Fort Worth ISD’s new Rolling Hills Elementary faces opening delays with water infrastructure
The Fort Worth Independent School District’s newest elementary school was set to open this fall in the Benbrook community, but obstacles with water infrastructure have delayed the welcoming of its inaugural class of 420 students.
It’s unclear when Rolling Hills Elementary will begin serving pre-kindergartners to fifth-graders, providing relief of overcrowding at nearby Westpark Elementary, but the move could happen in the midst of the 2023-24 school year, according to Mike Naughton, the district’s executive director of facilities planning.
“We will try to make sure that we move students and staff with as little disruption to instruction as possible. So this could happen over the weekend, it could happen over a long holiday. We have movers ready whenever it’s time to pull the trigger,” Naughton said.
Completing the water infrastructure is between the developer and the city, making it outside of the school district’s control, but it’s expected to be wrapped up “any day now,” Naughton said.
The $43 million school was funded through a $1.2 billion bond proposal that was approved by voters in November 2021 for middle school renovations and three other new elementary schools. Eastern Hills Elementary, Maudrie M. Walton Elementary and Worth Heights Elementary will be replaced once the new facilities are built.
The rollout of Rolling Hills Elementary comes shortly after the Fort Worth ISD school board approved a study on school building capacity that will include “rightsizing” recommendations, resulting from a steadily declining enrollment of students district-wide. In the Benbrook community, though, Westpark Elementary has dealt with overcrowding for years as residential growth has continued in the area.
“We’ll be looking at answering the question of, ‘Is what we have there sufficient to accommodate the anticipated future growth?’ as well as, ‘Are there other areas of town where we have more school capacity than we need?’” Naughton said, referring to the capacity study.
Rolling Hills has a maximum capacity of 1,000 students, he added.
The district touts the school — almost 120,000 square feet with 45 classrooms — as its first “with an indoor slide that travels from the top story to an open library and media center” with other amenities such as an “outdoor art and science courtyard” and “an interactive outdoor learning terrace.” The design of the school is based on the children’s book “The Giving Tree” with “public spaces that function as roots feeding into classrooms.”
Pre-K students zoned for Rolling Hills Elementary and Westpark Elementary are currently going to class at nearby Benbrook Elementary until Rolling Hills opens, Naughton said.
Julie Shelley-Myslim, a parent of a Benbrook Elementary kindergartner, said although her child will remain at Benbrook once Rolling Hills opens, she’s concerned as a community member about shuffling the pre-K students to different locations in the middle of the school year because “at that age, kids rely on routine and knowing what is going to happen next,” she told the Star-Telegram.
“I’d hate for them to have insecure feelings towards school because their first year involved such a major change,” she said. “I cannot see any way that it would be productive to move them halfway through the year. It has been a great disappointment to me that this school has had these delays and under no circumstances should they have considered an opening date for this school year if they were not able to do so the first day of school.”
This story was originally published November 2, 2023 at 5:45 AM.
