‘Stop the secrecy’: Keller ISD residents overwhelmingly oppose plan to split district
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Keller ISD controversy
Read our reporting on the possible plan to split Keller ISD into two districts.
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Residents in the Keller school district who spoke at a special school board meeting Thursday overwhelmingly opposed a proposal to split the district in two.
Concerns from some of the 121 who signed up to speak included questions over how the district’s buildings, resources, funding and student body would be divided. Many also expressed anger at a lack of transparency on the part of the board in the process. By Friday, at least some of those complains alleging illegal secrecy were in the hands of the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office.
After more than two hours of heated public comments, and the superintendent saying she was prepared to resign over the issue, the board took no action, and its president said the community and committees would study the proposal further and schedule a meeting later in January.
Many who spoke Thursday described the split as a move to cut out students who “live on the wrong side of the tracks,” referring to the rail line along Denton Highway that serves as the border between Keller and Fort Worth, saying the board intended to racially segregate schools in the district. They also said they were “blindsided” by how the idea was made public.
Two school board trustees said on social media on Jan. 9 that they did not know about the plan until it was discussed during a closed session by three of the colleagues at a Dec. 19 meeting.
Fort Worth city council member Charles Lauersdorf told the Star-Telegram last week that he spoke to a school board member who said members didn’t want to disclose the plan publicly because they didn’t want to create a public outcry before discussing it.
The lack of transparency was the source of anger for many who came to speak.
“Stop the secrecy,” said Tamara Masters, a Fort Worth resident, retired Keller ISD teacher and regional director of the United Educators Association. “I come before you today with a simple letter to request please stop all this drama. Start valuing the very people who make the district work for teachers, your staff, and the students they serve. It’s deeply alarming that you’re moving forward with a plan to abolish a significant portion of the district.”
“The five people who ran from Keller never ran on a platform of dividing this district,” said Joe Macaluso, a resident of the far north Fort Worth neighborhood of Heritage, in an interview after speaking to trustees. “It is because these candidates needed the support of neighborhoods like Park Glen and mine, Heritage, to win. If their true intent was revealed, they would have had no chance of victory, none.”
An unabashed conservative, Macaluso voted for the board members who are now trying to cut his neighborhood out of the district.
“If you look at the maps after the election results, it revealed that these subdivisions supported these conservative candidates, and now they’re the ones fighting the hardest to protect their property values,” he said.
Standing out in the chilly evening after not arriving in time to sign up to speak, Fort Worth resident Jihan Jackson watched the meeting on her phone alongside her daughter, Kalyn Harvey, a sophomore at Fossil Ridge High School.
Jackson, who is Black, said she saw the choice to split the school district along demographic lines.
“I have to say it on the west side, that’s where most of your minorities are going to lie,” Jackson said. “Fossil Ridge has the highest minority percentage of all high schools all over the entire district.”
Cutting Fossil Ridge out of the district would also mean her daughter wouldn’t be able to swim anymore, as the district’s natatorium is in Keller.
“I don’t think it should happen,” Harvey said. “I wouldn’t be able to swim anymore.”
Alison Kaygood taught choir in the district three decades. She stood with a group of friends outside to watch the meeting on their phones.
“They’re trying to split the district, all right, with the haves and the haves nots … so that they can have a district that they can do every single thing they want to do without anyone contradicting them, which was the design of those more people on the board,” she said. “And it’s not the way districts should run.”
Kaygood, who lives in Keller, wondered what would happen to her taxes if the business-heavy Alliance area west of U.S. 377 were cut out of the district.
She also disagreed with the lack of transparency in the process, saying that she disapproves of the board’s plan to avoid a public vote on the split by passing a resolution, rather than getting a petition signed by at least 10% of the registered voters in the district.
Parents suspected this tactic from the beginning, and Tarrant County Commissioner for Precinct 3 Matt Krause said he interpreted the law this way.
When asked what she thought was behind the move to split the district, Kaygood said: “Christian Nationalism. How about church and state? How about the fact that (Texas Governor Greg) Abbott and the rest of the idiots think that the Ten Commandments should be in every classroom?”
Board president Charles Randklev, vice president John Birt and trustee Micah Young discussed the proposed plan to split the Keller school district during a Dec. 19 executive session. The topic was not listed on the meeting agenda as required by law.
Trustees Joni Smith and Chelsea Kelly, who live in Fort Worth, said they oppose the plan and were “blindsided” when they first learned about it.
Both trustees said the discussions to split the school district need to include the public.
Trustees haven’t provided specific details of the plan to split the Keller district, which is the fourth largest in Tarrant County with over 34,000 students in Keller, Fort Worth, Colleyville, Haltom City, Hurst, North Richland Hills, Southlake, Watauga and Westlake.
However, parents provided detailed posts on social media which stated that the district will be split at the Union Pacific Railroad line along Denton Highway, which is the Keller Fort Worth border, which puts 27 of the 42 schools in Fort Worth. The new district would be known as Alliance.
All campuses in Keller, Southlake and Colleyville received an A rating from the state in 2022, as did three Fort Worth schools in the Keller district.
Either a school board resolution or a petition signed by at least 10% of the district’s registered voters can initiate a split, according to Texas Education Code.
A public election is required if commissioners accept a petition, but the relevant statute does not mention a resolution.
Some parents believe the district could try to use this as a loophole to avoid an election, but education lawyers have interpreted the law as requiring an election in either scenario. Bypassing the election process would be a shift from the norm and set a new precedent, education lawyers said.
Attendees not allowed in meeting with empty seats in auditorium
After about an hour of public comments, Randklev called a recess, drawing vociferous disapproval from those in attendance. Board members Joni Shaw Smith and Chelsea Kelly and Superintendent Tracy Johnson stayed in the auditorium, for which they received a round of applause and shouts of gratitude and support.
During the recess, people who had not been able to come in the building when the auditorium was full were not allowed inside, despite several attendees having left empty seats inside. After reporters put cameras on the attendees speaking to security guards at the locked door, school district officials allowed them to enter.
When the meeting reconvened one parent addressed the board members with a joke: “In case you don’t know me, my name is Laney Hawes.”
A resident of Fort Worth, Hawes is a co-founder of the advocacy nonprofit Keller ISD Families for Public Education and a regular at school board meetings.
After the laughter died down, she got serious, expressing skepticism about the board attempting to carry out the detachment process in good faith.
“We don’t believe that you didn’t do this in secret,” she said. “We don’t believe that this wasn’t planned to benefit yourselves and further your political agenda. None of us believe there wasn’t collusion. The proof lies in your utter disregard for the law. You clearly violated the Texas Open Meetings Act.”
Lawyers specializing in the Texas Open Meetings Act have told the Star-Telegram the board likely did violate the law when they discussed the split at the Dec. 19 meeting. On Thursday, Jan. 16, concerned parent Andrew Sternke asked Keller police to investigate the school board for the possible violation.
This story was originally published January 16, 2025 at 8:25 PM.
