Coppell Chronicle Vol. 6, No. 11
Coppell ISD Voters Choo-Choose Chaka • District Preparing for Another Bond Election • Council Rejects ‘Shops at Sandy Lake’ Plans • Shades Coming to Andy Brown Soccer Fields
On Friday, a friend asked if I wanted to spend time on his boat this morning. “Maybe you could finish the Chronicle early,” he suggested. I scoffed before telling him, “Saturday is Election Day. This is my Super Bowl, bro.”
Coppell ISD Voters Choo-Choose Chaka
The candidate with a train-themed campaign is on track to become Coppell ISD’s newest trustee.
Kevin Chaka earned more than 62 percent of the early votes in his race with Khanh Windham, and his haul increased to more than 63.5 percent once the Election Day tally was completed early this morning.
Here’s something I’ll address only because multiple people have asked about it: Although Chaka will succeed Board President David Caviness, who is stepping down after three terms, the title of president does not come with the Place 5 seat. After Chaka takes his oath of office, the seven trustees will decide amongst themselves who will serve as president, vice president, and secretary.
It’s certainly possible that Chaka could raise his hand for one of those roles, as he’s not shy about volunteering. His campaign touted his service on Coppell ISD’s District Educational Improvement Committee, its Community-Based Accountability System Advisory Council, its Bond Oversight Committee, and its Facility Evaluation Rubric Development Committee.
Chaka will be one of two former Coppell ISD students on the Board of Trustees, joining Leigh Walker. He and his wife, Holly Stokes Chaka, met when they were students at Coppell High School. They have two children in elementary school plus a toddler.
Chaka won all but three of the district’s precincts. The candidates tied in Precinct 2803, and Windham won two — Precinct 2801 in Coppell and Precinct 2601 in Irving; surprisingly, that’s not the Irving precinct in which Windham resides.
Here’s something that was not at all surprising: Chaka’s victory was driven by Precinct 2805, which includes Town Center Elementary School. Last year’s debates about closing that campus created a political movement, and Chaka’s most passionate supporters are former, current, and future Town Center parents. The 476 votes Chaka garnered in Precinct 2805 represented nearly 20 percent of his 2,423 total votes. He was favored by more than 80 percent of Precinct 2805’s voters. His next best result on a percentage basis was in Precinct 2808, where he was the choice of about 70 percent of voters.
(If you were expecting to see a color-coded map of the precincts in this edition, I have an embarrassing admission to make: I did not realize until this morning that Dallas County had created a new precincts map since last year’s election. Big-time oops on my part. You can review the new map here.)
After I spent consecutive Saturdays hanging out in the Coppell Town Center parking lot, my gut told me this was going to be the May election with the lowest turnout since the Chronicle began in 2021. However, the facts say otherwise. There were fewer voters in 2024, when Nichole Bentley won a third term while facing an anemic challenge from Eneida Padró.
When people asked what I thought about this election, I said the school district would be just fine no matter who won. Chaka and Windham were both qualified candidates, and I believe each of them could be a worthy trustee. And Windham could give it another go in a future election. After all, Jonathan Powers was elected to the Coppell ISD Board of Trustees on his second attempt, as was Tracy Fisher, who served from 2012 until 2022.
Meanwhile, check out this Election Day bingo card produced by Windham’s campaign team. I was flattered to be referenced twice on the bottom row.
Here’s a roundup of other election results that should interest residents of Coppell and Coppell ISD:
Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD Board of Trustees — Incumbent Carolyn Benavides of Carrollton won another term, and she will be joined by Cinthya Noda of Farmers Branch. The candidates left standing in the district’s game of musical chairs were Dave Jimenez of Coppell, who was separated from Noda by half a percentage point, and Luis Palomo of Carrollton.
Last week’s edition included an article called “Candidate Accuses CFBISD of Electioneering.” It was about Jimenez filing complaints with the Texas Ethics Commission and the Texas Attorney General over Palomo’s appearances on CFBISD’s social media. After that article was published, the district’s Communications Department forwarded me an April 27 letter from Jordan Hunn, the Texas Ethics Commission’s deputy director of enforcement, that says the commission doesn’t have jurisdiction over the matters in Jimenez’s complaint. But Hunn’s letter also says this:
“None of the communications identified in the complaint constitute political advertising, as they neither prominently feature the candidate nor mention his candidacy or the election. The bare fact of the candidate’s appearance is not sufficient to make the communications political advertising. Therefore, this allegation does not state a violation.”
Irving City Council — Al Zapanta easily won the mayor’s seat, earning more than 67 percent of the votes despite having two opponents. Meanwhile, it appears that incumbent Council Member Abdul Khabeer and challenger Kejal Patel are headed to a runoff in District 3, which includes the Parkside West subdivision within Coppell ISD. According to the unofficial final results, Patel bested the third-place candidate, Tamman Alwan, by only four votes.
The remainder of Zapanta’s term representing District 6 — which covers the vast majority of the Irving portion of Coppell ISD — will go to Fahad Ahmed. That means Irving and Coppell will each have a councilman who owns a martial arts studio in the other city. Ahmed owns Sixth Sense Martial Arts on MacArthur Boulevard in Coppell, and Kevin Nevels owns Championship Martial Arts, which has a location in Las Colinas. I can think of only one appropriate response to this factoid:
Lewisville ISD Board of Trustees — Staci Barker won a second term.
Lewisville City Council — Ronni Cade was reelected over two challengers, and Brent Kuykendall won the seat that Bob Troyer gave up after three terms.
Fun fact: Troyer has a distinctive look (a long white beard without a mustache), so I was 95 percent sure I spotted him working at Globe Life Field in an official capacity last week. When I emailed him to confirm, he informed me that he supervises the 50/50 raffle for the Texas Rangers Foundation.
Grapevine-Colleyville ISD Board of Trustees — It’s been a dramatic school year in the district to our west. Their superintendent resigned in November, a 5-2 majority of the trustees voted in December to close two elementary schools, and the Grapevine High School baseball team — the back-to-back state champs — lost a playoff berth last week for using an ineligible player. The drama continued on Saturday, when three trustees — Mary Humphrey, A.J. Pontillo, and Dianna Sager, all of whom voted to close the elementaries — were ousted by Darrell Brown, Matthew White, and Lindsey Sheguit, respectively.
Dallas Area Rapid Transit — Three municipalities’ voters were asked if they wanted to continue contributing sales taxes to DART. Nearly 70 percent of Highland Park voters said no, but more than 53 percent of University Park voters said yes, as did more than 70 percent of Addison voters. If Addison had gone the other way, the town would have lost its Silver Line stop.
District Preparing for Another Bond Election
Coppell ISD voters should expect to see at least a couple of bond propositions on the ballot one year from now.
The Board of Trustees meeting on April 27 included a preliminary discussion of a 2027 bond election. Coppell ISD’s most recent bond election happened in 2023, when a majority of voters approved four propositions with a combined value of $321.5 million.
During the April 27 meeting, Superintendent Leanne Shivers said her administration would like to establish a pattern of asking voters to consider bond packages every five years, which would mean an election in 2028. But Chief Financial Officer Amber Lasseigne said the Texas Legislature was laser-focused on such elections during their 2025 session, and conducting one next year would allow the district to avoid any new regulations lawmakers might concoct in their 2027 session.