing. Also, keeping our quality teachers should be a top priority. We must work toward decreasing stress levels, limiting additional duties that create stress, and showing teachers and staff proper respect. Teachers don’t just teach, they create the environment that encourages our kids to learn. Teachers help raise our kids. Do we really want them having to take a second job to make ends meet? Pay teachers what they’re worth. In Some countries, teachers are among the top-paid professionals. The US is 7th in the world in teacher pay. Luxembourg pays teachers $101,000/year. And Texas teachers make $7500 less than the average teacher salary in the United States, placing them in 26th position. I’ve seen districts give teachers a 2% pay increase with one hand while increasing insurance premiums by 4% with other. That is disrespectful and unfair. It’s time we treat teaching as a true profession and give them a real increase in pay. I know we can’t pay them like Luxembourg pays them, but the time for a significant pay increase is long overdue. My first teaching contract as a starting teacher in 1977 was $8500. Factor in inflation and that would be $60,000 in today’s money. In other words, teacher start their careers at the same pay level as they did 45 years ago. I don’t think that is true for any other profession. We also need to make sure all CISD employees have adequate health insurance at a reasonable cost. The school board must be very diligent in studying this issue to make sure the taxpayers are getting the best deal possible.
Learn more about Mike Midler:
Visit the Hello Woodlands 2022 Election Guide for the Conroe ISD Board of Trustees Candidates to view all candidates, interviews, and voting information here.
Visit the Conroe ISD Trustees Elections page to learn more about the November 8, 2022 election here.
Please note that Hello Woodlands is an unbiased, nonpartisan news source that does not support only one party or candidate. We do not accept or receive advertising or funding from any candidate, party or group. We believe in providing the community with educational information, credible facts, thoroughly researched topics and articles, and to be a voice for ALL members in our community.
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