Dallas ISD board president on path for reelection; Richardson ISD’s $750M bond appears to get voter approval

Dallas ISD’s school board will probably remain unchanged for the 2021-22 school year.

Board president Justin Henry appeared to be on track for an easy win in his District 9 race Saturday, garnering a 3-to-1 advantage over challenger Ulana Sigler in early voting and holding a 1,700-vote lead with a little more than half of the precincts reporting.

Henry’s seat was the only contested one among three DISD races. Two trustees — District 1′s Edwin Flores and District 3′s Dan Micciche — ran unopposed and will serve three more years.

Three of the district’s nine seats come up for election every year. The 2021 election cycle marks just the second time in the past decade in which fewer than two races were contested. In 2018, Henry forced incumbent Bernadette Nutall into a runoff election, while Flores and Micciche were unopposed.

Such a lack of turnover on the board is a rarity for DISD, but the stability comes at an auspicious time.

The board, which will pick its officers during its next meeting, faces a sizable struggle in the coming year as the district searches for solutions to close academic gaps brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The work we started three years ago has helped improve District 9 and DISD as a whole, but we have much more work to do,” Henry said.

Voter turnout for the Henry/Sigler race was small, with only 2,496 votes cast in early voting.

That pales in comparison to the historic turnout for DISD’s last election in November, in which 86,000 voters took part in two trustee races that shared the same ballot as the presidential race.

School elections have traditionally stayed on May municipal ballots, concerned with turning races into partisan contests. Nevertheless, partisan politics did creep into several North Texas school board races, with candidates arguing over hot-button topics such as mask mandates and Black Lives Matter.

Meanwhile, in Highland Park, Doug Woodward held a 1,400-vote lead over Kelli Macatee with 78% of precincts reporting. Woodward had been the target of mailers circulated by a PAC tied to hotel magnate Monty Bennett — a major campaign donor to former President Donald Trump — which labeled Woodward as a “New Jersey liberal” and criticized him for displaying a Black Lives Matter sign.

Macatee said she wasn’t involved in any way with the flyer. More than $100,000 was raised between Woodward and Macatee in the race.

In Richardson, voters appeared to overwhelmingly support two bond propositions that totaled $750 million, the largest debt issuance in the district’s history.

Approximately $694 million of those funds would be spent to renovate aging campuses, expand J.J. Pearce High School and two nearby elementary schools, and help with moving sixth grade out of elementary campuses and into middle schools.