Can Keller-Fort Worth relationship be fixed? Some see a heartbreaking division over split
These days, there’s a weariness in Keller school board trustee Joni Shaw Smith’s voice when she talks. Even when she jokes, the laughs are often clipped and followed by sighs. In some ways, she comes across like the proverbial cat in the roomful of rocking chairs.
It’s been a long couple of months for Keller school district residents, students and teachers, and perhaps no one has felt the tension more acutely than Shaw Smith and her school board colleagues. Since news broke in January that five of the seven trustees were pushing to break up the district, detaching the schools east of U.S. 377 from the ones in Fort Worth, the public outcry has been deafening. Shaw Smith is one of two trustees, along with Chelsea Kelly, who opposes the plan. Not coincidentally, Shaw Smith and Kelly are the only two who live in Fort Worth.
While the proposed split has garnered no shortage of attention, there’s been less talk of the bitter divide it has created among people who not long ago considered each other neighbors.
“I never foresaw it getting this polarized,” said Shaw Smith when asked what she expected when she ran for her school board seat in 2022. “If I had an inkling it was headed in this direction, I would have stayed away.”
Despite that, Shaw Smith is seeking re-election in May, as is Kelly. Shaw Smith’s opponents for the Place 2 seat are Jennifer Erickson and Jade Holbrook. Kelly is running against Ed Duncan, Phil Perez and Nikki Paris for the Place 3 seat. Board trustee Micah Young, who holds the Place 1 seat, has said he won’t seek re-election. Running for that seat are Randy Campbell, Scott Bruce and Marissa Bryce.
In addition to Shaw Smith and Kelly, Erickson, Duncan, Perez, Campbell and Bruce are against the split. Bryce and Holbrook both said they’re waiting for additional information before deciding. Paris said at a board meeting that she is for the split. The Star-Telegram contacted all of the challengers for comment on this story. Campbell, Perez, Duncan, Bryce and Holbrook responded and confirmed their positions.
Early voting for the Keller school board election is April 22 through April 29. Election Day is Saturday, May 3. The deadline to register to vote is April 3.
Season of discontent
For the uninitiated, recent Keller school board meetings have unfolded something like this: The meeting is called to order, there are pledges of allegiance to the U.S. and Texas flags followed by a prayer, then public comments begin, during which anywhere from a few dozen to a couple hundred residents take turns lambasting the board, alleging everything from mismanagement to outright corruption. The few who speak in the board’s favor are vastly outnumbered.
After public comments conclude and it’s the board’s turn to speak, disruptions are common, with residents shouting out their dissatisfaction. At one meeting in February, a mother who refused to sit quietly was escorted out by security guards at the behest of board president Charles Randklev, with her toddler in tow.
When she began her tenure, the biggest concerns Shaw Smith had were around how Keller would handle the COVID pandemic. Then there were twin controversies over district officials banning books in school libraries and canceling “The Laramie Project,” a play examining the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student in Wyoming, which was to be staged at Timber Creek High School. Keller’s former superintendent, Tracy Johnson, eventually reversed that decision.
Those things spurred passionate debate in the community, Shaw Smith said, but nothing like what the split plan has generated. Those who oppose the split fear what it will mean for students, teachers and property values. Those who support it want to see the Keller school district primarily encompass those schools within the Keller city limits and not those in neighboring Fort Worth. There’s also the issue of an expected $9.4 million dollar budget deficit next school year, which split proponents believe would be mitigated by creating two smaller districts. Keller has more than 34,000 enrolled students. Seventy percent of the district’s residents are on the Fort Worth side.
Unsurprisingly, the most dramatic signs of discord can be found on social media. Discussion posts on Facebook groups for Keller parents and residents have become increasingly combative, with some members publicly hurling insults at one another. Then there are the vitriolic anonymous posts that take on the shrill tone and tenor of a schoolyard back and forth. But while it’s easy to dismiss these expressions as trolling, it seems the same sort of attitudes have engulfed the area in the real world, too. Those who live west of U.S. 377 — those on the “other side of the tracks” as the joke goes — are exchanging sideways glances with the east siders who live in the city of Keller.
“Yes, social media tends to over-exaggerate things,” Shaw Smith said. “There was always a lighthearted ‘war of the tracks,’ so to speak, but it wasn’t mean spirited. Now, the division is palpable. It breaks my heart, it really does.”
Over the past few weeks, Shaw Smith said she has been inundated with emails and phone calls from constituents, to the point where she’s sacrificing sleep to respond to them all.
“The [pro-split] emails I receive from people in Keller say they just want to represented,” said Shaw Smith. “They want to see their family values intact and their community intact. But I thought the whole district was the community.”
Kelly, who was born, raised and attended school in the Keller district, said the area has always seemed like a small town, even if there has historically been a rivalry between the Fort Worthians and Kellerites.
“There’s always been a turf war, but it’s never been as heated as it is now,” she said. “So yes, the division is palpable.”
