Round Rock school board Member Tiffanie Harrison speaks during a pro-mask rally at the Williamson County Courthouse in August 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The event brought medical professionals and professional educators together advocating for local control and safety for students returning to school.
The Round Rock school board hopes to appoint a new president on Sept. 18 after Tiffanie Harrison announced last week she was planning on stepping down for personal reasons.
Harrison, 39, has been a school board member since 2020. She became the district’s first Black school board president in November when her fellow members appointed her to the position.
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“I will be moving to shift my focus to my family and raising and nurturing and growing my family,” she told the American-Statesman. She declined to provide further details. Her term ends in November 2026.
Harrison was first appointed to the Place 6 position in 2020 to fill a vacancy and was first elected to the board in 2022. She attended Round Rock schools as a student and taught marketing at Round Rock High from 2012-2020.
“It has been an honor to serve alongside Pres. Harrison,” Superintendent Hafdeh Azaiez said in a statement Monday. “Despite the challenges our district has faced, we have remained steadfast and committed to our mission. Under her thoughtful leadership, we have continued to place the success and well-being of our students at the forefront of our work. … Her dedication to our students is clear in all that she has done for the Round Rock ISD community, and we wish her all the best as she begins this next phase of her life.”
Online applications for Harrison’s position close at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 2. They are available at bit.ly/41XMVgr. Candidates must provide verification that they are registered to vote within district boundaries, consent to a background check and provide a resume and a letter of interest. Finalists will be interviewed in open session at a board meeting on Sept. 17. Board members, including Harrison, will deliberate in closed session following the interviews and then return to open session to vote on the appointment. If a consensus is reached, the new board member will be sworn in at the regular board meeting Sept. 18. Trustees also will vote on new board officers on Sept. 18.
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Harrison said the work that she is most proud of accomplishing on the school board includes helping update the district’s student policy against bullying, she said. “We became the first district in Texas to create a policy against identity-based bullying, which could be bullying based on race, gender and age,” Harrison said.
She said she is also proud that the board passed a policy for support staff such as custodians and lunch room employees that provides protection on discipline and job security issues.
When she first applied to be on the school board, Harrison said, she was interested in the position because a student study showed that minority students didn’t feel safe at school. Parents also were concerned about safety, as well as literacy and college readiness, she said. “Parents wanted to know if their student felt safe and well and felt like they belonged at the school,” she said.
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The district is now “looking at the safety and security of each student in Round Rock ISD in ways we haven’t before,” Harrison said. “We hold lots of community meetings to see what parents and students and educators want.”
Harrison, who is a co-CEO of the nonprofit Health Equity Collective, said she is glad that during her tenure school board meetings became “boring” again.
She first took office during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, two school board members sued Harrison and the other members over proposed censure resolutions. A judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2022. The school board placed Azaiez on administrative leave with pay in January 2022 pending the results of an independent investigation into a protective order issued against him. The order has since expired and no charges were ever filed against Azaiez. The board voted in March 2022 to reinstate Azaiez.
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“Back in 2020 and 2021, we were having board meetings several times a month and the longest one on record was maybe 14 hours,” said Harrison. “That’s ridiculous. School board meetings are much shorter now and we don’t have people on the board grandstanding,” she said.
Harrison said she hopes the person chosen to fill her seat will benefit from not having to conduct a campaign.
“This is a moment and an opportunity for the board to appoint someone that would represent our community well, that may not be able to afford to run a large campaign.”
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