Wearing a blue De Zavala Eagles hat, Heather Tolksdorf stood at the speaker’s podium at a Fort Worth Independent School District board meeting last month, pleading with board members to vote down a proposal to close her daughters’ school.
Tolksdorf was the 23rd speaker of the evening, and more than two dozen more would follow after her. Filling the room were parents, students and teachers from campuses across the district, though mainly from De Zavala and Briscoe elementary schools. Most were there for the same thing: to try — ultimately unsuccessfully — to save their kids’ schools from closure.
Tolksdorf’s daughters, Sophia and Olivia, were in De Zavala’s dual-language kindergarten class last year. When Tolksdorf and her husband told them that the school could close in the next few years, the girls were confused, she told the Star-Telegram.
“The question all 5-year-olds ask is, why?” Tolksdorf said. “And we as a family say, well, we don’t know.”
De Zavala is one of 18 schools the district is scheduled to close and consolidate over the next four years. Located in Fort Worth’s Fairmount neighborhood, the school is in a part of the city where Fort Worth ISD has seen its enrollment dwindle over the past five years, even as the population of school-aged children has grown. The trend illustrates one of the challenges facing the district: Presented with more options for how to educate their kids, a growing number of families are choosing schools outside of Fort Worth ISD.
School closures follow declining FWISD enrollment
Fort Worth ISD’s board voted last month to close 18 campuses over the next four years. The closures come after years of declining enrollment — the district has about 15% fewer students now than it did during the 2019-20 school year. District officials say closing and consolidating small and under-enrolled campuses will allow them to redirect money toward academic priorities like reading programs…