Fort Worth ISD trustees are set to take their first major step toward shrinking the district’s number of schools to better reflect its declining enrollment.
During its May 20 meeting, the school board is expected to consider a plan outlining 14 school closures over the next four years. If approved, the 14 schools would join four other campuses that trustees previously slated for closure.
The district’s buildings plan, developed with consultant Alabama-based Hoar Program Management, addresses shrinking enrollment and aging infrastructure.
Fort Worth ISD has lost more than 12,783 students since 2019 and expects to lose an additional 6,556 by 2030.
Tracy Richter, who works with Hoar Program Management, described school closures as a difficult and complicated process that affects the entire community. However, maintaining buildings with too few students and too many empty seats hurts the bottom line, financially and academically, he told trustees May 13.
If you go
What: Fort Worth ISD school board meeting
When: 5:30 p.m. May 20
Where: Fort Worth ISD District Service Center, 7060 Camp Bowie Blvd.
Stream: Can’t make it in person? Watch the meeting live on the district’s YouTube channel.
“Just trying to keep up with your facilities and trying to house the right number of students and not stretch out your staff so thin that it is detrimental to academic outcomes,” Richter said.
To maintain its buildings, the district would need to spend $1.2 billion in repairs over the next five years.
By closing schools, the district can pare down more than 8,800 unused seats and save more than $77 million over five years — mostly by avoiding future repairs and cutting support staff.
Those dollars can then be redirected to supporting the district’s academic turnaround, officials said.
“Our students deserve more,” Superintendent Karen Molinar previously said.
Schools slated for closure
Fort Worth ISD is considering the closure of 14 schools over the next five years. Here are the campuses:
- Kirkpatrick Middle School
- Kirkpatrick Elementary
- H.V. Helbing Elementary
- Riverside Applied Learning Center
- Charles E. Nash Elementary
- Atwood McDonald Elementary
- Sunrise-McMillan Elementary
- A.M. Pate Elementary
- Harlean Beal Elementary
- Morningside Middle School
- Edward J. Briscoe Elementary
- Hubbard Heights Elementary
- J.T. Stevens Elementary
- De Zavala Elementary
Trustees previously approved four campus closures:
- West Handley Elementary
- S.S. Dillow Elementary
- Eastern Hills Elementary
- McLean Sixth Grade
Jacob Sanchez is a senior education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at jacob.sanchez@fortworthreport.org or @_jacob_sanchez. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
