21-05-2025
Fort Worth ISD board approves plan to close 18 schools over four years
The Fort Worth Independent School District's board voted Tuesday to approve a plan to close 16 schools over the next 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.
