LEWISVILLE, Texas — Fair representation on a public school board is in question as a local mom takes a North Texas school district to court.

According to the suit filed in federal court, Paige Dixon of Lewisville argues that Lewisville ISD and its Board of Trustees are in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because their current system of seating members, she believes, denies equal representation to people of color.

“This is the south end of Lewisville,” said Dixon, stepping outside of her apartment where one of her sons studied virtually inside while the other attended high school at a nearby LISD school.

Dixon said her small neighborhood shows the bigger issue she feels is currently at play in the school district. When moving to town in 2012, she said she immediately began volunteering at her son’s school and eventually even became PTA president, when she quickly came to realize how massive LISD is and how far it stretches beyond her small corner of the city.

The district covers about 127 square miles and includes portions of 13 different cities and towns. That large footprint brings with it a very diverse population from widely varying economic and racial backgrounds. According to the district’s 2021-2022 profile, only 38.8% of the student population is white, with 30.5% being Hispanic and 15% Asian. The profile also describes 33.7% of the student population as economically disadvantaged.

However, as Dixon made her own bid to run for the LISD School Board last year — and ultimately lost that race — she said she discovered that the representation on the board, in her opinion, didn’t reflect those demographics. All seven current members of the school board are white and most, she said, live in more affluent areas of the district like Flower Mound and Highland Village.

Dixon said she discovered that many of the issues facing students in her son’s schools and others like them were not being represented in board meetings because there was no one from those communities at the board table.

“We were seeing higher disciplinary rates for students of color, we were seeing less money being spent per student,” said Dixon.

Dixon’s attorney, Bill Brewer. said he’s seen this issue come up in a number of Texas school districts which have grown very large and diverse, but where that isn’t reflected in school board membership due to, he believes, those at-large voting systems which allow anyone from any neighborhood in the district to run for any of the seats on the board, and likewise anyone to vote for any seat in the district.

“That means that if you have a voting block that is involved, turns out at the ballot box,” said Brewer of the Brewer Storefront law firm, “that group can control the election of all seven seats.”

Brewer Storefront has argued that successfully in lawsuits across North Texas in cities like Richardson, Carrollton and Irving. Several of those suits have resulted in districts switching to a representative board setup where board seats are assigned to represent specific parts of the community, are filled by candidates from those areas and are voted on by the people in those neighborhoods. 

Brewer said he believes these lawsuits will only continue to come up as the state keeps growing and more districts with those at-large systems encounter representation gaps.

A representative for the Lewisville ISD responded to request for comment on the topic saying, "It is not our practice to comment on pending litigation."

Previously, though, Brewer Storefront launched a similar lawsuit against the Lewisville ISD in 2020 that the district ended up winning. In that case, the judge ruled that the plaintiff, who Brewer said was a white man, did not demonstrate that the district’s current system affected him negatively.

Dixon, a Black woman in the district, could be a different story, though. She said her hope is to just see students like her son and families in her neighborhood properly represented in district discussions.

“It’s a great district, it’s just not equal for everyone, and so we wanna spread some of that greatness to the rest of the people,” she said.