FWISD parents want to know why students in this area may no longer attend Paschal HS
In the historic Rosemont neighborhood a few miles south of downtown Fort Worth, nearly 6,000 residents are packed into a one-square-mile area made up of mostly small, single-family homes.
Yet the predominately Hispanic neighborhood is split by three Fort Worth school district attendance zones. Some Rosemont teenagers go to Paschal High School, while others attend O.D. Wyatt and still others are sent to South Hills.
Under those conditions, one might think the neighborhood — which is bordered by Hemphill Street to the east, McCart Avenue to the west and Seminary Drive to the south — would favor uniting all the area youths into one high school. However, when the superintendent recently unveiled a proposed redrawing of the attendance zones during a public meeting, some residents spoke out in opposition — mainly because their children were being drawn out of the attendance zone for Paschal, a high school that is overcrowded and well-known for its high-quality academics.
The tension is a small example of the frustration that residents are feeling across the school district of 84,000 students, as leaders undertake their first major redrawing of attendance zones in 20 years. Many residents worry that the changes will force lower-income, minority students out to other high schools by making room for wealthier residents at the most-coveted, high-performing schools.
In the latest accountability ratings of Texas public schools, South Hills and O.D. Wyatt earned a C rating while Paschal received a B.
Under the district’s proposed boundary changes, all students in the Rosemont area would attend South Hills High School, which is more than two miles south of the neighborhood.
“My daughter is so stressed out,” said Gloria Herrera, a Rosemont resident whose 13-year-old daughter is a seventh-grader at McLean Middle School and was looking forward to attending Paschal. “Right now, she just wants to know if she can finish at McLean. We just want more information about what the school district is planning to do.”
Herrera, a special education teacher, also has two grown children who graduated from Paschal High School, which is less than a mile from her house. South Hills High School is nearly three miles away.
Superintendent Kent P. Scribner, who during the last several weeks has held listening sessions with residents at 13 high school auditoriums regarding possible zone changes, cautioned parents and teachers not to consider the plan a done deal.
Scribner described boundary maps displayed for residents as merely draft versions, and explained that a formal proposal for boundary changes will not be unveiled until after winter break. After that, changes would still have to be approved by school board trustees.
Scribner said the district has a generous transfer policy, making it possible for students anywhere in the district to move to a campus featuring academic programs they wish to pursue — including specialties such as biomedical sciences, engineering or world languages.
But transferring only helps when a school has room for an extra student — something that’s often not possible at Paschal because of overcrowding.
“You say we have a choice as a parent, but we can’t transfer to Paschal. So what do you mean?” Herrera asked Scribner during the meeting.
Challenges ahead
Scribner acknowledged the challenges ahead with the rezoning plan. He said the changes are needed because the district hasn’t made major alterations to its attendance maps since 1999. The school board approved patchwork changes to a handful of school attendance zones in 2009 and 2013, he said.
“They were needed fixes but they did not stand the test of time,” Scribner told the audience of about 300 people at Paschal’s large auditorium.
He said the district was aiming to create more simplified organizational “pyramids” in which each of the district’s 13 high schools is fed by roughly two middle schools and six elementary schools — with as few exceptions as possible — so students can attend kindergarten through 12th grade with roughly the same group of peers.
“We’re trying to fix a broken feeder pattern,” he said.
But there are strong suspicions among some residents that the boundary changes will upset the socioeconomic balance at various high schools. Regarding Paschal, the residents don’t think it would be fair for students from lower-income areas with high minority populations to be moved out of the school to make way for wealthier residents of neighborhoods that are farther away.
For example, under the proposed attendance zone changes students from Tanglewood Elementary and the new Overton Park Elementary would still be allowed to attend Paschal. Overton is under construction in the Tanglewood neighborhood and scheduled to open in the fall.
The Tanglewood/Overton Park boundaries are in an area of west Fort Worth that is much wealthier than other neighborhoods feeding into Paschal, and parts of the neighborhood could experience more residential growth.
But Scribner and other school officials say their intent is to redraw the boundaries in a way that maintains the current socioeconomic balance at all the schools.
“Fort Worth is rich in diversity and I see that as a strength and we want to continue that,” Scribner told the crowd.
About 65% of students at Paschal are economically disadvantaged, according to the Texas Education Agency. That percentage is much higher than schools in many neighboring suburbs, but one of the lowest in the Fort Worth district.
Changing neighborhood
The proposed boundary changes come at a time when residents of the Rosemont neighborhood are trying to take a more prominent role in civic affairs affecting their area.
Some of those residents recently formed Las Familias de Rosemont, a neighborhood association to represent the residents of Rosemont — as well as the smaller Shaw Clarke neighborhood immediately to the north — whenever Fort Worth city officials are voting on ordinances that affect the area.
The school district’s attendance zones proposal has provided Las Familias de Rosemont with its first big issue, said president Fernando Peralta.
“A lot of slices are being cut from our neighborhood,” Peralta said.
“One of our concerns is, because Rosemont seems to be kind of smack in the middle of this whole puzzle, we just want to make sure we have got that voice,” Peralta said in a phone interview. “We want to make sure the community is really heard. We want to make sure that every single student, no matter their socioeconomic background, even if they are moved to another school, they can have better academic achievement.”
How to speak up
Although the Fort Worth district has concluded its 13 listening sessions, residents who wish to speak their minds about the boundary issue can ask questions and offer comments online by visiting the district’s community forums website.
District officials say they will continue monitoring those forums and respond to residents’ submissions promptly.
This story was originally published November 22, 2019 at 6:00 AM.