Now, Shaw Smith and Kelly said, the sense of small-town community has been shattered by residents making snide comments and villainizing one another. Those on the east side who support the board’s plan are frequently accused of classism or, worse, racism. The eastern half of the district is more affluent and less racially diverse than the western half. Residents on the west side who denounce the split plan are often accused of being “woke” or of not being open minded to a solution that might solve the district’s financial woes and help avoid campus closures.
In addition to the anticipated $9.4 million budget deficit, Keller’s chief operating officer John Allison said at a Jan. 30 board meeting there’s a $35 million shortfall in the general fund. Allison also told NBC 5 news that splitting the district would not help it generate more money to close that gap.
“I haven’t seen any good rationale for the split because there isn’t any,” Shaw Smith said. “What we have with things like KCAL (the Keller Center for Advanced Learning) and the natatorium, we wouldn’t have those if we weren’t as big of a district as we are because we couldn’t afford it. And there’s not enough money in Keller alone to support it, either.”
From what Shaw Smith has seen, the only advantage to having a new independent district on the west side is that it wouldn’t be subject to revenue recapture, the so-called “robin hood” program that takes funds over a certain threshold from wealthier school districts and redistributes them to ones with financial need. But, Shaw Smith said, the new Keller district would still be subject to recapture, so she can’t understand why trustees and parents from that side want the split to happen.
Furthermore, she believes campuses will have to close on both sides of U.S. 377 no matter what. Shaw Smith remembers when Randy Reid, one of Keller’s previous superintendents, said the district was “sustaining,” but soon it would be “waning” due to declining enrollment, a reality that was acknowledged by district officials at the Jan. 30 board meeting. A lower birth rate, an aging population and a lack of affordable housing for young families are to blame, according to Shaw Smith.
For that reason and others, Keller is in a financial crisis, said Shaw Smith, but according to her, board executive sessions have become so contentious over the split that it’s tough to get down to the work needed to fix the problems. Shaw Smith described it as “two versus five,” with her and Kelly being all but cut off by the other trustees.
“I felt we were an incredible team,” said Shaw Smith. “We were all friendly. That’s gone.”
Kelly agreed. Partly because she’s the newest member of the board, she believes the five pro-split trustees dismiss her speaking out against district detachment as “antics.” Regardless, she wants to see the board return to some semblance of civility.
“I don’t agree with the process by which this came about,” Kelly said, referring to allegations that certain board members planned the split privately. “But I will stay cordial when it comes to meeting with them and hearing what they have to say.”
The first thing that needs to happen, said Kelly, is that all the trustees need to embrace community input on the split question. She pointed to the Northwest school district, which has faced similar budget constraints, saying its leaders have collaborated with the public.
“Why can’t we do that? Are they afraid of hearing dissenting voices or of people having opposing views?” asked Kelly. “I do think, with our board leadership, the messaging has not always been the greatest. It hasn’t been inclusive, it hasn’t been transparent. That’s something we as a board need to fix.”
More importantly, Kelly wants to see Randklev call for calm and “press pause” until the board can look more closely into the pros and cons of a district split.
Randklev and the other trustees did not respond to a request for comment.
Is it what the people really want?
One lingering question no one seems to be able or willing to answer is this: How many district residents actually want the district to split?
Public comments are overwhelmingly against it, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a silent pro-split majority wary of sharing their opinions.
The five trustees who want to split the district — Randklev, Young, Chris Coker, John Birt and Heather Washington — haven’t publicly expressed any reservations about the plan. Because of this, residents wonder whether there’s a groundswell of support for the idea.
When asked about this, Shaw Smith said she believed it’s only a small circle of residents who have convinced Randklev and others that district detachment is the only path forward.
Place 1 candidate Randy Campbell agrees. “The people in Keller, in the 76248 ZIP code, are wonderful people,” he said. “This has been driven by a small, well-funded faction. We should never paint 76248 as the bad guys. The majority of people in Keller don’t want this, but the extremes always get the attention.”
Campbell has lived in the district for more than 30 years. He blames the split plan on the fact that the board of trustees has grown overtly political in recent years. He said until Patriot Mobile’s political action committee started funding candidates, board decisions largely transcended party politics. Patriot Mobile calls itself “America’s only Christian conservative wireless provider.”
Like Shaw Smith and Campbell, Phil Perez and Ed Duncan have seen little to make them believe there’s a large number of people who want the split, but Perez says that with cautious optimism.
“If there’s smoke, there’s fire,” he said. “If board members are proposing this, there are people supporting it, and they see value. But if it went to a community vote, I don’t know that it would pass.”
Marissa Bryce and Jade Holbrook seem to be the only candidates occupying the middle ground. Bryce is part of a special budget committee advising interim superintendent Cory Wilson, and she said she’s asked for financial figures to help her decide if the split would be advantageous. Until she sees that, she’s reserving judgment.
