Fort Worth ISD board approves plan to close 18 schools over four years
The closures the board approved Tuesday are in addition to two others the board had already approved. District officials say the cuts will allow them to redirect millions of dollars toward academic priorities.
The board approved the plan by an 8-0 vote, with board member Wallace Bridges absent. The closures are a part of Fort Worth ISD's facilities master plan, which has been months in the making. The plan is intended to help the district manage revenue losses from declining enrollment. Fort Worth ISD has seen its enrollment drop by 15% since the 2019-20 school year, and officials project the district will lose another 6% of its enrollment by 2029-30.
District leaders didn't discuss the plan at Tuesday's meeting. But at a work session last week, Deputy Superintendent Kellie Spencer said closing the campuses would save Fort Worth ISD about $10 million over the next five years. That's money that the district can redirect toward literacy priorities, she said.
During the meeting, groups of parents and other supporters of Briscoe and De Zavala elementary schools held signs asking the board not to close their schools. Several spoke during public comment, explaining what made their campuses special and how students and their families would be affected if they closed.
Stephany Velez, the mother of two students at De Zavala, said she enrolled her sons at the school in spite of Fort Worth ISD's overall lackluster performance because it was a consistently high-rated campus. She had planned to home school her kids, but she changed her mind when she heard about De Zavala's dual language program. As a Spanish speaker herself, Velez said she wanted to make sure her sons had the chance to learn in both languages.
Velez acknowledged that De Zavala's enrollment is well short of the building's capacity. Last year, more than half the school's seats were empty. But she told the board she doesn't think the district has done enough to attract students to the school. The dual language program is one of De Zavala's biggest strengths, she said, but the school only has one dual language class per grade. That means it's forced to turn away many students who would like to enroll.
Danyelle Liggins, a fourth-grade reading teacher at Briscoe, told the Star-Telegram that the elementary school is 'a campus like no other.' More than 95% of the school's students are classified as economically disadvantaged. Every year, teachers help families with Christmas gifts and Thanksgiving dinners, Liggins said. Otherwise, many families couldn't afford either.
Liggins worries about what will happen to Briscoe's students when the school closes. The majority of Briscoe's students walk to school, Liggins said. Once it closes, they'll move to Carroll Peak Elementary School, a little over a mile and a half away. The district only provides transportation for students who live more than two miles away from school. That means most students will be too close to Carroll Peak to qualify for bus service, but too far to walk, she said. Most families at Briscoe don't have the means to drive their children to school themselves, Liggins said. She worries that those students won't be able to get to school at all.
'They're going to be left out,' she said. 'And that's what we're scared of for our kids.'
But not every speaker at the meeting opposed the closures. A few encouraged the board to be willing to make tough decisions that will put the district on sounder financial footing. Graham Brizendin, a member of the district's steering committee that worked on the plan, said committee members didn't take the process lightly. The plan allows Fort Worth ISD to move toward the goal of giving all its students a chance at success, he said.
Brezendin acknowledged that the process is difficult for families with a personal connection to the schools being closed. It's a list that includes Brezendin himself, he said — his grandmother attended De Zavala in the 1930s.
'I'm not excited to see it close, but I am also cognizant that the future students' success should not be bound by my emotional connection to bricks and mortar,' he said.
The closures approved Tuesday include:
Milton L. Kirkpatrick Elementary School (Closing in June 2026)
Charles E. Nash Elementary School (Closing in June 2026)
Riverside Applied Learning Center (Closing in June 2026)
Edward J. Briscoe Elementary School (Closing in June 2026)
De Zavala Elementary School (Closing in June 2027)
A.M. Pate Elementary School (Closing in June 2027)
J.T. Stevens Elementary School (Closing in June 2027)
Atwood McDonald Elementary School (Closing in June 2027)
McLean 6th Grade Center (Closing in June 2028)
West Handley Elementary School (Closing in June 2028)
Harlean Beal Elementary School (Closing in June 2028)
H.V. Helbing Elementary School (Closing in June 2028)
Sunrise-McMillan Elementary School (Closing in June 2028)
Kirkpatrick Middle School (Closing in June 2029)
Morningside Middle School (Closing in June 2029)
Hubbard Heights Elementary School (Closing in June 2029)
In addition to the closures outlined in the plan, Fort Worth ISD is also scheduled to close S.S. Dillow and Eastern Hills elementary schools next month. District officials said S.S. Dillow, an 88-year-old building in southeast Fort Worth, has structural problems that would require 'costly, extensive, and invasive work' to fix.
