Ryan Tsamouris

Christian. We were Baptist until my grandmother decided she wanted a livelier worship service, so I was raised in the Pentecostal church, which left a mark on me as a young man in ways I'm still grateful for. Later I met a beautiful young woman whose family attended a Methodist church, and that's where I found my home. Three denominations, one faith, and a healthy respect for the fact that people worship differently.

Ryan Tsamouris is an IT Architect, a ten-year local elected official, and the father of three Conroe ISD students. He served as Parent Chair of the school district's 72-member School Health Advisory Council and is currently President of both his Municipal Utility District and Homeowners Association boards. His wife Denise taught in CISD for 12 years. He is running to restore oversight, transparency, and fiscal discipline to a board that has lost focus on student outcomes.

First, governance experience. I have ten years as a sitting board president of two local government entities, where I have been personally responsible for budgets, audits, bond obligations, infrastructure, and tax rates. I have voted to lower tax rates consistently, lowering our MUD tax rate by nearly 30% in the last 6 years. This is not a theoretical experience for me. Second, district knowledge. I have attended CISD board meetings consistently for years, served two years on the School Health Advisory Council and currently chair it, and have written detailed public analysis of district governance since 2023. I also built a public tool at cisd.boardmonitor.app that tracks board agendas, meeting summaries, and policy changes so any resident can follow what the board does. Very few candidates arrive knowing the district this well....

One: loss of public trust. Over the past several years the district has been repeatedly pulled into controversy, leadership turnover, and public conflict, and too many decisions have been made through executive session or consent agenda with little public explanation. I would restore accountability by limiting executive session to what the law actually requires, requiring committee review and public input for major curriculum adoptions, and conducting a comprehensive review of board policy to remove political and ideological language from both directions so governance is neutral and durable. Two: budget pressure against flat enrollment. Enrollment has flattened after years of projected growth, and the district budgeted against projections that did not materialize. I would require conservative enrollment forecasting with variance reported publicly, stop the practice of funding recurring costs with one-time money, and conduct a hard review of legal spend and major external contracts, which have grown alongside the district’s recent controversies. I am committed to a parity or lower tax rate whenever it is achievable....

Conroe ISD already has one, and it is required by law. Texas Education Code requires every school district to have its fiscal accounts audited annually, at district expense, by an independent licensed CPA, in a format prescribed by the State Board of Education and subject to review by the State Auditor. The audit must include verification of the accuracy of the district’s PEIMS data, and the report must be filed with TEA. So the honest answer is that the annual third party financial audit is not something a trustee needs to pursue. It is something a trustee needs to actually read, question, and act on. In my experience on two boards, the failure is almost never that the audit does not exist; it is that the board accepts it as a formality without engaging the management letter or the findings....

Parents are the primary decision-makers in their children’s education. In practice this means parents should have real access to curriculum, instructional materials, classroom content, and online platforms their children use, and they should not have to file a records request to get it. It means major curriculum adoptions should go through committee review with public input before a board vote, not after. The Bluebonnet adoption is the clearest recent example of the district getting this backwards: a significant curriculum change implemented without meaningful teacher or community input....

Common Core: Texas prohibits it. House Bill 462 (83rd) added Texas Education Code Sections, which bar the State Board of Education from adopting Common Core standards and bar school districts from using Common Core to satisfy the requirement to teach the essential knowledge and skills. Texas teaches the TEKS. Attorney General opinion also confirmed districts must teach the TEKS. There is nothing for a trustee to oppose here; it is already settled law and CISD teaches TEKS. Critical Race Theory: CRT is a graduate-level legal theory. It is not a course, a curriculum, or a TEKS standard in Texas K-12 education. Texas law already restricts how certain race-related concepts may be taught in public schools. I would not support instruction that teaches students they are inherently superior or inferior by race, and I would also not support policing normal history instruction under the CRT label....

