Dear Reader: This is a piece is about a powerful but little-known organization in Texas, the Texas Association of School Boards. It’s a story of how even in a state where conservatives have been governing strongly for years, shadowy left-wing groups amass huge sums of public money and use it against us. Whether you’re a Texan or not, it’s a case worth studying: there are networks like TASB in every state, and we need to fight them everywhere. - Joe
Most Texans have never heard of the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB). TASB is an NGO which purports to represent Texas school districts and the boards that govern them. It takes taxpayer dollars from nearly every school district in the state through membership dues. It offers questionable “services” to members and benefits financially from relationships with major vendors. And its crown jewel is a massive and unaccountable risk pool for its member districts that operates outside the usual frameworks that govern insurance.
TASB’s revenues have grown steadily for years, surpassing $100 million for the first time in 2025. And it has used those funds to become a powerful political operation, lobbying in favor of left-wing social issues and higher property tax, and fighting against education reforms. It does all this with very little transparency owing to its “private” status. That may be changing soon, thanks to more and more Texas leaders waking up to the fact that we’ve allowed unaccountable organizations to metastasize in our state.
Aristotle explained in Politics millennia ago, “…often a great change of institutions takes place unnoticed when people overlook a small alteration…” In the derelict corners of bureaucracy, cancers and corruptions take root that eventually threaten our culture, our children, and the fabric of our society. The left has run that play in Washington and in the universities, and they have run it just as well in states that conservatives naively assume are “safe” because of the way they vote.
For years, many conservatives in Texas have worried about the left winning elections, and what that would mean for our governance. Unfortunately, the left learned long ago that winning elections in a complex country is just one way to rule; another option is to capture the institutions that operate beneath elections — like boards and associations with large, hidden pools of public money.
A bold Texas legislature can reassert the interests of the public, and this next session is the moment. Legislators, including House Speaker Dustin Burrows, are paying attention. I’ll be fighting alongside them.
It will come as no surprise that TASB’s priorities are significantly to the left of Texas voters (and it even represents the left-wing fringe of the Texas public education system).
TASB encourages extreme forms of DEI, urging districts to conduct racial audits and to implement “equity” based policies at all levels, from board rooms to classrooms. It lobbies against education reforms like vouchers and school choice (no surprise there). It has taken extreme positions on issues of gender, coaching school districts how to undermine parental rights in cases of transgender-identifying students.
Whether one personally agrees with those positions is beside the point. We vote on those issues at the ballot box, and it’s a problem when entities like TASB, which vacuum up huge amounts of taxpayer money, end up using that money to undermine the very things the public has voted on. It is an attempted end-run around our democratically-elected legislature!
So, how exactly are taxpayers paying for all this, and who else is getting the money that TASB takes in? Like any skilled NGO, TASB has multiple sources of money beyond its membership dues paid by districts: bond consulting, pseudo-insurance, trademark licensing to connected entities, and interests in purchasing networks used by its member districts.
Texas school districts owe $148 billion in bond debt, per the state Bond Review Board. Follow a bond dollar and TASB is waiting at every stop: it sells districts “Bond Election Assistance” and publishes “Seven Steps to Successfully Passing Your Next School Bond.” BuyBoard supplies the vendors who build the projects. Its subsidiary’s investment pool markets itself to invest the bond proceeds while they’re spent. The pro-bond PACs are funded by the vendors who profit from the bonds. A recent report by the Texas Public Policy Foundation documented how firms that made a relatively small investment ($27,500) in a pro-bond PAC later collected over $26 million in bond-related work. It is an obscene circle of grift.
TASB operates the largest school risk pool in Texas: the Risk Management Fund. In FY 2025, it collected $249.7 million in contributions (similar to insurance premiums) and held $522 million in assets. TASB staff runs the Fund, and the Fund paid TASB $2.2 million just for the use of its name. This private franchise relies on the state’s interlocal-cooperation law, which also serves as the source of its immunity. An ironclad member contract dating to 1974 underpins the Fund’s operations. By explicitly classifying the Fund as ‘not insurance’ and omitting any ‘insured’ status for members, the contract allows it to evade the laws that govern how actual insurers must act. As a consequence, TASB gets to use this non-insurance as another source of leverage over member districts (and under current law, if a district sues over a denied claim, the Fund can hide behind immunity).
Then there’s BuyBoard, a purchasing cooperative open only to TASB members that lets districts skip competitive bidding, from which TASB takes a cut of purchases. There is the Lone Star Investment Pool, managing tens of billions in long-term district resources, from which it can also take a cut. Even by NGO standards, this is an impressive level of reach. TASB has managed to become a veritable conglomerate on which districts simultaneously depend and prop up.
