Grapevine-Colleyville board president confirms school closures
Grapevine-Colleyville school board president Shannon Braun said the district will close elementary campuses, but no decisions have been made on how many will be on the chopping block.
The district’s Education Master Planning Committee will submit recommendations to the board later this fall.
“We’ve been discussing downsizing and right-sizing from the dais …” Braun said in an interview Friday afternoon. “This idea that some people are now shocked, we’ve had half-empty schools.”
Braun said she and other trustees have talked about campus closings at PTA meetings.
“It’s just frustrating we communicate and communicate,” she said.
The district is not looking at middle or high school campuses. The elementaries are the issue, Braun said.
The community is aging, and it is an expensive place to live. Young families can’t afford homes, according to information from the Sept. 29 board meeting. The median list price for a home in Grapevine was $600,000 in September; in Colleyville it was $1.1 million.
Dove Elementary in Grapevine and Bransford in Colleyville are among the campuses that are being considered for closure.
Grapevine-Colleyville, like other districts, did not receive full funding from the state, and it is also a “recapture” district,” and sent more than $30 million to the state to distribute to poorer districts.
Braun, a Grapevine High School graduate, said she lives in Colleyville, and that she and other trustees have a long history with the school district, which makes the decisions difficult.
“We are not looking to burn the place down,” she said.
This week, the concerns about schools closing prompted dueling letters from Grapevine Mayor William Tate and Braun.
Tate’s letter criticized Grapevine-Colleyville for failing to include the city in its discussions over the schools and also cited financial concerns.
Braun responded with a letter telling Grapevine to stop putting out false information. Braun said it took two days for her to respond to Tate’s letter because she had to consult with school district attorneys.
She also described a meeting last month involving Tate and Superintendent Brad Schnautz in which Tate told the superintendent that if schools close, Schnautz would never work in the area and told Braun that closing schools is “political suicide.”
Tate said that he got angry during the meeting when Braun talked about the Education Master Planning Committee, saying people were chosen based on their talents, not where they lived.
“I asked to terminate the meeting because I got angry,” Tate said. “But they kept going and going.”
Take said he “advised Schnautz that as a superintendent, it would be difficult for him to get hired elsewhere if he came from a district with political turmoil.
“I told him to stand up and to be a leader.”
Tate said he told Braun that she has two or three years of political experience and that Tate has 57 years.
“I was giving her advice,” he said.
Braun sent a letter to Tate asking for another meeting to discuss issues facing Grapevine-Colleyville.
“What does the mayor want people to do, picket, raise holy Cain? It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’re still going to close the schools. We’re not going to do this emotionally. It’s going to be based on factual data.”
This story was originally published October 10, 2025 at 5:53 PM.