District officials plan to build a new campus for Eastern Hills. Students at the school will go to West Handley Elementary School until the new building is finished, and the entire consolidated student body will move from West Handley to the new Eastern Hills in 2028.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Fort at Fort Caroline National Memorial to come down. Why I'm OK with this
Can you imagine Fort Caroline National Memorial without a fort? The National Park Service has been. The park service plans to take down the existing fort, a replica built on the banks of the St. Johns River in 1974. This replica was built to replace a replica that was built in 1964, the 400th anniversary of the French settlement, and promptly destroyed by Hurricane Dora. Today, issues with water continue, which actually might add some ironic and unwanted authenticity. There are records of Spanish soldiers, captured by the French, mentioning that the original fort would flood at high tide. We still don't know exactly where the original fort was located. But in recent years, the replica has been damaged again and again by storms and flooding. And between rising sea levels and the deepening of the river, that's only going to get worse — and more costly to repair — in the coming decades. So the park service decided it's time to use some available funding to remove the replica fort, let the native vegetation grow where the fort has stood for more than 50 years, and build a new memorial exhibit on uplands, out of the floodplain. The small Timucuan village at the park also will be removed — but, if anything, the indigenous history should become a larger part of the story told at Fort Caroline. There was a public meeting in July. And there has been a lot of public comment on social media, with quite a few posts expressing disappointment with the end of a fort visited by generations and fear that this is the start of something more sinister. 'Return to 'native vegetation' means waterfront condos in a year,' one said. I certainly understand these types of fears, particularly considering what has happened recently with attempts to develop state parks, pull off a land swap involving Guana River Wildlife Management Area and — relevant to a National Park Service site — chip away at our national parks. There not only have been cuts to staffing and funding for our national parks. In some cases, the actual parks have been targeted. So I understand the cynicism and the connection to the fort. But even in these times, I feel confident this piece of land is going to remain our land. And I'm OK with a Fort Caroline without a fort. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I like it. 'Fort Fake-ee' I certainly appreciate Fort Caroline National Memorial and what it represents, not just historically but for the city today. In many ways the 138-acre site is at the heart of our grandest local park, the 46,000-acre Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve. This national memorial was Congressman Charlie Bennett's baby. He lobbied, fundraised and even personally donated money to purchase the land that was donated to the park service and in 1953 became Fort Caroline NM. Thirty-five years later, Congress established the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, with Fort Caroline as part of it. The park's visitor center and administrative offices are there. There's a beautiful view overlooking the river. There's a rolling, loop trail that I've circled probably hundreds of times. And, yes, there's a fort. But the fort never was my favorite part of Fort Caroline. And not because the original only stood for a small piece of this land's long timeline. Or because the replica seems modest compared to something like Castillo de San Marcos National Monument in St. Augustine. This is, to borrow a description, Fort Fake-ee. That's how the late Craig Morris, a longtime ranger at the park, once described the fort, a moment of candor that ended up in a book written by Tony Horowitz ('A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World'). Few people knew or loved Fort Caroline and the surrounding areas as much as Craig. And while he could give a more nuanced description of the replica fort and its place in the park, that flippant comment summed up some of my qualms with it. This isn't a fort built by the French in 1564. It might not be in the same location. And it almost certainly isn't the same size. It's a scaled-down version. So visiting this fort isn't like visiting Castillo de San Marcos or Fort Matanzas in St. Augustine or Fort Clinch in Fernandina Beach. This fort always felt artificial, like something more befitting a theme park than a national park. It's a remnant of Mission 66, a plan that coincided with the park service's 50-year anniversary in 1966, an era when our national parks still did things like hold nightly bear feedings in Yellowstone and build a fort in Jacksonville. That isn't what the park service would do today. And it isn't what it will do when this re-imagining of a Fort Caroline Memorial starts to take shape in late 2026 or early 2027. A new kind of memorial Steven Kidd, Chief of Science and Resource Management for the Timucuan Preserve, explains that they looked into elevating the fort, or building a berm around it. But in the end, it made sense to go a different direction — in particular, upland. 