Lawsuit: RISD board held ‘meetings in secret’

Story by CAROL TOLER

A NEW LAWSUIT accuses the Richardson ISD board of meeting in secret, a violation of Texas open meetings laws that resulted in more than 500 unanimous votes over a span of seven years.

Former RISD trustee David Tyson Jr. filed the suit in July.

The lawsuit alleges that trustees met in groups of two or three while corresponding with other trustees by text, email or phone until a consensus was reached. RISD has seven trustees, so a meeting of four makes a quorum, which would make that arrangement illegal under the Texas Open Meetings Act.

In an action the lawsuit calls “brazen,” Tyson accuses the trustees of deleting their electronic communication from those alleged meetings in order to leave any trail “purposefully concealed and forever lost.”

Subsequent public board meetings were merely a “rubber-stamp formality,” Tyson alleges. “Votes that appear swift and uncontested” were in truth “choreographed behind the scenes.”

In the past seven years, only three school board votes were not unanimous. Eron Linn voted against the proposed tax ratification election and the budget in June, and Justin Bono voted “no” to the proposed nontraditional high school in 2015.

The lawsuit seeks a court order to prevent board members from skirting open meetings laws and to void all actions based on any violations.

Tyson served on the board from 2004-2010. He is the only minority ever to serve as an RISD trustee and has criticized the board’s whiteness in a district that is culturally and racially diverse.

He sued RISD in January claiming the district’s at-large system of electing trustees violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because it denies fair representation to minority voters. That case is pending.

State law requires that meetings of a governmental body must be open to the public. Tyson claims RISD’s secret sessions “have denied the public the opportunity to participate in the democratic process.”

Brewer Storefront is representing Tyson in both lawsuits. That firm previously has won voting rights cases against the Carrollton-Farmers Branch, Grand Prairie and Irving school districts, as well as against the cities of Farmers Branch and Irving.

Education

Richardson ISD trustees voted to postpone the school district’s previouslycalledtax ratification election (TRE)until November. Merging the vote with the general election, they said, will encourage higher voter participation and save hundreds of thousands of dollars. The delay will give RISD officials more time to inform community members about reasons for requesting the property tax increase. “

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