A closed meeting causes frustration as parents protest outside Keller ISD building
A closed meeting with board members of Keller ISD has generated more frustration over transparency and residents’ inability to choose their future amid a proposed school district split.
Katie Woods was one of the handful of parents standing on Keller Parkway in front of Keller ISD Education Center with signs saying “Honk 4 Votes KISD” on Wednesday night. Security checked IDs at the entrance of the building, only allowing invited attendees to enter and keeping Woods and others outside.
Woods is a Heritage neighborhood resident who has two children in the school district. She wishes the school district would be transparent about why it wants the split, and allow residents to vote on it as she fears it will place a financial burden on students.
“I knew we wouldn’t be let in, but I really just wanted there to be at least some kind of public demonstration of how upset we all are that they’re still entertaining this idea,” Woods said.
The meeting was posted on a “Keller ISD Families for Public Education” Facebook page.
The post shows an email sent by Keller ISD interim superintendent Cory Wilson for a “Superintendent Special Projects” meeting. Wilson replaced Tracy Johnson, whose resignation was on the Jan. 30 meeting agenda but was tabled.
In the email, Wilson said managing the school district’s budget crisis has been a “multi-year process with vast community input.” He later stated that the special project meeting’s goal was to “gather community feedback as we explore solutions and options and consider structural changes.”
According to a statement from Keller ISD that was sent to the Star Telegram, the attendees were to be members of three committees whose membership was approved by all seven current members of the board last year. There are 12 committees that provide the board with feedback on a number of issues, including policy, legislative priorities and innovation. The feedback gathered in the session is to be presented to the Board of Trustees for review, the statement said.
The statement said the meeting would not be open to the public or recorded so as to protect the privacy of attendees. Bill Aleshire, an Austin-based attorney with the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, says this does not violate the Texas Open Meetings Act because the committees do not fit the definition of a “governmental body,” according to the Texas Attorney General’s Open Meetings Act Handbook.
Milton Weatherred was among the parents demonstrating their frustration with the school board. Weatherred lives in the Woodland Springs neighborhood and has two children in Keller ISD.
He said he thinks the split was caused by PAC money from sources such as Patriot Mobile, a Christian conservative wireless provider. The wireless service created a PAC to support school board members in Keller and surrounding school districts who align with conservative values to ban school books about topics such as LGBTQ people and anti-critical race theory.
The lack of information and transparency the school board has shown has only increased his uncertainty about what is to come, he said.
“There’s more motivation than just making this school district as successful as possible,” Weatherred said.
He fears the split will cause financial problems and cause teachers to leave the district.
Three board members discussed a plan to split the district during a closed meeting in December, but the plan did not become public until January, when a Fort Worth city council member spoke out about the proposal.
While the school board has not said how the district would be split, the consensus among the public is that the line would form along Denton Highway (U.S. 377). The west side of the highway is where 27 of the district’s 42 schools are located, mostly in Fort Worth. Most of the schools on the east side of the highway are in Keller.
A FAQs page on the district’s website has information on “reshaping” the district to curtail financial challenges, how it will benefit the community, and how it would affect students, parents and teachers.
Opponents of the split say it is dividing the district by race and class, will hurt property values, and gut resources and services for those on the west side of the highway.
Christa McCord is a Keller ISD parent who lives on the west side of Denton Highway. She was not demonstrating, but received an email to attend the closed meeting to voice her concerns, even though she never applied to be on any committee.
She said she thinks the split should be voted on, because like many parents, she fears the potential financial burden and how it will affect property values. Racism is motivating the split, McCord claimed.
“They want to keep Keller a small town that has one high school that all the kids feed into it, and it’s got that good old small-town Texas vibe, that’s elite, that’s wealthy, that’s white, even though they’re not willing to say that,” McCord said.
This story was originally published February 5, 2025 at 9:02 PM.
