Coppell Chronicle Vol. 5, No. 11
Voters Just Add Powers to School Board • Sethi Steps Down After Seven Years • Challenger Prevails in Flood Control District • Another Cowgirls Team Earns a State Title
I was a little bummed this morning, because somebody I was rooting for on Saturday finished in second place. No, I’m not talking about a school board race; I’m talking about a horse race. The runner-up in the Kentucky Derby goes by Journalism. With a name like that, how could I not be a fan?
Voters Just Add Powers to School Board
Several people who keenly track Coppell ISD elections — including this reporter — thought the campaign between Jonathan Powers and Julie Waters would be as closely contested as the aforementioned horse race. At least one of the candidates felt the same way.
“I honestly feel like it could come down to 50 votes,” Waters said in a Facebook post on Friday.
That’s why several people — including this reporter — were surprised when the early voting numbers, which are always revealed as soon as the polls close on Election Day, showed Powers with a commanding lead: 65.5 percent to Waters’ 34.5 percent. When the Dallas County Elections Department’s final tally was posted at around 1 o’clock this morning, Powers had 62.5 percent of the votes, earning him a seat on the Board of Trustees.
The vote totals were 2,979 for Powers and 1,788 for Waters. Two years ago, when Waters challenged David Caviness during his bid for a third term, she earned 2,746 votes. Turnout for this year’s election was about 20 percent lower, because the 2023 election also included four Coppell ISD bond propositions plus a Coppell City Council race. That said, if Waters’ level of support had similarly dropped by about 20 percent, she would have ended up with nearly 2,100 votes this year. As was the case in 2023, Waters’ strongest pockets of support were in the precincts outside Coppell’s city limits.
During this year’s candidate forums, Waters brought up her large number of “Just Add Waters” signs and said she’d placed them all herself. But as the old saying goes, signs don’t vote. Neither do banks, convenience stores, or any of the other businesses along Denton Tap Road where Waters’ signs were posted.
As the campaign season progressed, signs touting Sheri Hill started to appear outside the same businesses. But Hill got only 23 percent of the votes versus the 77 percent earned by Leigh Walker, who was running for a fourth and final term. (Coppell ISD doesn’t have term limits, but Walker has said she plans to stop serving when her youngest child graduates in 2028.) I didn’t bother creating a map for that contest because Walker prevailed in every precinct.
Walker was unopposed in 2022 and 2019. When she and Mary Duran vied for an open seat in 2016, Walker earned 73 percent of the votes. Her total number of votes back then was 3,571, and her total this year was 3,577. That 2016 election also had a much higher turnout than this year’s due to the ballot including a Coppell ISD bond proposition.
Because it’s never too early to look ahead to the next election, I’ll tell you that the seats held by Caviness and Ranna Raval will be on the ballot in May of 2026. Same goes for the Coppell City Council seats occupied by Don Carroll, Mark Hill, Ramesh Premkumar, and Jim Walker.
Sethi Steps Down After Seven Years
Monday’s meeting of the Coppell ISD Board of Trustees was the final one with Manish Sethi on the dais. Sethi was elected in 2018, when he and Balki Chamkura vied to fill a vacancy created by Jill Popelka’s move overseas. Sethi was unopposed in 2019 and 2022.
Near the end of Monday’s meeting, the other trustees took turns praising Sethi and thanking him for his service. Board President David Caviness kicked things off by saying Sethi had challenged him, which helped shape Caviness’ views on certain topics. “You’re certainly going to be missed up here on the dais,” he said.