Keller ISD board members must answer questions and produce documents, judge rules
Keller school board President Charles Randklev and former board trustee Micah Young must provide records related to their alleged efforts to conceal a plan to split the district, based on a court ruling in a lawsuit filed by district residents against the board.
On May 7, Tarrant County District Judge Megan Fahey said attorneys from Kelly, Hart and Hallman, the firm representing homeowners in north Fort Worth’s Heritage neighborhood, can question Randklev and Young and have them produce records showing how they responded to a Jan. 9 Facebook message posted by former board trustee Joni Shaw Smith.
In that message, Shaw Smith said Randklev, Young and board Vice President John Birt presented a plan during executive session at the Dec. 19 board meeting to split the Keller school district in half. Shaw Smith wrote that she and board trustee Chelsea Kelly were “blindsided.”
Since then, there’s been speculation that five of Keller’s seven board trustees finalized the split plan before the Dec. 19 meeting without input from Shaw Smith or Kelly in violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act.
Under the proposal, which was called off on March 14, the Keller school district would have been split using U.S. 377 as the dividing line. The schools on the east side in Keller, Colleyville, Southlake and Watauga would have formed a new Keller school district, leaving the schools west of the line in Fort Worth to create their own.
Many residents, especially on the west side, were furious, fearing what the plan would mean for their children, their schools and their property values.
Matthew Mucker filed the first lawsuit against the school board alleging Open Meetings Act violations in an effort to stop the split plan from moving forward. The Heritage homeowners later joined that suit as intervenors, bringing high-powered Kelly, Hart and Hallman into the mix.
The plaintiffs chose to continue the suit after the split plan was squashed. Now, they’re asking for the removal of board trustees Randklev, Birt, Chris Coker and Heather Washington, all of whom were allegedly in on the split plan from the beginning. Micah Young did not seek reelection for his seat, which Randy Campbell won in the May 3 election.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys believe they’ll find an admission of guilt in communications from Randklev and Young following Shaw Smith’s Jan. 9 message, something that proves that Shaw Smith and Kelly were intentionally left out of split plan discussions.
Kelly, Hart and Hallman attorney Joseph Austin said he and his colleagues had reason to believe Randklev and Young did not restrict discussions to their Keller school district email accounts, so the lawyers are asking for access to private communications.
Attorneys from Jackson Walker, the firm representing the Keller board, said this amounted to a “fishing expedition,” and asked Fahey to deny the request. The judge sided with the plaintiffs, agreeing with Austin that there was merit in parsing through the board members’ communications.
Over the past four months, board members have repeatedly denied hatching the split plan in secret, and they have said the lawsuit alleging Open Meetings Violations has no merit.
Trustee Birt has said the idea never moved past the conceptualization stage, and that board members were merely considering splitting the district as a possible solution to a budget crisis. According to a financial audit presented at the Jan. 30 school board meeting, the district’s general fund has fallen by $35 million in recent years. At that same meeting, John Allison, Keller’s chief operations officer, said the district was looking at a $9.4 million budget deficit for the 2025-26 school year unless significant cuts were implemented.
This story was originally published May 7, 2025 at 10:59 AM.