Southlake Carroll trustee gives Republicans his blueprint for successful schools
The Southlake Carroll School Board vice president spoke to a crowd of about 50 True Texas Project meeting attendees on how to demand accountability and a better product from their school board.
At Monday’s meeting, Trustee Andrew Yeager said he’s likely the only conservative elected that believes in making public schools great again.
Yeager said there are three goals people run for municipal office to accomplish: their own will, someone else’s will or God’s will. The reason he first ran for the school board back in 2021 was to accomplish God’s will, and he said he does so by focusing on Plato’s transcendentals of truth, goodness and beauty.
The outcome for Carroll, Yeager said, was raising literacy rates with a lowered tax rate.
“This is not R or D,” he said. “This is just doing good governance.”
Yeager said the reason more school districts are seeing low literacy rates is because they are buying into the Texas Association of School Boards’s philosophies. Southlake Carroll ISD left the nonpartisan association in 2023 because the organization had policies favoring diversity and its offerings were too expensive.
Texas Association of School Boards offers training, policy guidance and risk management for school boards. Yeager called the training “indoctrination camp” for newly-elected trustees.
Sylvia Wood, a spokesperson for Texas Association of School Boards, said the organization does not indoctrinate. Its mission is to promote classroom excellence by advancing good governance, advocacy and education for school leaders. The training offered focuses on making the most of every tax dollar and meets all state requirements, she said.
Yeager told the conservative crowd that every school district in Texas would have higher literacy rates, lower taxes and less bond debt with the right fiscally-responsible leaders in place.
Southlake Carroll is set to pay off its $208 million bond from a 2017 election in 2030 or 2031. Carroll ISD also has the highest literacy rate and one of the lowest tax rates in the county.
Per a 2025 Houston Chronicle article, the school district is tied with Highland Park as the wealthiest in Texas.
Wood said the Southlake Carroll school district is projecting a budget deficit while facing a decline in enrollment and increasing costs, like many other districts across Texas.
“We welcome ongoing debate of how TASB and its member school boards can continue to support educational excellence and fiscal responsibility — as long as that discussion is based on facts,” she said.
Throughout the presentation, Yeager and a few outspoken members of the audience mentioned with scorn that voters have removed many school board trustees like-minded to Yeager in the last few years.
Allison Campolo, chair of the Tarrant Democratic Party, said the conservative candidates aren’t winning because they have unpopular ideas like school vouchers and the removal of bilingual programs. They are actually proactively turning out voters who oppose them, Campolo said.
This story was originally published May 11, 2026 at 11:02 PM.