Public will study plan to split Keller school district, board president says
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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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After more than two hours of heated public comments at a special meeting of the Keller school board on Jan. 16, President Charles Randklev announced that the community and committees would study a proposal to split the district.
“We’re going to take this idea that, what we’ve talked about that, to be honest with you, I think we’re still in a formative and conceptual phase, and we’re going to kick it out to the community,” he said during a board discussion following the public comments. “We have committee groups that we can work with, and we can workshop on it. And at the end of the day, if it’s not viable, it doesn’t have legs, then you know what? I think it’s dead in the water, and I agree.”
Three board members discussed a plan to split the district during a closed meeting in December, according to two trustees, but the plan did not become public until last week, when a Fort Worth city council member spoke out about the proposal.
Trustee Chelsea Kelly said Thursday that the plan was to vote on the split during the special meeting.
“We are not allowed to divulge the advice we receive from the lawyer, but I am allowed to say that we, 100%, were told by Charles that today we were supposed to vote for this resolution for Keller ISD to split. Don’t let them tell you otherwise,” Kelly said.
After Kelly’s comments, shock ran through the crowd again when Superintendent Tracy Johnson gave a tearful comment, saying she did not agree with the proposal to split the district. She said she had already written her letter of resignation and would submit it pending the results of the closed session.
She did not resign after the board returned to open session.
Kelly called the proposal to split the district a matter of “significant public interest” and demanded more transparency in the process.
After closed session, Randklev told attendees that no action would be taken on the item at the meeting and that a community website would be created to get feedback from the public.
Trustee Heather Washington spoke of the funding difficulties the district as had in recent years and asked for time to find solutions to them. She praised Johnson for finding $45 million in budget cuts in the last two years.
The district has to make some “real adult decisions, decisions that don’t need to be talked about with your children right now. They don’t need to worry about this. Be the adult.,” Washington said. “There’s no easy solution. We are addressing it.”
Keller ISD has 12 committees through which people who are not district employees can provide the board with feedback on a number of issues, including policy, legislative priorities, innovation and more. Randklev suggested committees on budget and infrastructure/facilities could analyze the proposal
But critics of the process to split the district said they do not have confidence in the committees to provide unbiased feedback to the board.
“No one who has ever publicly spoken out against the board made it to a committee,” said Laney Hawes, a regular at school board meetings and co-founder of the advocacy nonprofit Keller ISD Families for Public Education.
The board went into closed session after a heated back-and-forth with attendees, during which members of the public called for the formation of a task force to investigate splitting the district.
Keller faces significant funding challenges, and the district is going to have to look at “efficiencies,” such as closing schools to address the lack of funds from Austin.
“We are going to come out with next steps. We are going to push this out sooner than later,” Randklev said. “We are going to take this apart. There are opportunities to keep dollars locally. We’re in the middle of fact-finding.”
He said he went to Austin two years ago and “fought” for the students and teachers, but nothing happened.
Several from the audience shouted, “We’ll go to Austin with you.”
Both Randklev and the board’s lawyer Tim Davis did not respond to questions when approached before going into the closed meeting.
Before adjourning the meeting, Randklev announced that the regular meeting scheduled for Jan. 23 would be moved to Jan. 30 to accommodate the schedule of Trustee Joni Shaw Smith, who will be out of town on the day of the scheduled meeting.
On Friday, Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker called for an election that would give the district’s residents the final say.
“This is a major decision that will impact thousands of families, and the way it is rolling out is unacceptable,” she said in a Friday statement posted on X.
This story was originally published January 16, 2025 at 11:26 PM.
