The board that governs the Texas School for the Deaf will now meet Thursday, a week later than planned. It canceled both of last week’s meetings and re-posted the same 22 items for August 20, giving no reason in either notice.
The sharpest item is unchanged. A 2025 law makes a superintendent certify each year that his school assigns no diversity, equity and inclusion duties to anyone, and that it can discipline or fire an employee, contractor or volunteer who knowingly takes them on. The board must approve that certificate in public, with a chance for people to speak, after a week’s notice online. It goes to the Texas Education Agency by September 30 and must list any savings. Whether the law reaches this school at all is a question it does not answer: the requirement is written for school districts and charter schools, while the School for the Deaf is a state agency with a governor-appointed board that state law tells to act like a district board of trustees. The school is voting anyway.
The library item follows a different 2025 law, which makes boards approve the books a school library buys or is given, leave the list open for public review at least 30 days, and vote in an open meeting. Replacement copies already on the shelves are exempt. That statute is separate from a 2023 law requiring vendors to rate books, which a federal judge permanently blocked last October in a ruling the state has appealed. The same question about whether any of it binds a state agency applies here too.
Money and safety fill most of the rest. The board votes on next year’s operating budget and on the appropriations request it must send lawmakers by August 21 — the day after the meeting, and written under a July order from the governor, lieutenant governor and speaker telling agencies to shave three percent off their baselines. It also hears findings from an intruder detection audit, which state law keeps confidential, and an internal audit whose technology section goes behind closed doors.
The delay puts the board back near its own published calendar, which had listed August 20 and 21 for this year rather than the August 13 and 14 dates it first noticed and then dropped. A policy committee meets at 9 a.m. Thursday and the full board at 11. Watch the appropriations vote: it lands with one day to spare.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 11 a.m. CT Thursday, August 20, 2026, with a policy committee at 9 a.m. The notice was filed August 12, replacing meetings noticed for August 14 and canceled.
- Where
- Administrative Welcome Center Board Room, 1102 South Congress Ave., Austin.
- Governing body & chair
- Governing Board of the Texas School for the Deaf — nine members the governor appoints with Senate consent, at least five of whom must be deaf. Shawn P. Saladin is president.
- Format
- In person. A sign-up sheet for public comment sits outside the board room the day of the meeting; there is no advance deadline. Board policy sets no fixed per-speaker limit but bars the chair from cutting anyone below a minute.
- Live video
- None found. Nothing on the school’s board pages or its meeting portal indicates this meeting will be streamed or recorded on video.
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer · school board meetings page
Board members
- Shawn P. Saladin — president; UT Rio Grande Valley deaf rehabilitation academic.
- Heather “Hex” Lightfoot, Austin — vice president; orientation and mobility specialist.
- Christopher Moreland, New Braunfels — secretary; internal medicine physician.
- Lisalee D. Egbert, Arlington — UT Arlington deaf studies professor.
- Gregorio Mata, Edinburg — operations and data associate at a national nonprofit.
- Darlene “DJ” Nobles, Waco — owner of an interpreting agency.
- Oscar Ocuto, Austin — associate professor of education, Gallaudet University.
- Lauren Ridloff, Austin — actress; parent of two deaf sons.
- Kathy Sellers, Kosse — lead interpreter, Bryan school district.
The roster follows the school’s own board biographies page; all nine seats are filled and officers were elected in November 2025. That page lists no city for the board president, so none is given. Two members’ published cities differ between the school’s pages and the governor’s appointment announcements — Moreland appears as New Braunfels and Austin, Ocuto as Austin and Manchaca — and the school’s listing is used here. Peter L. Bailey has been superintendent since September 2023. The school, founded in 1856, is a state agency in its own right and put on-campus enrollment at 544 for 2025-26 in its most recent strategic plan. Board policy requires notice on a campus bulletin board, the school’s website and through the secretary of state.