'We're not going to be building anything that has to be rebuilt every time we have a tropical storm come through here,' he said. It won't be another replica fort. They will adhere to Congressional mandate for this park by creating a new memorial to the French colonists who came to North America in the 16th century seeking religious freedom, wealth and territorial expansion. And that will include the story (what we know of it) of the original fort, along with documentation to remember the replica. Kidd mentions some of the possibilities: large stones marking dimensions of the original fort to give visitors a sense of the actual size; elevated boardwalks with views of the river; access for those with disabilities; and some kind of natural amphitheater for programming and presentations. "We think the way we're going about this is appropriate and respectful — and will be there for the next century," Kidd said. When I took a sabbatical before the NPS centennial and spent a year trying to look into what happens to our parks in the next 100 years, one of the places I focused on was Dry Tortugas National Park, about 70 miles west of Key West, and in particular Fort Jefferson — the largest brick masonry structure in the Americas. Then-NPS Director Jonathan Jarvis had pointed to the fort, surrounded by a moat and rising water, presenting a major dilemma for the park service in the next century. It already needed something like $25 million of repairs. And the water was only going to keep rising. So should we keep spending money on it? To me, it did make sense to keep pouring money into Fort Jefferson. How much and for how long? I don't know. But the fort at Fort Caroline is a different story. And it isn't just about the money. Part of what I appreciate about the park service is that it has evolved in its telling of history. A few decades it was more apt to speculate about what might have happened and repeat stories that might have been true (and, in some cases, were not). Now it is more willing to use words that we all probably should use more often: We don't know. At Flight 93 National Memorial — which soon will hold a commemoration for the 24th anniversary of Sept. 11 — the park service tells the story of United 93 and its passengers in excruciating detail. But just the details we know. It doesn't try to fill in blanks with things we don't know. In a different way, that is what the park service can do with Fort Caroline. mwoods@ (904) 359-4212 This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: End of replica fort and new plans for Fort Caroline National Memorial Play Farm Merge Valley
Time Magazine
2 hours ago
- Time Magazine
D.C. Families Brace For Start of School Under Trump Takeover
On a recent summer night, a 9-year-old girl in Northwest Washington, D.C. was having trouble sleeping. She heard on the news that speaking Spanish could draw the attention of federal agents, and she worried aloud to her Hispanic father that immigration officers might come for her classmates' parents. 'She kept asking, 'Can they come to people's homes? Can they come to our home?'' her father said. 'She was terrified.' Their family, longtime residents of the city and American citizens, are not at risk of deportation. But the girl's anxiety reflects a broader unease rippling through D.C. families as the city's public schools prepare to start a new school year on Monday, Aug. 25, under the shadow of President Donald Trump's takeover of the city's police force and a ramp up in federal immigration enforcement. Across the nation's capital, parents are setting up group chats on WhatsApp and Signal to coordinate carpools and walking groups. Some are pressing the city to relax attendance requirements, out of concern that some families might feel they have to keep their kids at home. 'We've got people volunteering to carpool other people's kids to school because the parents are afraid to try to get their kid to school on their own,' says Catherine Morgan, a D.C. resident whose child starts third grade on Monday. Since announcing in August that he would place the Metropolitan Police Department under federal control and deploy National Guard troops to patrol the streets, Trump has insisted his measures are necessary to curb what he has described as 'roving mobs of wild youth' and 'bloodthirsty criminals,' despite statistics showing violent crime in the city had hit a 30-year low earlier this year. His administration has also rolled back protections that once limited immigration enforcement around schools, allowing agents to conduct raids in neighborhoods and workplaces. The result, according to parents, educators and community leaders, is a climate of fear and confusion at the very moment when families are usually focused on first-day jitters, backpacks, and back-to-school clothes. Parents across the city interviewed for this story described adjusting their routines to shield their children from encounters with federal law enforcement whose mandate remains unclear. Marta Urquilla, a D.C. resident and mother of two teenagers, says she will not let her kids ride public buses to school. 'At this point, that's off the table,' she says. 'My kids present as Black, and that's just not something I am inclined to expose them to.' She says families in her neighborhood near Howard University have organized walking groups to the grocery store and that similar plans would be in place for school commutes. The federal occupation, Urquilla adds, has not been evenly felt across the city. 'The closer you get to where immigrants live, to where Black folks live and work, the more you see it,' she says. Rumors of ICE enforcement actions have swirled since Trump's inauguration in January, but have intensified over the past two weeks as ICE, FBI, Border Patrol, National Guard troops, and more have descended on D.C. streets. Videos have circulated of federal agents and local police arresting individuals in handcuffs and stopping others at various checkpoints. Across the country, school districts have been taking precautions to shield children from immigration enforcement. In New York, officials unanimously passed a resolution this year that prohibits ICE agents from entering schools or accessing student records without a judicial warrant. In Los Angeles, school leaders announced new 'safe zones' in areas targeted by ICE to protect students before and after school. D.C. parents, however, remain uncertain how much protection their schools can offer, given the city's lack of statehood and Trump's direct authority over its institutions. At a virtual information session for parents on Wednesday night, D.C. Public Schools officials attempted to address concerns about the increased law enforcement presence in the city, noting that they expect very little impact to schools. "Any law enforcement action on school grounds can only take place with a valid warrant or court order,' said Dr. Lewis D. Ferebee, the chancellor for District of Columbia Public Schools. He stressed that school resource officers are not performing any duties related to immigration or custom enforcement. DCPS also shared a few 'best practices' for parents to share with students, including to always travel in a group or with trusted adults, and to avoid distractions while traveling, such as being on a phone or using headphones. 