Yes. I live in the Grand Oaks area. Grand Oaks High School was built for about 3,000 students and has been running well past 3,800, with portables stacked on portables. The bond funded the junior high, the ninth-grade campus, and Kacy Arnold Elementary, which is the only real relief that area is going to get. I also wanted elementary kids to finally get gyms instead of doing PE in a cafeteria. And as a former FFA and 4-H kid who raised animals for the fair, I supported the ag barn. A yes vote is not a blank check, and that is where the board has fallen short since. My commitment is oversight: track every project against its original scope, cost, and timeline, report variances publicly instead of burying them, and hold administration accountable when one drifts. Voters approved specific projects at a specific price. They should get exactly that.

Yes. The board of trustees has clear legal authority over instructional materials and library collections in the district, and material that meets the legal definition of harmful to minors does not belong on a campus. My focus is on making that authority work through a process that is consistent and defensible rather than reactive. Right now the book challenge process is slow, inconsistent, and fought title by title, which serves no one. Not the parents raising concerns, not the librarians, and not the students. I want a process that is policy-driven, applies the same standard every time, resolves challenges on a defined timeline, and is transparent about how decisions were made. Systemic fixes, not one-title-at-a-time fights.

Yes. Material meeting the Penal Code 43.24 definition of harmful material has no place on school property, and I would support district policy and processes that keep it off campuses. On the second question, that exemption is already gone. Senate Bill 412 repealed it, effective September 1, 2025. Educators and librarians no longer have a professional-purpose defense. The only one left is for judicial and law enforcement officers doing their jobs. What matters now is implementation. Because educators no longer have the educational exemption defense, Conroe ISD has an obligation to give its teachers and librarians clear guidance on what the law requires and a reliable process for reviewing material, so that the district is protecting students and not leaving individual employees exposed to criminal liability over an ambiguous title. That is a governance responsibility the board owns.

One correction on the premise: those projections were not the Superintendent's. They came from Population and Survey Analysts (PASA), an outside demographic firm the district contracted, and for years PASA actually under-projected the district. Conroe ISD repeatedly enrolled more students than even PASA's high-growth scenario. What changed is birth rates. The district's current demographer, Zonda, now projects roughly 73,000 students by 2030-31 followed by a decline, against PASA's earlier estimate near 98,000 by 2032-33, and Zonda attributes it to fewer births than expected even with thousands of new lots still coming. That is a demographic shift, not a personnel failure, and I would rather be accurate about it than score a point. The budget problem is real regardless, and here is how I would manage it. Build enrollment forecasts conservatively, check them against the October snapshot, and show the board the variance plainly instead of burying it in a packet. Stop funding recurring costs with one-time money or fund balance. Review legal spending and major outside contracts, which have grown right alongside the district's controversies and are among the most avoidable costs we have. And address the part we actually control: families who lose confidence in a district leave it, and every departure is permanent revenue loss. Rebuilding academic quality and public trust is not a soft goal, it is the actual fix.

No. On athletics, Texas already requires K-12 athletic participation to be based on biological sex as stated on a student’s birth certificate at or near the time of birth. On facilities, Senate Bill 8 addresses multi-occupancy restrooms, locker rooms, and showers in buildings owned or operated by political subdivisions. Conroe ISD does not have discretion to adopt a contrary policy, and I would not propose one. The part of this that is genuinely within a trustee’s control is making sure the district applies the law consistently, does not put teachers and coaches in the position of improvising policy on the fly, and does not turn individual students into the subject of public board meetings. Enforcement should be quiet, lawful, and uniform.

A school board trustee has no authority to define gender, and no vote I cast will settle that question for anyone. What a trustee actually controls is whether the district follows state law, whether classrooms stay focused on academics, and whether every student in the building is safe and able to learn. Under current Texas law, instruction and programming on gender identity are prohibited in K-12, and I will enforce that. Beyond enforcing the law, I do not think a school board should be relitigating this in public meetings while our reading and math outcomes need attention.

If the question is whether I support Conroe ISD adopting a policy that promotes gender fluidity: no. State law prohibits instruction, guidance, activities, or programming regarding gender identity in K-12, and I will follow that law. If the question is whether I would support a blanket removal of every book or material that touches on gender or sex from district libraries: also no. Blanket removals by category do not survive legal challenge, sweep in health, biology, and history materials the district is required to teach, and hand the district an expensive lawsuit. The approach that actually holds up is a consistent, policy-driven review process applied to specific material against the legal standard for harmful material. That protects students and it protects the district. I would rather win this permanently through good process than lose it in court through a broad policy that a judge strikes down.

