Board President Regina Harris and trustee Eron Linn are the only current board members with more than two years of experience in their positions. Both of their seats, along with the currently vacant District 5 position, will go before RISD voters on May 7.
In RISD, five trustees are elected by residents of specific districts, while the remaining two trustees are elected by residents at-large. The filing period for those interested in running for the RISD’s board opened Jan. 19 and is scheduled to end Feb. 18. Linn has filed for re-election, while Harris said she plans to run again.
Ahead of that upcoming election, the board approved changes to each of the five trustee district maps in December. The changes were made after the 2020 census showed the largest district was 12% bigger than RISD’s smallest district, Chief Financial Officer David Pate said. The new trustee maps give RISD a 9.86% differential between the two most and least populated districts, which is under the 10% difference required by the state education code, according to Pate. Trustee District 1 now has the smallest population and District 5 the largest, Pate said.
While any newly elected trustees are expected to be seated by June, Harris said she would like to have the district’s next superintendent hired before the beginning of the 2022-23 school year. However, RISD has not begun accepting applicants for the job. Harris said she expects the board to begin planning for its superintendent search at upcoming meetings.
Team of eight
The superintendent and the seven-member board of trustees are collectively known as a district’s team of eight, former RISD trustee Kim Caston said. After her 14-year tenure with the RISD board ended in June, the Texas Education Agency authorized Caston to provide “team of eight” training for districts statewide.
“The team of eight is really most effective when the board and superintendent lead and manage the district within their respective roles,” Caston said.
She explained the board is responsible for setting the vision, the mission and the goals for the district. And the superintendent is responsible for managing the district day to day and attaining those goals. Collectively, the team of eight works to review and evaluate the progress and success of the district’s initiatives and goals, Caston said.
“That working relationship is grounded in good communication, information, data and trust,” she said.
RISD Interim Superintendent Tabitha Branum, who was appointed to that position in December, said she speaks with trustees on a daily basis. Harris said communication is key and noted it is also important for the trustees to listen to each other.
“We all come with very different backgrounds,” Harris said. “What we have to make sure that we do as a board of trustees is [that] we make the ... right decisions for all of our students and staff in RISD.”
District changes
Over the last four months, the district has seen the resignation of former Superintendent Jeannie Stone and former board President Karen Clardy, who represented District 5.
Clardy resigned Sept. 24 in a letter to Stone and the other trustees, while a separation agreement for Stone was accepted by the board Dec. 13. Stone, who was reassigned to serve as a transition liaison until Aug. 31, did not respond to an interview request.
Clardy said she was not surprised by Stone’s resignation. And seeing that as a possibility was the reason she resigned her position on the board, she said.
“I loved working on the board, and I did not want to [resign],” Clardy said. “But I also didn’t want to be on the board that got rid of [Stone].”
In addition to Harris and Linn, Clardy was the only other trustee who had been on the board before the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020.
“[The new board members] were trying to fix everything that they thought went wrong or the community thought went wrong when we’re still trying to deal with the pandemic,” Clardy said.
With more than 37,000 students and 6,000 employees in RISD, Clardy said Stone could not devote a “tremendous amount of time” to requests from individual board members.
“Superintendents can only handle so much,” she said.
The Texas Association of School Administrators offers learning opportunities and advocacy efforts for state superintendents and other school administrators. The association’s Executive Director Kevin Brown said superintendents throughout the state are finding it difficult to satisfy everyone with just about any decision.
“The divisive nature of politics today makes it very difficult to really focus on the children,” Brown said. “Once you’re deprived of being able to focus on your students [and] focus on serving your community, then you don’t feel like you’re fulfilling your mission. Our state is losing some extraordinary leaders.”
Serving the district
For the last several months, Harris said preparation for board meetings has been a daily task for trustees.
“Everyone knows that we are a pretty new, young board and interim superintendent, [so we are] growing together and [working on] understanding each other,” she said.
Working with board members through the “team of eight” trainings she facilitates, Caston said she has found three areas that usually surprise newly elected trustees. The first is the time required to be effective in the position; the second is understanding the role of a trustee as a member of a governing board; and the third is the impact on their families.
“Most people ... just see the twice monthly school board meetings,” Caston said. “What they don’t realize is the amount of time that you spend on being prepared during the week to be a good board member.”
During her time as an RISD trustee, Caston said she received hundreds of emails each week. And trustees are “elected officials who serve uncompensated,” as she described the role.
“For most board members, I think the normal [preparation time] is probably 10 hours, but some weeks, it was double, if not more,” she said.
To be a successful board member, Clardy said trustees have to be focused on the best interests of all the children in the district.
“That first year that I was on the school board, ... I already knew Lake Highlands,” Clardy said. “I spent all my time up in Richardson because I needed to see the whole district.” Superintendent search
Brown said the Texas Association of School Administrators had seen 55 superintendent openings throughout the state by December. He said that number is higher than years past, as the hiring cycle for superintendents usually begins in January or February.
“It is a very difficult time to find a highly qualified superintendent,” Brown said. “If a superintendent is in a district that has a really supportive board, they are not willing to leave, even if it means higher pay, higher benefits [and] expanded influence.”
During her tenure on the board, Caston helped hire RISD’s last two full-time superintendents. She said a realistic time frame for RISD to find and hire a new superintendent is probably January 2023.
“The district is fortunate [to be] in the really capable hands of interim Superintendent Tabitha Branum,” Caston said.
Branum told Community Impact Newspaper she plans to apply for the permanent superintendent position with the district when it is posted.
“I am very passionate about this district,” Branum said. “I don’t want to go anywhere. Where there may have been opportunities in the past, I’ve stayed because I love the people, [and] I love this community.”
Editor's note: The attached map has been updated to correctly label Buckingham Road.
