Keller ISD committee recommends closure of 4 schools and grade consolidation
CORRECTION: Cory Wilson is the superintendent of the Keller Independant School District. A previous verison of this story incorrectly referred to him as the interim superintendent.
The Keller Independent School District’s Long-Term Planning Committee recommended on Thursday the closure of four schools to offset low enrollment and the financial crisis the district is facing. Overall, this proposal would save the district at least $51 million.
The proposal would close three intermediate schools and one elementary school ahead of the 2027-2028 school year.
The schools being closed are Bear Creek Intermediate, Parkwood Hill Intermediate, Trinity Meadow Intermediate and Shady Grove Elementary.
The committee plans to consolidate classes by designating elementary schools from kindergarten to fifth grade, middle schools sixth to eighth grade and high schools ninth to 12th grade.
Superintendent Cory Wilson said the plan to close Shady Grove Elementary would save a “minimum of $5.9 million more due to it being an older school” in capital improvement costs to neighboring schools and would limit the disruption to students and staff.
“There are a bunch of good ideas, but at the same time, there may be others,” Wilson said. “But this is the best we could put together for right now, with the data that we have going forward.”
As of right now the district estimates that at least 4,250 students will be affected by the changes. Currently, the committee does not have an estimate of how many staff members will be affected by the plan.
The proposal this would also end the split at Ridgeview Elementary, which currently serves as a feeder school to two different high schools.
Wilson said the plan aligns campuses and increases each school’s occupancy rates while also leaving room for pre-kindergarten programming at elementary schools.
The changes to campus alignments would have effects such as Whitley Road Elementary students going to Indian Springs Middle School and Keller High instead of Hillwood Middle and Central High.
That would leave Liberty Elementary students to go to Indian Springs Middle instead of Bear Creek Intermediate or Keller Middle, so that there is a balance in enrollment and staffing.
Some students from Independence Elementary would go to Timberview Middle instead of Trinity Meadows Intermediate and Trinity Springs Middle.
These changes will affect Shady Grove Elementary students going to other nearby campuses, and Ridgeview Elementary students would only enter the Keller feeder pattern. It also changes how enrollment will be balanced and work with the new “new grade level structure,” according to the consolidation plan.
“We’ve been meeting for months, and we have been given so much information, and we knew it was going to be really difficult, because we knew that schools had to close,” Keller parent Laney Hawes said.
The plan states that within the last five years the district has seen an enrollment decline of 4,000 students and that the decline will continue as birthrates decrease and fewer younger families move into the area.
How did the committee come up with these recommendations?
The committee used a 10-point criteria that includes:
- District-wide Grade Alignment and Configuration
- Campus Occupancy and Utilization
- Cost of Bringing Facilities to Standard
- Transportation Considerations
- Prioritization of Facility Costs
- Cost of Relocating Special Programs
- Facility Condition index Score
- Limiting Staff and Student Disruptions
- Program Equity Access
- Feeder Pattern and Boundary Stability
“I’ve had to go back to your criteria multiple times to see and make sure that it was holding true,” Wilson said. “I had to make sure that I was looking at this as one district and not for separate feeders.”
What Keller ISD parents are saying about the changes
Parents who were part of the planning committee said they were “pleasantly surprised” by the plan.
“I really believe they did their best to try and serve what we call feeder patterns here, they’re kind of like families in a way, because they’re high school patterns and they tried really hard to keep those together,” Hawes said.
Mary Anne Weatherred, another Keller parent, said the process has had positives and negatives throughout the last few months.
“It would have been great if the committee could have been more collaborative,” Weatherred said. “But just given the size and the scope of what we were doing, that was difficult.”
Dixie Davis, who was also part of the committee, said the whole process should have happened three years ago, but thinks the delay may have had to do with board members who previously wanted to split the district.
“It’s been stressful because I’ve worried that the instability has made educators wary about coming to this district or staying in this district,” Davis said. “I’m worried about losing educators, I’m worried about how my kid is going to go through the next 12-years in this district.”
Davis said that even with everything that has been going on in the district, she feels things are starting to stabilize.
“We are moving in the right direction, even though this process right now is so hard,” Davis said. “I’m hopeful that we have seen the worst of it, and we are moving forward.”
This story was originally published April 2, 2026 at 6:49 PM.