By James Rincon

Pflag Reporter

Filing closed Monday for candidates seeking a seat on the Pflugerville ISD Board of Trustees. Incumbent board members Carol Fletcher and Vernagene Mott filed for re-election to seats 5 and 4, respectively. Neither Mott nor board president Fletch drew opposition in their races and will thus begin new three-year terms with the district.

Former board secretary Paul King is not seeking re-election for seat 3, which he’s held since 2001.

Four candidates have filed for the vacant seat on the board: Mario M. Acosta, Ginny German, Chester Warren Hoster and Rob Reyes. This issue marks the beginning of the Pflag’s coverage of those four candidates with profiles on the first two candidates to file, Mario Acosta and Chester Hoster.

Mario Acosta

Acosta is a familiar face in PISD. At the end of December 2009 he resigned as principal at Parmer Lane Elementary School after more than a decade with PISD to assume a position as a program specialist with the Texas Education Agency.

“During my professional life I have always been focused on my current responsibilities to my job, and that kept me pretty busy, so I never had any time for public serving. So that was one of my goals as I retired, to look at public service, and this is just the natural avenue for me, since my background is education,” Acosta said. “I feel like I can provide some good service to PISD because I really appreciate what they’re doing. The time that I worked for them I really enjoyed it and I hope that consistency continues.”

Acosta grew up in Marfa and later attended Sul Ross State University in Alpine. He said he knew from a young age that he wanted to work in education.

“I wanted to coach and teach and I needed 130 hours to get that classification and when I graduated I had exactly 130 hours, so I was really focused on what I wanted to do,” Acosta said.

Acosta coached and taught in Marfa for 12 years, during which time he said he experienced schools of all sizes and levels of education.

He then continued his education with a master’s degree in administration from what was then Southwest Texas State in University in San Marcus, followed by a superintendent certification from Sul Ross State.

“I wanted to again experience all the levels of educations. By that I mean I wanted to see how the elementary school operated, the middle schools, high school. Of course I already had high school experience. And I did that. I also experienced being an assistant principal, and a principal and a superintendent,” Acosta said.

If elected to the board of trustees, Acosta said he wants to continue to push the installment of systemic programs in the district.

“An example of that is the common curriculum… The students are going to get the same education and that also goes to the vertical alignment of the curriculum and the levels that you attend, you will be getting that same curriculum. I think the more systems we have in place, the more apt the district is to learn them and just plug personnel in as teachers…allowing transition and consistency throughout the district,” he said. “I think that once that’s in place there is less of a chance for gaps in the curriculum and gaps in the supervision of the students that lets them fall through the cracks.”

Acosta said he is impressed with the board and the direction it has given PISD in recent years.

“I like the consistency of the current board. The board has been in place for a few years and they’re working very well together, so I think my role would be to keep that going and keep the consistency,” he said.

Chester Hoster

Hoster is a computer scientist for KLA-Tencor who has worked on the technology portions of Texas School Performance Reviews for North Forest ISD, Donna ISD and Kerrville ISD with the state comptroller’s office.

Hoster said public service is an important part of his life and now that his 4-year-old son is in a PISD program, serving on the board of trustees is a way for him to invest in his community and his family.

“I have one son that’s in … a program that we got him involved in [Preschool Program for Children with Disabilities because he had some speech problems early on, and that’s largely related to the hearing issues that he had during early childhood. I’ve got another son who’s about 20 months now and he’ll be in the program in a couple of years as well,” Hoster said. “Obviously with two young kids in the program and with a background from a family perspective in education in Texas, I felt like my services at the school board level would be an appropriate choice.

Hoster received a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Texas State University and finished his master’s at the Univeristy of Texas last December.

“My wife and I have been discussing our ability to give back to the community over the last couple of years. Obviously with two young children and during grad school the opportunities that I had were very limited,” Hoster said. “But now that I’ve graduated from college the second time around, I feel like I have substantially more time that I can dedicate to community service.

Hoster describes himself as fiscally conservative and says he applauds the board for their budget management over the last decade.

“We’ve been through some pretty tough economic times, especially since the change in the way school districts are funded and where Pflugerville ISD ended up in that equation. So I feel like that direction is already being served by the existing school board, and I feel like I would like to continue in their existing financial conservancy,” he said, referencing the 2006 changes to the state funding formula that shifted the district’s funding from state revenues to local property tax revenue.

Another issue that Hoster said is of personal interest to him is raising awareness for the district’s special education programs.

“Our son has already been wonderfully served in the year that he’s been in Pflugerville ISD’s program, and I feel like the way we got to that program was kid of haphazard. We were connected by a doctor that we had with Easter Seals for early childhood intervention between 18 months and 3 (years),” he said. “We got him in with his teacher over at Rowe Lane and he’s made so much progress in the last year. But one thing that I’m concerned about is that there is a lot of parents out there that may not have gotten directed to Easter Seals and may not have even had any awareness of this type of program or that such things were available.

“I just hate to think what would have happened if we had waited until our child got to kindergarten age and sent him off to school. He would have been so far behind and that opportunity would have been missed to get him caught up.”

Hoster said his background in computer science has built strong problem-solving skills that would benefit him on the board. He also has a background in project management and budgetary resource allocation.

“Through my work in the technology industry I have a strong background in information technology from a hardware management perspective, network management, that sort of thing. I’ve also got a background in software development. So I think I would bring a very strong technological role when it comes to the board addressing issues for the district moving forward with new technologies and how to address existing technology policy. So certainly from my work history that’s the strongest asset I would bring.” Hoster said.

As the region recovers from economic downturn, Hoster said allocation of funding will be one of the more important responsibilities facing the board, and one of the most difficult.

“That’s really where we’ve got a lot of problems these days, both because money is tight all over and because the state funding formulas are not necessarily working out in our favor at present,” he said. “We have to do the best we can with the resources that we’ve got. It doesn’t do us any good to whine about it. We just have to be really, really carefully about what we do with our dollars.

jrincon@pflugervillepflag.com