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When the Judson Independent School District starts the new school year in the fall, there will be three elementary schools missing from the roster.
The Judson school board voted 5 to 2 Tuesday to close Ed Franz Leadership Academy, Park Village Blended Learning Academy, and Rolling Meadows Elementary at the end of the current school year.
Laura Stanford and José Macias Jr. voted against the closures. Macias said he wanted to only "reluctantly close" Park Village and wait until other budget cuts were discussed before considering more school closures next year. Stanford said she wanted to give Rolling Meadows a year to to see if the campus could boost enrollment — a request that many public speakers had made earlier in the meeting.
Suzanne Kenoyer, who often votes with Stanford and Macias, voted to close the schools. Before the vote, she said she has ties to all three schools and hated the idea of losing them.
"Rolling Meadows is in my district, and I taught there, and I have friends there," Kenoyer said. "Franz was my school. I have friends there. Park Village — my wife was an assistant principal at Park Village for five years. These all mean something to me, but what means more to me is making sure that this district can be functional and that we can provide for all our students."
"We're in a situation now where we are in truly, truly difficult circumstances. I've wrestled with this all weekend. I've been wrestling with it for quite a while, and I apologize to all of you, because I know you work hard, I know you care, and I hate that this is a decision that I feel like I have to make," Kenoyer said.
The board room was packed with members of the Rolling Meadows community Tuesday, many of whom signed up to speak. During nearly two hours of public comments students, teachers, and parents listed the reasons they love the school and questioned why Rolling Meadows needed to close when demographers in 2022 said a new elementary school was needed next door in Selma.
Board President Monica Ryan said she also has ties to Rolling Meadows.
"My children were Rolling Meadows wolves the day we moved here to Judson. That's where my two babies started," Ryan said Tuesday. "But it's felt like lately we're spending a lot of time looking in that rear view mirror, focusing on the past and things we should have, could have, would have done differently. Should we have started this two years ago? Yes, absolutely we should have. Could we have approached this thing differently and much earlier? Absolutely. Should different financial decisions have been made the last two and a half years? Without a question. But those just aren't decisions I can undo tonight."
During a five hour meeting on Saturday, district administrators gave a presentation on five elementary schools proposed for possible closure before recommending the board choose Franz, Park Village, and Rolling Meadows.
The board voted to close Judson Middle School last week. District consultants estimate closing all four schools will save Judson about $7 million annually, about 19% of the districts roughly $37 million budget deficit.
The Judson school board has been discussing the possibility of school closures for more than a year as they struggle with a looming budget deficit. Like many school districts in Texas and San Antonio, student enrollment at Judson is on a downward trend.
During public comments on Saturday, Judson parents, students, and teachers spoke for more than two hours, mostly in defense of keeping individual schools open.
Rolling Meadows teacher Casey Capparelli said her school had lost enrollment due to district decisions to build two new elementary schools nearby in recent years, Wortham Oaks to the north in 2019 and Selma to the east in 2025.
“Yes, our enrollment has dropped. However, you can see that history has already repeated itself. Two schools have already been built in Judson ISD to help the growing numbers at Rolling Meadows Elementary,” Capparelli said. “With new construction happening in our areas, our numbers will rise again.”
“My very first day of school was here at Rolling Meadows,” fourth-grader Sarah Canales said. “I didn't just learn how to read and write in this building. I learned how to be brave, brave enough to speak in front of you all today at the age of nine, how to be kind and how to believe in myself.”
Several public speakers expressed confusion and frustration over a change in the board agenda that switched some of the schools on the list for possible closure. Rolling Meadows and Millers Point were added to the list of five possible elementary schools last week, replacing Woodlake and Olympia.
Franz teacher Melissa Covington told the board she chose to send her two daughters to the school because of the community there. Both girls also spoke to the board.
“Splitting these kids up would be heartbreaking, forcing them into a new environment away from the people and routines they feel safe with is unfair and disruptive to their sense of stability,” said Addison Covington, who is now a sophomore in high school.
After public comments on Saturday, newly appointed Interim Superintendent Robert Jaklich said the speakers had highlighted “what a really meaningful and quality campus environment should look like.”
“We do not want to be in a position to have to close schools. We don't want to do that, but it is a necessary requirement, because of what we're facing with our financial crisis,” Jaklich said.
“Our responsibility as the top leaders in our school district is to protect the entity of the Judson ISD and the entity of the Judson ISD is all across our 55.8 square miles,” Jaklich added. “We've got to be able to make decisions to cut down this deficit and offer the opportunities for every child and every teacher and every family to be successful like we heard today. If we continue in the same model we are today that will not happen.”
Jaklich said the recommendation to close schools is based on the data, and that the recommendation to close Rolling Meadows, Franz, and Park Meadows was based on specific criteria: how many students the campus has space for, how much space nearby campuses have to receive additional students, how close campuses are to schools that would receive new students, the age of the buildings and the cost for their upkeep, and the location’s “potential for growth.”
Out of the five schools under consideration, Rolling Meadows, Franz, and Park Village have the lowest utilization by students zoned to their campus, according to the presentation prepared by administrators.
Based on enrollment and population projections, demographers have recommended Judson either close one elementary school in each of the three high school feeder patterns or close two elementary schools in the Veterans Memorial High School feeder on the north side of the district and one elementary school in the Judson High School feeder in the center of the district.
None of the elementary schools on the table were in the Wagner High School feeder pattern to the south. Instead, administrators opted to recommend closing Park Village in the Judson High feeder and Franz and Rolling Meadows in the Veterans Memorial feeder.
Rolling Meadows is the second most northern elementary school in Judson, with the district’s two newest elementary schools to the north and east.
“It is absolutely true that Rolling Meadows is one of our newest campuses. It was built in 2009, and it has not had to have any renovations to date,” Assistant Superintendent Lacey Gosch said.
“Rolling Meadows is in a commercial location, based on demographer reports, as well as where the area is, being largely a quarry area,” Gosch added. “We are seeing limited growth in that area for the campus as it stands.”
District administrators said one of the biggest factors for making the recommendation to close these three schools was because it allowed Judson to adjust enrollment at all of the district’s remaining 17 elementary schools to ideal levels.
Gosch said ideally all campuses would be between 80% to 85% of the building’s capacity to be the most cost effective while not being overcrowded.
“We are still able to maintain the site very well at a 70% capacity in terms of making sure that we are providing the services being most cost effective in terms of the way that we are using the buildings, as well as the placement of staff and how we bring students in,” Gosch said.
District administrators said closing Franz, Park Village, and Rolling Meadows will bring the average utilization up to 71% at elementary campuses. The highest projected enrollment is 84% at the northernmost school, Wortham Oaks. The lowest projected utilization is 59% at Candlewood Elementary just north of Interstate 10.
Students at Rolling Meadows are slated to move to Selma Elementary. Students at Franz will be reassigned to Olympia and Crestview, and students at Park Village will move to Hartman and Paschall.
Special academic programs and applications for schools of choice will all need to be readjusted following these changes.