'Please advise our young people to stay aware of their surroundings,' Ferebee said at the information session. D.C. police are currently enforcing a citywide juvenile curfew that begins at 11 p.m. for people under 17. In some targeted neighborhoods, juvenile curfews begin as early as 8 p.m. But some parents remain frustrated by the lack of communication from their schools about what many view as an unprecedented moment. 'We haven't been told a goddamn thing,' says Morgan when asked what her daughter's school in D.C. had communicated about the coming week. 'It makes us feel like, what are you going to do? Are you just going to let them come in and take these kids?' Jenn Kauffman is a mother of two who sits on the city's advisory neighborhood commission representing her neighborhood in Brightwood Park. She says parents are demanding stronger assurances from school leaders. 'I want bare minimum for the schools to kind of stand up and say what they will do to protect students,' she said. 'But in this climate, and you know, D.C. being a federal jurisdiction, I'm also afraid that still won't be enough.' Her 7-year-old, who attends a bilingual school, has already been discussing the situation with classmates. 'The kids have been talking about this and aware about this,' she says. 'But I think it's risen to a new level.' Parents say their children are absorbing the stress—and so are they. Lara Fife, whose 4-year-old started pre-K this month, says he has asked her why police are detaining people. 'I've been extremely stressed and not sleeping well at all,' she says. The White House insists the deployments are making Washington, D.C. safer, but most residents don't see it that way. A Washington Post-Schar School poll published Wednesday found roughly 80% of D.C. residents opposed Trump's executive order to federalize the city's police department, and 65% do not think Trump's actions will make the city safer. Residents warn that the show of force may deepen mistrust and drive children away from school. In Los Angeles, officials recently reported a 7% rise in online academy enrollment, attributing the spike in part to immigration fears. D.C. parents worry they may soon face the same difficult choice. 'Are we at a point where we need a virtual schooling option?' Kauffman asks. 'Because what's going to happen then is families are going to have to choose between risking their child, or being referred to Child Protective Services for truancy. And that's just immoral.' For now, families are bracing for Monday. Some will walk in groups. Others will drive in carpools. Still others may keep their children home. But the sense of unease remains. The Hispanic father with the worried 9-year-old daughter says his family plans to arrive at school extra early on Monday so he can warn other families if they notice ICE or other federal law enforcement in the area. 'I'm not hearing from any person of color or minorities that they feel safer or that they think that the police presence is here to quote, unquote, restore safety or security, right? It's quite the opposite,' he says.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Thanksgiving could throw a big surprise for crypto investors
The upcoming Thanksgiving could bring surprising news to the crypto community if Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) is to be believed. The digital asset market structure bill will land on President Donald Trump's desk before the end of 2025, Lummis said. 'I hope it's before Thanksgiving.' She was speaking at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium in Jackson Hole on Aug. 20 when she made the revelation. The Republican camp is attempting to have the bill passed through the Senate Banking Committee by the end of September and considered in the Senate Agriculture Committee in October, Lummis said. These committees will discuss how the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulate crypto assets. The market structure bill builds on the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, which the House of Representatives already passed with bipartisan support on July 17. Now, the Republicans want to continue with its progress in the Senate, she is one of the loudest crypto advocates in the U.S. political circle who also introduced the Bitcoin bill to codify Trump's executive order to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve. This reserve will consist of Bitcoin forfeited by federal agencies during criminal or civil proceedings. The House has also passed the Anti-Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) bill on July 17, but with negligible support from the Democratic Party. The GENIUS Act, which deals with stablecoin regulation, became a law after Trump signed it on July 18. With the Trump administration pushing an aggressive pro-crypto agenda, the fate of the remaining crypto bills will be a key test of its commitment. This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Aug 21, 2025, where it first appeared in the Policy section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
