2026 election: Meet the Round Rock ISD School Board Place 3 candidates
ROUND ROCK, Texas - Amber Feller Landrum, Vera Southwell, Gregory Andrew, and Ayaan Moledina are the candidates running for Round Rock ISD School Board Place 3.
Meet the candidates
The backstory:
Amber Feller Landrum has been on the Board of Trustees since 2018.
"I think experience matters. You know, I've spent eight years on the board so far. My heart is in it. I do this for all the children," she said.
Vera Southwell says her career has been in data analytics.
"I believe that the district needs thoughtful, responsible governance that looks beyond the current budget. I want to understand the risks, consider the alternatives, and measure the results," she said.
Greogory Andrew is a nurse practitioner retired from the U.S. Army Reserves.
"If you want something you don't have, you need to do something different. You just have to," he said. "We are going to bring our teachers in, and they are going be represented far beyond any union could ever do. We're going to listen to them. We're going to have them sit down. We're to make absolutely certain that if you are face-to-face hands-on with a kid, you are what makes this machine operate."
Ayaan Moledina just turned 18 and regularly does advocacy work at the State Capitol. He wants to run for school board because he wants to create more support for students that he felt he didn't have and bring more representation to the board.
"It's so important that we have a fresh voice and fresh perspective because education now and eight years ago has changed so much and to have someone who was in Round Rock ISD classrooms just a few years ago is an invaluable perspective," he said.
RRISD's $6M budget deficit
What they're saying:
One of the biggest issues for the school district is a roughly $6 million budget deficit.
Feller Landrum says a problem is the state legislature not funding public education.
"We've made cuts, and cuts, and cuts and cuts. Every year, we're cutting our budget by millions of dollars. Our annual budget is around $500 million, and we're cutting that on a regular basis. What we've done so far is we've tried not to touch the classrooms, and tried not to touch our staff and our teachers, because that's our most sacred commodity," Feller Landrum said.
"We must look beyond one year of budgets. Budget is what we plan to spend this year, and strategy is what is our plan and how are you going to sustain those choices over a long time. The district has both. However, I would like to see more financial and operational connection between the two," Southwell said.
"I think we need to look at what we can shave. I'm not about cutting things and throwing the baby out with the bath water. We're going to need to sit down and talk about could we, are there services we could contract?" Andrew said. "I think that what we should do is go out into the community and bring some big high profile guy. I don't know, Michael Dell, come in, bring him in and have him help us out as a superintendent. Elon Musk, somebody like that, have him come in."
"I would be hesitant to proactively say anything [to cut]. I would want to hear from administration on what they think first, and then based on that push back and take back to them what I think can and can't be cut, because they know better than anyone," Moledina said.
RRISD's VATRE election
By the numbers:
Round Rock ISD also has a VATRE on the ballot this year, which stands for voter-approved tax rate election.
For the median-value home in Round Rock, this would be about $200 more per year in property taxes.
"50 percent of that money will go to teacher and staff raises and to supplement health care increase costs, but the other 50% will go back to the state for the state to use in their general fund," Feller Landrum said.
"I support teachers being paid well. Teachers face our students, they definitely should be paid very well. However, my concern is with financial sustainability. We need to understand where we will take money next year, not only this year," Southwell said.
"We're against it. We're wanting to vote no against that package. These things, they just rush these things through and people vote for it as an impulse because they think that this is really what's going to make things better. It's just another example of dumping more money into a system that we need to pull back and save," Andrew said.
"I'm in full support of the VATRE. I honestly think it doesn't go far enough. I hope that later down the line we can work towards a $20 an hour minimum wage for our staff in Round Rock ISD," Moledina said.
Other issues at play
Dig deeper:
Moledina also addressed a video on social media of what appears to be him fighting another student.
"The video that was edited, highly edited, was a video of me and one of my close friends from high school that were messing around being teenage boys. The fact that that is being weaponized is disgraceful. It is disgusting," he said.
Andrew was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in a road rage case in 2024. That was ultimately dismissed.
"It doesn't excuse the fact that there was an encounter on the road that was not pleasant. I don't think I did anything wrong. I was caught between, I was in an unfortunate situation," he said.
The Source: Information in this report comes from reporting/interviews by FOX 7 Austin's Angela Shen