Update (10:37): With 100 percent of the Austin ISD precincts reporting, Kendall Pace is officially the winner in the AISD School Board At-large District Nine race. Ted Gordon won in District One with 56 percent of the vote and Paul Saldana won in District Six with 53 percent of the vote.
Update(10:05 p.m.): With 92 percent of the Austin ISD precincts reporting, Kendall Pace continues to have a healthy lead over Hillary Procknow in the at-large District Nine race for Austin School Board.
In District One, Ted Gordon continues to inch ahead of David Thompson. As of the last report, Gordon has 55 percent compared to Thompson's 44 percent. But voter turnout was very low in that district, with fewer than 6,000 people voting.
In District Six, the race is even closer between Paul Saldana and Kate Mason-Murphy. However, Saldana continues to inch ahead of Mason-Murphy with 53 percent of the vote. That race saw low voter turnout, too.
Original Post: Early voting results are in for the three Austin school board positions. Two of them are in geographic districts and one race is for a district wide seat.
District 1:
David 'D' Thompson: 48.6%
Edmund 'Ted' Gordon: 51.40%
District 6:
Paul Saldana: 50.83%
Kate Mason-Murphy: 49.17%
District 9 (at-large):
Kendall Pace: 64.84%
Hillary Procknow: 35.16%
The district wide race is between Kendall Pace and Hillary Procknow, two candidates who consider themselves progressives and agree on many issues. However, Procknow is very passionate about her stance against standardized testing. The two mostly differed when it came to their campaigning. Pace raised at least $80,000 dollars in contributions, but as of the last campaign finance report, Procknow did not receive any contributions. In fact, before the general elections Procknow actually endorsed another at-large candidate, Kazique Prince, because she believed her lack of fundraising cost her the race.
In East Austin's District 1, Ted Gordon is running against David 'D' Thompson. Gordon is a UT Professor and chairs the African and African Diaspora Studies department. Meanwhile, 'D' Thompson is a former teacher who is now a minister at the Austin Stone Community Church. That race received attention because Thompson received donations from the Leadership for Educational Equity, a Washington D.C. based group that supports Teach for America alums.
The last race is in south Austin in District Six. Local public relations firm head Paul Saldana is running against former Austin teacher Kate Mason Murphy. Two other seats were up for election in November. Julie Cowan won that race in District 1 in Northwest Austin, while incumbent Trustee Robert Schneider won in Southwest Austin's District 7.
