Dr. LaSonja Flowers

Trustee Flowers: Focuses on Building Relationships and a Positive School Culture

Dr. LaSonja Flowers is a native of Dallas, Texas, and is proud to say she grew up in Oak Cliff. She credits her personal and professional success to the priority she places on building, nurturing, and sustaining relationships.

Dr. Flowers uses her more than 25 years of K-12 educational experience, along with the knowledge she obtained as an educational researcher to serve the Duncanville learning community. As an educational consultant, Dr. Flowers  provides professional development to school districts and her mission is to ‘Transform the Educational Experiences of Minority Students’.

 “I am a byproduct of caring teachers that created a culture of care,” Dr. Flowers said. “They are the reasons I became an educator. I am the educator and woman I am today because of the teachers God placed in my path; many of them left their fingerprints on my life.” 

Dr. Flowers is proud to mention that one of the students on the cover of her second book, “Who Cares About Black Boys,” is a product of Duncanville High School. She points to that as evidence of a developed relationship.

Ms. Carmen, Dr. Flower's third-grade teacher at W. W. Bushman Elementary, was one of the few teachers who went “beyond the call of duty”, Dr. Flowers said. 

“Oftentimes, Ms. Carmen would comb my hair when I came to school,” Dr. Flowers said. “My mom worked two jobs and was often gone when I left for school.”

“Ms. Carmen called me inside from playing tetherball one morning and told me that she felt much safer with me in the building,” Dr. Flowers said. “I thought I was doing my teacher a favor by joining her and helping out in the classroom every morning. In hindsight, I understand she was only pretending to be afraid of being in the building alone because she detected a need.”

After graduating from high school and obtaining her associate degree from Mountain View College, Dr. Flowers moved to California where she lived for 25 years.

She returned home in 2016 and became an assistant principal at Duncanville High School. Dr. Flowers said that it is her commitment to pay it forward and the value she places on the relationships she built with several stakeholders in Duncanville that encouraged her to seek a place on the Board of Trustees. In 2018, Dr. Flowers earned her Superintendent Certification.

“I believe that education should be the leveling field, the great equalizer,” Dr. Flowers said. “Our kids’ futures really depend on their education. That’s why it’s very important that we focus on that instruction piece and the culture of school.”