Aside from a few stray school buses pulling up to the front of Denton ISD’s brand new middle school instead of stopping in the bus lane behind the school, the crew at Pat Hagan Cheek Middle School almost seemed as if they had rehearsed the opening of the district’s ninth middle school.
“Come on, Mom!” a staffer shouted at a woman as she inched toward the student drop-off spot, windmilling one arm toward herself. “You’re almost there! Just a little more!”
If there was any traffic congestion on the way to the new campus in Prosper, it was out on U.S. Highway 380. The cars and buses driving up stopped, unloaded and then left within minutes.
Coach Brandt Brooks welcomed students in a booming voice. He directed students to their grade level “pods,” or to breakfast.
“Good morning!” Brooks shouted at each busload of students, telling sixth and seventh graders to turn to the left, eighth graders to the right. He sent off each group with encouragement — “Let’s have a great day!” — punctuated with a whoop.
A big campus with modern buildings
Cheek Middle School is a big campus. A wall of windows gleams over the front entrance. The athletic complex is on campus, and the staff is especially excited about the two big courtyards that each have an outdoor classroom. One of the courtyards has raised flower beds ready for students to plant vegetables. Another area awaits three composting bins.
Inside, there is a lot of natural light. Security cameras are mounted, and a crew was working on WiFi in a maker space that will enable students to test out all kinds of technology, from robotics to 3D printing.
“A lot of parents have told us, ‘Wow, this looks like a high school,’” said Cheek Principal Beth Kelly.
This is Kelly’s 27th year as an educator.
“Usually I have trouble falling asleep the night before school starts,” she said. “But I just had a sense of calm and peace last night. I slept very nicely, because our staff has been working really hard to get ready for our kids.”
Kelly said she’s impressed with all of the collaborative spaces and open areas that were built for students to gather and work together.
“Our kids were excited, and when we toured the building and had our parents here, they loved the campus. They love the fact that the kids could do group work while the rest of the class could remain in the classroom,” she said.
Creating community from Day One
Jeff Russell, the Denton ISD area superintendent of academic programs, welcomed students to the school. Russell leads the Braswell High School zone, which is the part of Denton ISD that is growing the fastest.
Russell said the district considers each campus a distinct community of learners, teachers, staff and administrators.
“You have to pull in parents and kids and build that culture together,” Russell said. “You’ve got to get feedback from them, and I think we’ve done that with this campus. I think we’ve done that with our rezoning meetings from the very beginning, to get feedback on what they want from this campus, and some of the challenges and how we can overcome those together.”
A crucial part of building a school community is creating an environment where students and faculty feel free to collaborate and challenge each other, which requires openness and connectivity. But parents, staff and administrators are also charged with making campuses safe and secure.
“The state has given us some really pretty specific things that we have to do,” Russell said. “Those have been taken into consideration as we build our campus.
“See the cameras there? We’ve increased that, and the community supported that with our bond. And so we’re implementing that, not just at this campus, but every campus.”
Denton ISD has been implementing security upgrades for the last several years, just ahead of mandates made by Gov. Greg Abbott in 2022 for new campus security measures. Superintendent Jamie Wilson said the district has developed secure vestibules at all campus primary entrances, and has hardened secondary entrances. Wilson said the camera surveillance systems on campuses “are second to none.”
“It’s at the forefront of our minds and all of our planning and organization,” Wilson said. “No child has ever been harmed behind a locked door at any school district in the country. If you keep people out, you’re on the right track.”
Parents who came to the school to enroll their students on the first day of class had no complaints about the secure vestibule at the front entrance.
“Oh, yes, I like that they did this,” a woman said as she and her student were buzzed into the office. “They have this same thing at my daughter’s high school.”
Denton ISD started the school year with a new requirement from Texas House Bill 3, which requires an armed security official at each elementary school. Wilson said Denton ISD doesn’t have an armed guard at all elementary schools yet.
“We do have a plan for it,” he said. “If you want to be in compliance with the new law, it needs to be a certified peace officer. You don’t have to have that, but that’s what the state wants us to have. Part of the issue is that there is a shortage of peace officers across the state.
“It’s a great thought,” Wilson said. “But we weren’t funded for that, right? We received $15,000 per school for that purpose. That’s less than $10 an hour. That’s half of what we pay our bus drivers.”
Cheek Middle School has a student resource officer from the town of Prosper on campus.
Honoring a longtime Denton ISD teacher
The new middle school is named for Pat Hagan Cheek, who spent her career teaching middle school in the district. But Cheek’s advocacy reaches back to the days when Denton schoolchildren were segregated by race.
Cheek is a founding member of the Denton Women’s Interracial Fellowship, a group of white and Black Christian women in Denton who played a role in desegregating the city and the school district. She’s also a founding member of Trinity Presbyterian Church, a congregation with a long history and discipline of social justice work.
Cheek played a role in the founding of the church’s Opening Doors Immigration Services, a ministry that helped people — mostly from Mexico and Latin America — immigrate to the United States legally.
Wilson said he thinks the new school is a living legacy of Cheek, who enjoyed a tour of the school in May.
“I think it’s just a reflection of Pat Cheek, just in general, and the commitment she had to kids in our community,” Wilson said.
Wilson said the school taps into Cheek’s career as a creative and inquisitive teacher with its collaborative spaces and connectivity — socially and digitally.
“I mean, this is the the way, right? People say the new way, but it’s really the way, and we’re just really excited about it.”
Cheek, who has recently downsized from the Denton home she had lived in since the 1960s, said she’s deeply honored to have the school named for her family. She taught English and Spanish to local middle school students. She eventually taught history, too, a subject she grew to love.
“I was able to teach at the time when teachers could teach what they wanted, the way they wanted to teach it,” she said. “If a teacher found a way to teach that worked, they could keep doing that, or develop it. I retired before everything changed and you had to teach the same material the same way. I couldn’t have done that.”
After she retired, Cheek returned to the district.
“I was the best substitute teacher Denton ISD ever had,” she said. “I didn’t just come in and keep the kids in line. I found the material they’d been studying and we got to work.”
Cheek said some of her neighbors at Fairhaven Denton Assisted Living know about the new school.
“A man walked past me and said, ‘You know? That building is going to say Cheek forever.’ I told him, ‘Yes it will,’” Cheek said, smiling.
