Natashia Gerald Running for Dallas ISD District 5 Trustee

Natashia Gerald has spent most of her life in the neighborhoods Dallas ISD District 5 serves. Now she wants a seat at the table where decisions get made.

Gerald, 42, is one of three candidates running in the May 3 election for the District 5 trustee seat, which covers West Dallas. She grew up in Oak Cliff, attended DISD schools, and returned in 2023 to the Glendale Heights home where she was raised. First-time candidate. No prior runs for office.

Her pitch is straightforward: West Dallas schools have been underserved, and the people running them haven’t been held accountable.

“I embrace this journey, not as an individual seeking power, but as someone deeply committed to a cause greater than myself,” Gerald said, “the future of our children.”

The policy priorities she’s named are specific. On the construction side, she’s pointed directly at what she describes as delays and discrepancies in completing projects promised under previous bond packages. Her proposed fix involves a forensic audit of past bond and maintenance expenditures. That’s not a new complaint in Dallas school politics, but it’s one that rarely gets a trustee candidate willing to say the word “audit” out loud. Worth watching whether that position holds.

Safety is the other pillar. Gerald said she’d work to develop a district-level disciplinary and safety policy she describes as practical. The details are still thin, but the direction is clear enough.

On preservation, she’s focused on something less tangible but politically sensitive: the naming and renaming of schools. District 5 schools carry histories tied to West Dallas and Oak Cliff communities, and Gerald said she wants to lock in stronger requirements for community input before any name changes move forward. She’d streamline district and local policies to define, require, and document that input. Given how contentious school renaming fights have gotten across Dallas ISD and other urban districts, that’s a position with some real constituency behind it.

Gerald brings a resume built outside government. She’s served as president of the South Oak Cliff Alumni Bear Cave Leadership ISD, chaired the Serve Pillar for the Mayor’s Star Council through Engage Dallas, directed advocacy for Outreach Ministries International, and chaired parent advocacy for The Black Academy of Arts and Letters. She also chaired artist and talent relations for the Dallas Riverfront Jazz Festival. The profile is community-first and arts-adjacent, which fits the district.

Her daughter, now 19, went through DISD and attends the University of Houston. Gerald mentioned that. It matters because it’s not abstract for her. She’s seen the system from a parent’s seat.

The Dallas Free Press, which has been running candidate Q&As ahead of the May 3 election, published Gerald’s full responses as part of its Dallas Voter Guide coverage of the race.

District 5 stretches through West Dallas, a part of the city that has absorbed enormous development pressure from the outside while fighting for basic school resources from within. Bond money that doesn’t reach classrooms, safety policies that vary by campus, schools whose names connect communities to their own histories. These aren’t abstract governance questions. They’re the daily conditions that families in Glendale Heights and across West Dallas navigate.

Gerald’s background is in advocacy, not administration. That cuts both ways. She hasn’t managed a budget or navigated a bureaucracy at this scale, and the Dallas ISD board governs a district with more than 140,000 students. But she’s been showing up in these communities for years, which counts for something.

The trustee seat is nonpartisan. The winner serves on a nine-member board that sets policy, approves budgets, and hires and fires the superintendent. Not a ceremonial role. Real authority, if you use it.

May 3 is the date. West Dallas is watching.