Photography by Amani Sodiq.
Richardson ISD single-member District 5 Trustee Rachel McGowan is as Lake Highlands as it gets. She went to Stults Road Elementary, then Forest Meadow Junior High, before graduating from Lake Highlands High School in 1996.
She was a Highlandette and can still remember the seniors painting “Welcome to the Boneyard” on the train overpass on Church Road. Two of her three children — don’t hold it against the third, she’s a first grader at Stults Road — are or have attended the high school.
“My favorite piece is just the love, the compassion that our community truly has for its people,” McGowan says. “We take care of our people in Lake Highlands. And I don’t know about Pearce, I don’t know about these other places, right, but I feel like Lake Highlands, if we have something happen in Lake Highlands, and you put out a call to certain people and put out the feelers that ‘Hey, we need that,’ this community will come together no matter who it is.”
While speaking with her, bringing the whole community together kept coming up. She’s the first Black trustee to represent Lake Highlands on the board, and her first involvement in district politics came with a Forest Meadow Junior High PTA election.
“I was just like, ‘You know what? There’s not any African American parents trying to get involved at this level,” McGowan says. “Y’all like, “I’m trying to do the work, like I want you to embrace me, like I’m coming in, open the door.’ That was kind of my stance.”
She’d seen PTAs and parent groups with minimal or no representation. At LHHS, McGowan heard about AP classes with a lone Black student enrolled, which she recalls hasn’t changed much from her days.
“The representation just wasn’t there,” she says. “If people like me are not trying to get involved and come into these things, then what do you expect? You shouldn’t expect anything greater, right? But I had a different feeling about it. It just drives me to push harder and to try to get more people to come along with me and push harder.
Closing achievement gaps and finding a place for underrepresented parents were concerns of McGowan’s going into the 2022 school board election, but she wasn’t a single-issue candidate. In fact, some of her biggest priorities were supporting teachers and finding solutions to behavioral problems.
“My kids have grown up with some of these kids,” McGowan says. “And I’ve seen some of these behavioral issues over the years, and then as an adult and as a parent, I have listened to other parents in the community talk about some of their experiences and some of their kids’ experiences in our classrooms, and it’s not okay, it’s not acceptable.”
McGowan cruised to a victory, earning more than 20% more votes than the runner-up. She says adjusting to the hands-off boundaries set for trustees was the biggest learning curve.
“You’re not supposed to do administrative work,” McGowan said. “You know, you need to stay overhead, and that’s super, super hard for me, right? First term finishing up, that’s been hard because, again, I am still a mom at the end of the day. And to me, the relationship building piece and our community is the most vital part. ”
Since her election, she’s helped get maternity and bereavement leave for teachers, and was one of the votes which approved the district’s 2024-25 school year budget that included substantial pay raises, something she says she’s “super excited about.”
Outside of School Board meetings, when she’s not meeting with constituents, McGowan is an account manager working in sales. She enjoys traveling, shopping and trying out restaurants in the area. Her favorite spot at the moment is MoMo Italian on Forest Lane.
McGowan will run for reelection this May, she says. Her biggest priorities will remain closing achievement gaps, teacher retention and improving classroom discipline.