And as I noted, our key leaders in Texas are now paying proper attention. The Texan News reported recently on the efforts of State Senator Mayes Middleton, who is running to be Attorney General:
As a private, nonprofit organization, TASB is not subject to state oversight or transparency requirements such as state open meetings and public information laws. Texas Sen. Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston) has filed legislation that would redefine nonprofit state associations and organizations like TASB, TASA, and TML as governmental bodies. This year Middleton is also renewing efforts to ban taxpayer-funded lobbying.
And Texas Rep. Briscoe Cain remarked at a recent hearing featuring TASB leaders:
“You’ve done great today. Your organization has drawn the ire of the governor, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, conservatives across this state, members on this dais… Please know the ire wasn’t directed at you. I just hope that you find another job with another organization eventually, because we want to see this one shut down.”
Our team at the Cicero Institute spends a lot of time studying how unaccountable organizations like TASB capture public funds — and what the best policy remedies are to restore accountability and public interest. In the case of TASB, things have grown so out of control that we need to end its influence entirely in our state. Here’s a non-exhaustive list (you will notice that the one thing not on here is “asking nicely” — we have to go after the money).
End association-administered risk pools by amending the interlocal-cooperation statutes they’re built on to bar private associations from running or profiting from any interlocal entity, so TASB’s single largest revenue stream ends. The Lone Star Investment Pool and BuyBoard stand on the same statute.
Place the $22.8 billion investment pool under state management to eliminate the $10 million in annual fees TASB’s subsidiary collects, ensuring no successor can rebuild the racket under a new name.
Move BuyBoard’s contracts and purchasing functions to the Comptroller’s existing Texas SmartBuy program, so that districts keep their purchasing power — but vendor fees stop flowing to the association.
End association-sold bond election services by prohibiting any entity that advises districts on bond planning or elections from deriving revenue from the resulting debt, including purchasing fees and proceeds management.
End association administration of health-benefit pools by moving programs to TRS or the State Office of Risk Management, so employee coverage continues without the conflicted middleman.
End immunity through express statutory prohibition and waiver, so pools and their administrators can be sued like anyone else when they deny a claim.
Ban anyone who lobbies from administering public money, enforced by the Attorney General, Comptroller, State Office of Risk Management, Texas Department of Insurance, and contracting entities, so whatever survives or gets rebuilt under a new name can never go political again.
Require transaction-level spending transparency for all covered public funds through databases housed with the Office of the Comptroller, so every fee, rebate, and affiliate transfer is public record and the quiet deals end.
Force open competitive procurement, with mandatory rebidding every few years, on anything that remains privately administered, and bar awards to any association that lobbies, so no group can convert a government function into a permanent revenue stream again.
Give the Attorney General express subpoena and civil investigative demand authority over any nongovernmental entity, and its affiliates, that administers, invests, insures, or derives revenue from public funds, so no private-nonprofit label or immunity claim keeps the state from opening the books of an organization run on public money.
Enforce by authorizing contract invalidation, clawbacks, disgorgement, penalties, debarment, removal, criminal consequences, and injunctive relief through actions brought by the AG and state agencies, so violating the law costs more than obeying it.
None of this is just about one organization. The task at hand rises above preserving the independence of Texas’ schools to something much bigger. These types of schemes only run until a legislature finds the nerve to remove them, and Texas has the nerve, the leaders, and now the playbook. Cut out the rot, return the money to the classrooms, and let organizations like TASB argue for their own ideas the way free people do: by persuasion, and not with our taxpayer money.
P.S. Our team is scouring the states for other corrupt organizations lurking in the shadows. It’s time to stop sending free machine guns to the Marxists. If you have any leads, please send us an email at info@ciceroinstitute.org.
TASB has been the origin of almost every woke, anti-intellectual school policy.
Shut it down.
The Fall of America really escalated when Nixon removed the gold standard, I believe. The cost of living has continued to climb while those with friends in the right places have lined their pockets with dollar bills then and still printed with the stamp of the press. And there are people dying in the streets while the once white house has become an idol draped in gold. I am proof housing first works. I am proof that not all homeless are criminals and insane. I have looked into the eyes of the man I loved as he passed away and the world only saw a homeless man dead in the woods. I have had it all taken away when my camp was swept, even my financial aid was swept away. It was more than anyone should ever have to and never did I lay down to die too even though I wanted to. I rose to speak for those who are poor downtrodden and lame.
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Emma Lazarus
November 2, 1883