Meet Your Board of Trustees Candidates: Jon Altschuler

The Highland Park ISD board of trustees will get a new face this year. 

Jon Altschuler and Michael Denton, Jr. will appear on the ballot for Place 4 on the board of trustees. The new member will replace Jae Ellis, who is not running for reelection.

See below for the candidate questionnaire Altschuler submitted to People Newspapers. Election Day is Saturday, May 3, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Early voting runs from April 22 to April 29. 

• What is your occupation?

Commercial real estate! I started a firm in 2009 called Altschuler and Company. I love the work.

• Why are you running for the Board of Trustees?

I am running to win a seat, and in doing so I will force the issue of teacher pay and expand the board’s perspective. We will chop a lot of wood together. 

Our community is best represented when we have a wide range of viewpoints on the board. One area where we presently are “out of balance” in this regard relates to having the viewpoints of those who moved here from elsewhere. There are very positive attributes to being from here and also from being from elsewhere, and the two coming together are what makes this school district so incredible. My wife and I moved here, and I will be offering a perspective this board tends to miss but which is often shared within the broader community. Accepting year after year that our teachers shall be underpaid is a board and foundation blind spot. Our teachers should be the best paid, and we can start doing this right now using the resources we already have.

• What will your priorities be if elected?

Set our teacher pay at the very top of market via budget tightening and more creative use of the Foundation’s Tartan Fund, improve our budget transparency such that we all understand the choices we are making between operational overhead and other areas, reduce the amount of school instruction and homework taking place on district-issued screens, and improve our college admissions results into elite state schools and top national universities. 

• What experiences or skills have prepared you to serve as a board member?

I have enjoyed all of the volunteer work that people expect from a trustee candidate – led two Bible studies, coached tons of youth sports, led three Y guides tribes, served as Bradfield Dads Club president, and served three terms as a board member on Highland Park Education Foundation. 

I serve on SMU’s athletics board and chair its liberal arts college board. What I have learned there is relevant to HPISD: a powerful donor base will stretch to great lengths when they are excited by your daring efforts. Top teacher pay is the school-district equivalent of joining the ACC. 

And my four years as a board member at Fort Worth Education Partnership, where we work to improve public education in that city, has given me an even greater appreciation for the value of capable administrators and the importance of outstanding teachers. 

What prepares me for this task, though, is paying close attention to my own family’s experience in the school district, observing that of others, listening closely to my wife about where there are obvious deficiencies, and having the ability to work with others to make a plan, work the plan, and be successful. 

• Please describe your connections to HPISD. If you are an HPISD graduate, include your graduation year. Please also include whether you have children who are students in the school district or are HPISD graduates, and their grades or graduation years.

I have many connections to HPISD. The first isn’t so great. My high school basketball team beat Eric Ochel’s HP squad like a drum in 1989, and I think he may still be crying in Coach Piehler’s locker room. Someone please check on him.  

Lori’s late father graduated from HPHS in 1961, and we have kids who graduated in 2021 and 2024 as well as a junior and an eighth-grader. Four kids total with a wide range of abilities and interests — the district has shown considerable dexterity educating each of our children. We feel that each child has had a unique and positive experience, and we are grateful for that. 

• What do you believe HPISD has been successful in accomplishing, and to what do you attribute this success?

I feel we accomplish most everything we set out to accomplish, and I think it is because we share the expectation that we will do so. We might fall short from time to time, but when we do, we are always back at it next school year.

• What are the greatest challenges facing HPISD, and what do you see as the board’s role in addressing these challenges?

While I study it closely and understand the ramifications, I think lamenting the attack on public education happening in Austin is a waste of HPISD time. Doing so surrenders our own agency to execute what is under our control in HPISD. Everything I have described in this interview requires no cooperation from the governor. 

“Declining sales” in the form of declining enrollment strikes me as a significant challenge. High home prices, high interest rates, and property tax caps will continue to make it harder for young families with children to move here. And the 2015 bond delivered us a ton of excess real estate we now service and maintain. As capable as he is, I wouldn’t expect the superintendent to solve this challenge. We need to lean in and get creative at the board level and lean on all residents who want to think about these challenges. 

Our state’s economic and cultural success is resulting in massive increases in applications to our elite state schools. UT had 90,000 applications this year. SMU’s applications were up 100% last year and 60% this year. The same is true for all of our prominent colleges and universities in Texas. We must see around the corner that admission to top schools is going to become even more challenging and prepare our students accordingly. 

• What do you think HPISD’s budget priorities should be? Are there areas where you would make cuts?

For one, you won’t see me suggesting we need to borrow more money to spend on school buildings. In fact, I published an Alternative Plan to downsize the 2015 bond, and what I have learned from the last two bond exercises is to interrogate projections that we are provided.

And buildings don’t teach our children, teachers do. Our highest priority should be getting teacher pay right and now. “Right” means the best and “now” means now. We should identify existing spending that limits this, and we should work more closely with HPEF to fund salaries to the best in North Texas. We are sitting on an existing endowment of $50 – 60 million, plus or minus. If we utilize $4 million of that next year to give 400 teachers a $10,000 per year raise, we would leap past all districts in offering the best pay. And when our donor base sees we are serious about addressing teacher pay, we will open the private-fundraising floodgates like we never have seen before. Look to the educational campus a couple miles east for evidence of what happens when you make bold moves (re: SMU ACC). 

• When you complete your board service, which achievements do you hope to be remembered for?

I don’t really worry about how I am remembered or about legacy. I want to do my best and look out for others. But I do hope I have a full funeral that’s really funny. Lord knows I have provided my friends with plenty of material.