Copperas Cove ISD appoints Mike Wilburn to fill trustee vacancy

Copperas Cove ISD trustees moved quickly to keep Place 5 filled, appointing former trustee Mike Wilburn after Heather Copeland resigned from the seat she won in November 2025. The special meeting on Monday, June 8, left the district with a familiar hand in place as it heads into a year shaped by campus projects, election turnover and the reopening of Williams-Ledger Elementary.

Board president Joan Manning said Copeland stepped down for private family reasons and health reasons. Copeland had served about six months of a term that runs until November 2028, making the vacancy a short but significant interruption in a seat that voters had only recently settled in a three-way race against Carl “Moose” Smith and Trang Nguyen.

Wilburn, who served 18 years on the Copperas Cove ISD board before most recently leaving in 2026, said he intended to serve only until the November election. The board treated the appointment as interim, with voters expected to choose a trustee on November 3, 2026 who will finish the unexpired term. Place 5 is not the only board seat on this year’s ballot: Places 6 and 7 are also open, giving residents multiple chances to reshape the board at the same time.

The appointment gives the district continuity at a moment when trustees are still dealing with a heavy load. J. L. Williams/Lovett Ledger Elementary was damaged by heavy rains in early July 2025, and the district declared the repairs an emergency on Aug. 12, 2025. Trustees later approved work on Nov. 18, 2025 that included 96 new HVAC units, new servers and speakers, and cabling infrastructure for the campus. District officials said then the school was on track to reopen for the 2026-2027 school year.

That makes the board vacancy more than a routine personnel change. The next trustee to hold Place 5 will be part of decisions affecting rebuilding, enrollment planning and other district priorities already underway in 2026. For now, Wilburn’s return means the board has a seasoned member back in the room as those votes come forward.

Copperas Cove ISD has handled a similar vacancy before. In June 2017, trustees appointed former trustee Bob Weiss to Place 6 after Doug Cook resigned in April 2017. Weiss later won the November 2017 election to finish that unexpired term, a precedent that now gives residents a clear next step in Place 5 as the board keeps moving toward the fall ballot.