The ballot for the Nov. 2 Tomball ISD Board of Trustees election is set now that the Aug. 24 candidate filing deadline has passed and for at the foreseeable future, there will be two new members on the board.

Positions 1, 2, 3 and 4 are all up for election this year and a pair of incumbents, Steve Robinson (Position 2) and Katherine Hanson (Position 1) chose not to seek re-election this year.

Taking Hanson’s place will be Katherine Handler, a local small business owner who has lived in Tomball ISD for the past 11 years. Handler is the only applicant for Position 1 and will replace Hanson and the board.

Handler and her husband, David, currently have a son attending 10th grade at Tomball High School and a daughter who graduated from there in 2008. Their youngest child will attend Tomball Memorial in two years.

“We’ve had a great experience in Tomball ISD,” she said via e-mail response. “It will be an honor to serve as a trustee in a district that has tremendous leadership and wonderful teachers.”

Hanson is completing her eighth year on the board after first being elected in November 2002.

“This was a very difficult decision for me,” she said.

Hanson cited family commitments, and with much her family living out of state, said she wanted to dedicate more time to them.

“It’s something I will miss tremendously,” she added. “It was one of those things that was tug and pull ’til the last minute.”

Robinson is completing his second term on the board after serving first from 2001 to 2003, then again beginning in 2005.

He did not return messages to the Tribune by press time last week for comment as to his reasons why he is not seeking re-election.

The spot he is vacating, Position 2, is the only contested race among the four this year, with three candidates vying for the spot.

Michael Pratt, David Zuhlke and William Harris all filed applications to run for Position 2.

Pratt is a manager for Hewlett-Packard and has lived in Tomball for 10 years, Zuhlke is a civil engineer, also with 10 years in the district and Harris works in private security and has lived in the district for just over five years.

John McStravick (Position 2) and Mark Lewandowski (Position 4) will retain their seats after they filed applications and no one will oppose them.

Lewandowski was first elected in 2003 and will serve his third term. McStravick, who currently serves as the board secretary, was elected in 2000 and will enter into his fourth term.

This year marks the first time in five years Tomball ISD has held an election. In 2006, none of the board members seeking re-election were contested, so the election was cancelled.

An election was scheduled in 2007, but according to district spokesperson Staci Stanfield, it was cancelled after the Texas Legislature amended the Texas Education Code which required state school districts to enter into agreements with either the city or county in which they resided.

“Tomball ISD opted to enter a joint election agreement with the county, which changed the three-year board terms to four-year terms because county elections are held in even number years,” Stanfield explained via e-mail. “Therefore, we canceled our election in 2007 because the county was not holding an election that year. At that time, the district began four year board terms.”

In 2008, again the election was scheduled and called, but there was no opposition, which forced the cancellation.

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