Likewise, Holbrook wants to see the numbers. “I’m not taking a position,” she said. “I’m not privy to enough information at this point to make an informed, data-driven decision.”
Bryce, who lives on the Fort Worth side, said the loudest voices in her neighborhood are against the split, but most of the people she’s spoken to feel the same as her — they just want to see the facts and decide what’s best for the students.
Holbrook echoed that sentiment. She said she understands the emotions involved, but she hopes people can get past the infighting and come together to find solutions. That starts, Holbrook believes, with people stepping away from the keyboards and engaging in dialogue.
“I appreciate face-to-face meetings,” she said. “It’s beneficial to talk in person.”
Bryce also bemoans the divisiveness in the community, and she hopes the rift can be repaired. “Whether this reshaping happens or not, Fort Worth and Keller are still going to be neighbors. We’re still going to be eating in each others’ restaurants, shopping in each others’ areas, attending church with one another ... There have been so many rumors fueling the fire, and we’ve buried the truth.”
Kelly remains hopeful, too. “The thing I hear continuously is that the relationship is so badly damaged that folks don’t see a way to fix it, but I don’t believe that.”
Ultimately, it’s hard to get a read on exactly how many people support the split proposal. Pro-split board members have declined to talk with the media, and so have the majority of pro-split residents.
One, Payton Scarth, the father of an elementary school student in Keller and a soon-to-be kindergartener, said he’s just looking for the district to do something different.
“That’s no way to live,” he said of Keller’s ongoing budget crunch. “Based on the information, it seems like it would be much easier to manage two small districts. It would change the economic demographics, allowing for more state funding for the [west] side, and they wouldn’t be subject to recapture, so it’s good for them.”
As previously reported, the west side of Keller has more students receiving special services, like special education and English as a second language scaffolds. But state funds “follow the student,” meaning there would be little difference in the per-pupil funding whether Keller splits or not.
Scarth, whose father, Danny, served for about a decade on the Fort Worth City Council, believes a new district for the east side of Keller would lose less revenue to recapture given the smaller tax base, which would result in higher overall funding for schools. Like others, though, he worries about dividing district expenses. Forming a new district would likely mean renegotiating contracts with existing service providers, perhaps at a higher rate. It would also, of course, mean two separate administrations, with the litany of needs that go along with that times two.
“We just don’t know what that will look like,” Scarth said.
While Scarth isn’t shy about voicing his beliefs, he said many who are pro-split are, especially the ones who don’t want to risk alienating friends on the west side.
‘I feel like I have my tinfoil hat on’
Keller parent Katie Woods is anti-split, and she said she’s felt a chill in the air when she crosses the Keller city limits from Fort Worth.
“I always felt welcome in Keller,” she said. “Now I just stay quiet, because you don’t know who the people are on the other side.”
Woods said she’s invested a great deal of free time into researching the motives behind the split. That’s included poring over documents released under open records requests into the wee hours of the morning.
“I feel like I have my tinfoil hat on, like I’m going down this conspiracy trail, but everything I see, it just keeps getting worse.”
When not digging deeper into the split, Woods has recently spent her days canvassing neighborhoods on the west side, getting signatures on a petition to change the rules governing Keller school board elections. Some feel the board makeup and its lack of diversity is a sign the district needs to adopt single-member voting, which could give voters from individual neighborhoods and smaller communities within the district more of a voice.
Woods said she’s talked with more than 100 residents, and only a couple have said they want to see Keller broken up.
Woods said she’s encountered residents on the west side who just want to “rip the bandage off” and split the district so everyone can move on. But she cautions against that kind of thinking.
“I remind them that we don’t know what will happen if the ax falls.”
Woods worries that if Keller detaches itself, the new district on the west side would be governed by appointed board members who could enter into agreements and contracts that might haunt the district for years to come. The Texas Education Code states then when a new district is formed, “the commissioners court of the county in which the largest portion of the district’s territory is located” must appoint seven trustees to govern the district until a regular election can be called.
How will it end?
How things will turn out is anyone’s guess. A whole army of district residents are against the split. One group of homeowners in the Heritage development has filed a lawsuit to keep it from happening.
Shaw Smith, Kelly and the challengers are busy drumming up support for the upcoming election. Shaw Smith admitted she questioned getting back into the political ring, worrying that her involvement has been to the detriment of her family life. Nevertheless, she’s marching forward.
“I got into this to make sure we retain, recruit and reward the best teachers,” she said. “But this has been the ultimate time suck. Is it worth it? At this point, I’m in the fight. This has truly become a war. Teachers are scared to death, they’re scared for their livelihoods. That’s what worries me.”
Kelly said nearly the same thing when asked why she was subjecting herself to another unpaid term on the board. Her goal, she said, is to protect the district, the students, the teachers and property values for those on the west side. “If I don’t run, then this community doesn’t have a voice.”
This story was originally published March 5, 2025 at 11:21 AM.