Seven Candidates, Three Seats: What Conroe ISD Trustee Hopefuls Say Before Early Voting
Early voting opens Oct. 19 for three Conroe ISD board seats. Here is who is running and what each candidate said about budgets, teachers and parents, in their own words.
Early voting starts Monday, Oct. 19, and three of the seven seats on the Conroe ISD board of trustees are on the ballot. Seven candidates are running. Whoever wins will help decide how the district handles a budget shortfall, flat enrollment and a fast-growing special education population.
Early voting runs Oct. 19 through Oct. 30, and Election Day is Nov. 3, with polls open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., according to Community Impact. Polling locations are posted at elections.mctx.org.
Who is on the ballot
Candidate filing closed Aug. 17, Community Impact reported. The races are:
Position 1: Aggie Gambino, the incumbent, and Ryan Tsamouris.
Position 2: Robin Deferrari, Rodney "Rod" Hammer and Destinee Milton. There is no incumbent in this race.
Position 3: Board President Misty Odenweller, the incumbent, and Phillip "Phil" Martin.
Every candidate answered the same questions in Community Impact's candidate Q&As. Their answers show a real choice, and voters should read them in full. What follows is what each candidate said, in their own words.
Position 1
Gambino said she is running "to continue building platforms that bring parents' voices to the front of the room, and to serve every child, especially our most vulnerable students." She named unfunded state and federal mandates, implementing new curriculum so reading and math scores improve, and "rebuilding trust with staff and families through a major leadership and systems transition" as the district's biggest challenges.
Tsamouris said his wife taught in Conroe ISD for 12 years and that he "watched strong educators leave and families lose confidence while the board chased political agendas instead of governing." He said special education is "now roughly 17 percent of enrollment" and called for enrollment-based state funding. He also listed vouchers and charter expansion as reasons "public schools lose ground," and said he would consider a VATRE, the voter-approved tax rate election, "where the math works."
Position 2
Hammer, a CPA and former construction company executive, said, "The conservative board elected in 2024 has started the turnaround. I want to help finish it," he said. He blamed prior leadership for budgeting on "enrollment and property-value growth that never arrived," and said the district must "earn every student" now that families have more choices. "Back them on discipline; a teacher who cannot keep order cannot teach," he said of teachers.
Deferrari, a Rice MBA with 25 years in oil and gas and a former PTO president, said "the biggest challenge is the budget" and that the board "needs stronger financial experience and must prioritize teacher pay and retention." She called for "a more collaborative, transparent board" and named vouchers and "the funding they pull from public schools" as the greatest challenge ahead.
Milton, a former Conroe ISD teacher, said she is running "to remove the political noise, rebuild trust, support educators, advocate for proper school funding." She called for closer scrutiny of non-instructional spending.
Position 3
Odenweller said, "Since joining the board, I have put parents back in the driver's seat, removed woke ideology from our classrooms and libraries, and worked through a budget deficit while keeping academic success our top priority." She said future budgets should be built "on current, honest enrollment data rather than outdated growth projections."
Martin, who said he has worked 22 years in municipal finance, including on Conroe ISD bond programs, called the district "a billion-dollar enterprise that needs trustees who can read what's in front of them." He said enrollment is projected to decline, that the district "carries significant debt," and that "seven campuses earned a D or F." He promised to "re-bid stale contracts" and "protect taxpayer dollars."
Analysis: What voters should weigh
The dividing line in this race is plain. Odenweller and Hammer say the current board majority is fixing problems it inherited, including the content in classrooms and libraries. Tsamouris and Milton say the board has been too political and has lost the trust of teachers. Martin and Deferrari are running mainly on financial competence.
Christian parents have every right to expect that the schools they pay for will respect their children's innocence and their own authority as parents. That question is on this ballot. So is something every taxpayer should care about: whether the district can balance its books without cutting the classroom.
On one point, every candidate agreed. Each said the state's school funding has not kept up with costs and named special education as a growing obligation that must be met. Voters should ask the candidates how they would pay for it, not just whether they support it. Every candidate's claims above are their own and have not been independently verified by Dock Line.
Read every candidate's full answers from Community Impact for Position 1, Position 2 and Position 3 before you vote.
Related from Dock Line
Hero photo: Stedil via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0; cropped and resized, adaptation shared under the same license.
