Ball High’s own AP environmental systems teacher, Dr. Daniel Hochman, might be the next member to join the State Board of Education. Tired of environmental amateurs determining policy, Dr. Hochman explained his decision to run for State Board of Education along with his ideas for potential changes to the Texas curriculum.

“I decided to run because I’m really passionate about education, I’m passionate about my students and the well-being of my students and teachers.” He followed up with “I have a really strong belief that students should be told the truth about the past and the present and not water it down to protect people’s feelings,” stating “because that’s not how history works, that’s not how science works.”

Hochman claims there’s an attack on public education, that practices such as the school of choice voucher programs, textbook revisions, and standardized testing are simply created to dismantle public schools in favor of private charter schools and to ransack taxpayer money. “So what happens is, especially in rural locations where there aren’t charters and private schools, they end up paying for rich people in cities to send their kids to private school and the whole time that’s stealing money from their public schools,” he says, “so their public schools fall apart and then the state comes in and says ‘see, public schools aren’t working’ and they shut down the public schools and take over public schools and put in place charter schools.” He also issues that charter schools artificially inflate their numbers by picking the best kids and leaving out certain groups.

The environmental systems teacher also went on to elaborate about his plans to change Texas’ fixed education curriculum, stating “I want to see curriculum scaffolded throughout the whole state so that year by year everybody’s getting the same information step by step so as they go by grade, they have the background they need to succeed.” Hochman also mentioned his hopes to rid standardized testing as well as book banning throughout Texas. “Book banning has got to stop. That’s censorship and it really leads to fascism,” ending with “they did that in Nazi Germany.”