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When Dana Enriquez-Vontoure moved her two children from Houston ISD to the Humble Independent School District, one big difference in the school boards baffled her.
In Houston, the district is broken into nine geographic areas, with voters in each section electing one trustee. Humble, however, is governed by seven “at-large” trustees, who are elected by all voters in the district and are not required to live in a specific part of Humble.
Enriquez-Vontoure preferred Houston’s system, known as “single-member districts,” which allows voters to choose a representative who lives in their community and intimately understands their needs. When families had an issue, they knew who to contact for help, she said. Now, Enriquez-Vontoure’s home on Humble’s south side sits eight miles away from the nearest board member’s house.
“Coming to a district now where it’s completely different, where I feel like some of our board members are completely out of touch with what is taking place in my community, was mind-blowing,” Enriquez-Vontoure said.
But that system could change in the coming years. In January, Humble trustees will consider transitioning to a hybrid approach that features five single-member districts and two at-large positions, potentially bringing more geographic representation to a board that some residents say is not reflective of the racially and socioeconomically diverse district.
In Humble, critics of the at-large system say it consolidates power in the whiter, more-affluent parts of the district, including the Kingwood area. Supporters of at-large districts, however, have argued trustees elected by a fraction of the community can become more focused on their own neighborhoods than what’s best for the district as a whole.
It is not immediately clear why Humble trustees are considering the board change now, or whether there is support for making the switch.
During a meeting last month, Trustee Martina Lemond Dixon requested that board members consider a transition and potentially vote on it at their Jan. 9 meeting. However, Lemond Dixon did not elaborate on her reasons for raising the topic, and her colleagues did not discuss the matter. All seven board members did not respond to interview requests for this article. A district spokesperson also declined to make any board members available for comment.
Currently, three of Humble’s seven board members reside in the boundaries of Kingwood High School, where about two-thirds of students are white. The other four live in areas serving Atascocita High School, where about one-third of students are white.
No board members reside in the other three high school boundaries, including Summer Creek (15 percent white student population) and Humble (5 percent) high schools on the district’s south side.
Five Humble board members are white and two are Black. The population of the 47,500-student district is roughly one-third Hispanic, one-third white and one-quarter Black.
The board’s political make-up has leaned conservative in recent years, with four trustees receiving endorsements from the Harris County Republican Party. In 2020, trustees supported reopening campuses amid the pandemic before many other districts led by more-liberal boards.
However, the district hasn’t waded as deep into cultural issues as some other conservative-dominated districts, such as Katy and Conroe. Last year, for example, trustees voted 5-2 to move forward with a health clinic partnership at Humble High School with Memorial Hermann, despite calls to end the deal from parents who complained about the provider’s involvement in gender-affirming care.
The fast-growing district has maintained a B rating in recent years under Texas’ A-through-F academic accountability system — though a few of its campuses, including Humble High School, scored poorly in 2022.
‘Concentration of representation’
Humble’s at-large election system is not rare. Seven out of the Houston area’s 10 largest districts employ the approach, including neighboring Conroe and Klein independent school districts.
Several Texas districts have been pushed to abandon the system in recent years amid arguments that it creates a lack of racial, geographic or socioeconomic diversity on school boards. In Houston, the Spring Branch Independent School District has been locked in litigation for 2 ½ years with a voter fighting to end at-large elections, citing a lack of representation and inequity in the district.
Humble hasn’t seen much community advocacy for adopting single-member districts, but Aisha Robinson, whose child is a junior at Summer Creek High, said she believes better representation for the south side of the district is long overdue. Still, Robinson remains skeptical that trustees will create an equitable single-member district system that cures the “concentration of representation” in the Kingwood area.
“While I am an advocate for a hybrid of both single and at-large sub-districts, I am more interested in how you actually set it up,” Robinson said. “Unless we find a way to actually get the parents and the residents in our areas actually involved in the election process, none of this will matter.”
Jay Qatato, the parent of two Kingwood High School students, said he has mixed feelings about the potential change. While he thinks representation for some parts of the district should improve, he can see “forced representation” through single-member districts yielding candidates who are less-qualified or win their seats in areas where voter turnout is lower.
Instead, he said voter turnout in the currently under-represented parts of the district needs to increase. In the Kingwood area, about 10 percent to 15 percent of registered voters cast ballots for trustees in the May 2023 board elections, according to precinct-level data. Turnout in precincts on the district’s south side generally ranged from 1 percent to 5 percent.
“I want everyone to be represented, that’s priority number one. But if you don’t have the volunteers, and people aren’t going to get out and vote, whose fault is that?” Qatato said. “Is it people campaigning? If I were gonna run, the first thing I would do is I would see, where are the votes coming from? And then I would target those areas heavily to try to get those votes, because I know those people get out.”
As trustees bring the conversation forward, Enriquez-Vontoure hopes board members are open to sacrificing their seats to “do what’s right” by creating more south-side representation.
“Right now, we’re dominated by board members who aren’t directly in touch with our communities and our schools,” said Enriquez-Vontoure, whose children attend Summer Creek High School. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if you had someone that was directly representing your neighborhood? There’s a difference between someone living in your city and someone living in your neighborhood.”
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