“I’ve got RISD running through my veins,” says Regina Harris, Richardson ISD Place 4 Trustee.
Photography by Ethan Good
She’s probably right, especially considering she’s held every officer position on the school board, sent her son to district schools and served on PTAs of every level. Harris also grew up in Hamilton Park, was a member of one of the first integrated graduating classes at Hamilton Park Elementary and graduated from Richardson High School.
That’s about as RISD as it comes.
Education in general has been a common thread throughout her life. She comes from a family of educators. Her grandmother taught in Baton Rouge and an uncle coached football at Grambling State, among numerous other cousins and aunts. While her mother may not have been a teacher, she was the “classroom mom” and a fixture of PTA meetings.
“I’ve always wanted to do something with education,” she says. “The one thing I did not want to do is be in a classroom … but I wanted to make a difference in children’s lives.”
After high school, she attended Grambling State and graduated with a degree in public relations. Her professional career includes stops at Coca-Cola and Pizza Hut, where she first managed a call center before moving into human resources, her current field.
While moving up the corporate ladder, she raised her son, Brian, who also attended Hamilton Park. As he progressed through junior high and high school, Harris remained heavily involved, just as her mother had done for her.
“That was absolutely me all the way to today. I backed my son. I’m there for him,” she says. “I’m very visible. I was such a fixture in the PTA that when he saw me walking down the hall, he was just like, ‘Hey, Mom.’ Nothing crazy. It was just typical and usual to see me walk through the halls of West Junior High or Richardson High School or Hamilton Park because it’s just what I did.”
A PTA president at West Junior High and Richardson, she eventually joined the RISD Council of PTAs, where she served as vice president.
Despite her involvement, she didn’t even know what the board of trustees was until a rainy day waiting for her son.
“He was at West Junior High. It was raining outside,” Harris says. “I was sitting in my car waiting for him to come out of band, and a good friend of mine came over to my car, and she’s standing in the rain outside of my car, and she’s going, ‘You should run for board of trustees.’ And I was like, ‘What is that?’”
Initially hesitant to run for the volunteer position due to its net salary of $0.0, she decided to dive in after she began to understand she could make a deeper impact in her community at the board level. Harris went on to defeat three challengers for the newly created Single Member Place 4 seat with close to 52% of the vote.
Her election to the board came at a difficult time. Superintendent Jeannie Stone resigned in 2021 after months of tumult and rancor, a departure which Harris says affected her greatly, especially considering she had worked with Stone as board president following the departure of Board President Karen Clardy in 2020. It may seem like the distant past, but those were the days of packed board meetings and vicious attacks from public commenters.
“I just kept thinking, ‘I’ve got to keep calm, and I’ve got to follow this script, and I’ve got to facilitate this meeting and facilitate it with pride, knowing that what we’re doing and the decisions that we’re making have been well thought through, and we are keeping our kids and our staff number one as these decisions are being made,’” she says. “And regardless of what these public commenters come up and say and thrash us, know that they don’t know the whole story.”
Harris and the district are still facing significant challenges. Legislation at the state level has created uncertainty for districts across Texas, and RISD has passed multiple consecutive deficit budgets fueled by declining enrollment. Funding shortfalls have forced the district to make difficult decisions, including school closures as part of Project RightSize. One of the schools closed in 2024 was Thurgood Marshall Elementary in Place 4, a closure which Harris says “hurt.”
“There’s several things that we promised we would do to try to right size our budget, and we’ve only done a handful of them” she says. “And so I think that’s what a lot of people have to understand as well, is it wasn’t just about closing those four schools. There’s a whole lot of work that needs to be done.”
Despite the challenges, she says she is especially proud of her role as president in navigating the pandemic and the search process for a new superintendent. She stepped down from the position in 2024 and has since served as the district’s Texas Association of School Boards representative, in addition to being a member of the Texas State Caucus of Black School Board Members.
Harris was recently sworn into a third term after running unopposed for the second consecutive election. She says she will likely remain a fixture of the horseshoe for the immediate future, but believes new perspectives are important on the board.
“I think that just giving someone else an opportunity,” she says. “I would love to help someone who’s interested in this seat understand what it all involves and mentor them so that they can run a good race.”