No, and under current Texas law the question runs the other direction. Senate Bill 12 prohibits school employees from assisting a student with social transitioning, and the statute defines social transitioning to include the adoption of a different name or different pronouns. A CISD employee is not merely permitted to decline; the district is restricted by statute. I will follow the law as written. I will also say plainly that I do not think teachers should be disciplined by the district for how they navigate an individual interaction with a child in good faith, and that the district owes its staff clear written guidance rather than leaving them to guess at a statute that is currently being litigated.

No, and I will explain fully because I expect this is a point of disagreement. The State Board of Education sets the TEKS and reviews and approves instructional materials at the state level, and that is appropriate. But Texas law deliberately leaves local adoption authority with elected local trustees, and I think that structure is right. If total and final authority sat with fifteen members in Austin, then the parents of Conroe ISD would have no meaningful recourse over what their children are taught, because the people who answer to them directly would have nothing to decide....

Full access, and it should be easy rather than adversarial. For curriculum and instructional materials, parents should be able to see what their child is being taught without filing a records request. For classrooms, parents should be welcome in schools, and I volunteer in my own children’s classrooms through the Watch DOGS program, so I mean this literally. For teachers, parents should get timely responses, and the district should set clear expectations for communication. For online apps, this is my professional field, and it is the area where districts are weakest. Parents should know exactly what applications and platforms their children are required to use, what data those vendors collect, where that data goes, and who has access to it. I would add that districts often fail this test not out of ideology but out of disorganization. The information exists in six places and no one owns it. Fixing that is a systems problem, and it is one I know I have experience with to solve.

Texas law already requires K-12 athletic participation to match the sex on a student's birth certificate. Conroe ISD follows that, and I will support it. Where a trustee actually makes a difference for girls is everything after eligibility: facilities for girls' programs that are funded and maintained, fair scheduling and travel, good coaches, and harassment complaints investigated quickly and taken seriously. Those are the votes that change what four years here actually look like for a girl, and they get a fraction of the attention the eligibility debate does.

Yes, and I would do it through the mechanism that actually works: a board vote on a policy that applies a consistent legal standard, with a defined review timeline and public reporting of outcomes. I want to be direct about one thing, because I think it matters to this audience more than a slogan would. A single trustee has no unilateral authority to pull a book off a shelf. What a trustee can do is build a majority for a durable policy. Individual public demands generate news coverage; policy changes generate results, and they survive the next election. I am interested in the outcome, not the theater....

I will be direct: I am not a curriculum expert, and I do not claim to be. I work in IT. On instructional decisions I would lean on our teachers and curriculum staff, who do this for a living, and I would expect them to bring me evidence rather than opinions. What I do believe firmly is that reading comes first. A child who cannot read fluently by third grade is locked out of every subject that follows, and no program later makes up for it. Beyond that, our CTE and career readiness programs are a genuine strength and serve the many students for whom a four-year degree is not the right path. And in the one area where I do have expertise, technology, I would push for practical digital and AI skills while being just as willing to pull technology out of classrooms where the evidence says a screen is hurting learning.

I am not aware of any policy in Conroe ISD that removed the Bible from school libraries. If you search within the CISD Library Catalog, you will find copies of the Bible available and hundreds of titles that relate to the Bible, whether children’s books or academic literature. I support having the Bible available in our libraries. It is the most historically and literarily influential text in Western civilization, and Texas Education Code already lists religious literature, including the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, and their impact on history and literature, among the subjects in the state curriculum. A library that excluded it would be making an indefensible academic choice.

Yes, and I talk about it openly because of the impact it had on me. In 2010, when I was 26, I was arrested for DWI. No one was injured. I took full responsibility for it; it was my decision and my mistake. It was also the turning point of my life. Within three years of that night, Denise and I were engaged and married, we built our first home, we were expecting twins, and I had started my career in the energy industry. I stopped drifting and started building....