Tarrant DA asks Texas AG to weigh in on legal questions surrounding Keller ISD split
Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney Phil Sorrells has asked Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for his legal opinion regarding a recent proposal to split the Keller school district in two.
Signed Feb. 13, the letter asks Paxton for “clarification on the procedural requirements for a school district engaging in the detachment process authorized in the Texas Education Code.”
The possibility of splitting Keller ISD, or the creation of a district “by detachment,” as the code states, has led to heated debate since the public became aware of the school board’s intent to do so in early January.
At issue is whether the code requires an election with the participation of at least 25% of registered voters in the district.
The letter tells Paxton that there are three “proposed methods by which the process may occur.” The first is a petition signed by at least 10% of registered voters in the district, which the code explicitly states mandates an election.
The other two involve a resolution passed by the board. Proponents of a split have said that since the code only specifically requires an election in the case of detachment being initiated by a petition, then an election is not required. Opponents say an election is required in both cases and have made repeated calls for one at recent school board meetings.
“The second and third processes cannot co-exist,” Sorrells’ letter states. “The resolution must either trigger an election or complete the detachment process without an election.”
The letter goes on to say that “the statutes lack specificity as to the effect a board of trustee’s resolution has on detachment,” and that clarification is needed because the Tarrant County Commissioners Court will soon face the issue.
Republicans on the court who have expressed their opinions on the split appear to be at odds with how the law should be interpreted.
Precinct 3 Commissioner Matt Krause, a constitutional lawyer, has said that he does not believe the law requires an election in the case of a resolution from the school board. Precinct 4 Commissioner Manny Ramirez, on the other hand, said on social media that he believes an election should be required.
“Because of the grammatically ambiguous wording found in Education Code Subchapter C and the lack of precedent, an opinion of the Attorney General’s Office is needed to provide guidance and resolution,” the letter states.
Sorrells said in an emailed statement that these statutes have never been used in Texas and that there are a few ways to interpret the Education Code.
“I want to advise my client, the Commissioners Court, correctly,” he said. “The best way to do so is to request input from the Attorney General.”
Paxton’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Sorrells’ letter “reads like there is a Gordian Knot, and he is asking the Attorney General to try and unravel it, because it appears no one is sure how to proceed,” said Dennis Eichelbaum, a Plano-based education lawyer. “That sounds about right.”
He and other education lawyers told the Star-Telegram in January that the law has never been interpreted so as to bypass an election. Steven Dubner, a Lewisville-based attorney who represents school districts across Texas, said that a proper interpretation of the law requires the “harmonization of statutes” to result in an election no matter what, and that reading the law any other way would be “chaos.”
Opponents feel that if the Keller school board is able to pull off a split without their input, it will set a precedent for other districts across the state to cut out undesirable student populations or neighborhoods with a simple majority of just four trustees.
Keller school board President Charles Randklev, Vice President John Birt, Trustees Heather Washington, Chris Coker and Micah Young, and parents who want the split cite a $9 million budget deficit as reason for their support.
A financial report by a third-party school finance firm presented at the Jan. 30 board meeting, however, showed that funding follows students and that a split would result in little change to the two new districts’ dollars.
Board Secretary Joni Shaw Smith and Trustee Chelsea Kelly, the only two on the board who do not reside in Keller, noted how that report did not include projections for expenditures in the new districts, only focusing on revenues.
Josh Haney, the financial analyst who prepared the report, said he was only asked to focus on revenues, not expenditures, but a Dec. 19 he sent to Randkev, Young and Superintendent Tracy Johnson revealed that he had looked at some expenditures and that the costs for underfunded programs like bilingual and special education would largely go to the new Alliance ISD.
Opponents say that the lack of any significant changes to funding reveals that the split is meant to divide the district along demographic and socioeconomic lines. Several opponents who spoke at a Jan. 16 special meeting accused the board of trying to racially segregate public schools.
Laney Hawes, a parent of students in the district and co-founder of the advocacy group Keller ISD Families for Public Education, accused Sorrells of not being willing to give his own legal opinion of the split, so he is “punting it to Ken Paxton because they know litigation is imminent.”
The split has already seen opposition in the courts. Dallas-based pro bono law firm Brewer Storefront sued the board in federal court on Feb. 14 for alleged violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
And Keller ISD parent Matthew Mucker filed a pro se petition in the Tarrant County District Court on Jan. 16 asking the judge to intervene to avoid possible violations of the Texas Open Meetings Act. Lawyers specializing in the government transparency legislation told the Star-Telegram in January that the school board likely violated the Open Meetings Act when it discussed the split during an executive session on Dec. 19.
A far north Fort Worth neighborhood association recently formed a legal fund and hired a powerful Fort Worth attorney to fight the split.
“This is exactly what happens when corrupt elected officials operate in secret so they can skirt the law and circumvent community involvement,” Hawes said, adding that allowing residents to vote would avoid any potential legal issues.
The Keller school board trustees did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Sorrells’ letter also asks for clarification on the commissioners court’s role in splitting the personal property, such as technology, books and other school supplies, between the two districts.
The Education Code tasks a commissioners court with equitably allocating personal property in the case of annexation of one district onto another, but it is not clear in the case of detachment, the letter states.
Sorrells argued that “it seems clear the commissioners would have the duty of splitting personal property between the districts” due to another statute that states that territory can be detached from one district and annexed to another.
“If the commissioners court plays no role in the division of personal property between the districts, this raises the question of whether personal property is divided between the districts at all,” Sorrells wrote in the letter.
Dubner, the Lewisville education lawyer, said Sorrells appears to be arguing that personal property does not need to be equitably distributed. He disagreed with that interpretation, saying “it’s pretty clear that you divide it with the territory.”
This story was originally published February 18, 2025 at 5:08 PM.
