New enrollment numbers show thousands of students have left Fort Worth ISD in the last decade. The vast majority are elementary school students. The district is now looking into whether campuses need to be closed or moved. NBC 5’s Keenan Willard spoke with parents and district leaders about the enrollment decline.
New enrollment numbers show thousands of students have left Fort Worth ISD over the past 10 years, with the vast majority of those students leaving from the elementary school level.
The district is now looking into whether campuses need to be closed or moved due to these departures.
“Fort Worth is a booming city, and so our population in our schools should be growing, but they’re not,” Hollie Plemons told NBC 5. “Because parents do not want what Fort Worth ISD is selling.”
In recent years, Plemons decided to make a change: she pulled her children from Fort Worth ISD, choosing to pursue other avenues like homeschooling or charter schools.
Get DFW local news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC DFW newsletters.
She’s not alone. Data from the district shows in the 2013-14 school year, FWISD’s total enrollment was 84,588 students across all grade levels.
At the start of this year, that number has fallen to 71,066 students – a drop of 16% in the student body.
NBC 5 found that 88% of those departures came among students in grades K-5.
Local
The latest news from around North Texas.
During the same 10-year time period, the population of the city of Fort Worth grew by more than 20%.
“They don’t like what they’re seeing in the schools in terms of discipline, in terms of outcomes of scores,” Plemons said. “And so parents are looking for other options.”
NBC 5 went to the district, asking if they believed those concerns were driving families elsewhere.
“I have seen the figures,” said Andrea Arabie, VP of Advocacy for the Fort Worth ISD Council of PTAs. “And while initially I was concerned, really there’s a lot of change going on in the Fort Worth ISD district at large.”
Arabie said she believed the district has been responsive to parent concerns about issues like curriculums and discipline.
She told NBC 5 that one of the factors drawing students out of Fort Worth ISD has been the proliferation of local charter schools.
“I know that the charter schools in our area are also building right within neighborhoods, so you have a new neighborhood school but it’s not necessarily a public school,” Arabie said.
She also said neighborhood demographics have changed, impacting attendance at some schools.
Fort Worth ISD is now conducting a $2 million facilities master plan to evaluate its campuses.
“Looking at the schools that have lower enrollment, it’s just like any business, we need to assess that,” Arabie said. “And if this isn’t working, we reevaluate and we do better.”
The plan could identify a need to close or move some campuses. Some said they hoped any steps taken would help secure the future of Fort Worth ISD.
“It’s an opportunity for growth, it’s an opportunity to change and turn things around to what this population needs,” Arabie said. “And I do not see it as a setback, I see it as an opportunity.”
The Fort Worth school board is set to get an update on the facilities plan in their upcoming January meeting.
