Fort Worth school board members voted Tuesday to close McLean Sixth Grade Center and consolidate it into McLean Middle School, about three months after trustees tabled voting on multiple consolidation plans involving seven middle school campuses.
The Fort Worth Independent School District school board approved the decision in a unanimous vote after hearing mixed perspectives during public comment. The school’s closing comes in the midst of an ongoing facilities master plan study that is looking at the district’s school building capacity as enrollment declines. Officials say the impacts of its underutilized buildings are “fewer academic offerings and higher operational costs.”
“Combining McLean 6th and McLean Middle School into a single campus would allow the district to address the inequitable distribution of resources among schools and create improved opportunities for all students to attend a thriving campus community,” school district documents state. “This would also increase alignment of middle grades instructional programming by consolidating the last remaining sixth grade campus in Fort Worth ISD.”
Tuesday’s decision follows the closures of other sixth-grade campuses, including Wedgwood Sixth and Forest Oak Sixth. Both closed starting this school year with students transferring to Wedgwood Middle and Forest Oak Middle.
Board member Kevin Lynch said he understood school closures are an emotional decision, but it is a necessary action for the district to take.
“I feel very strongly that the teachers and the people in that building are the most important people to impact kids, but I do think this goes a long way in addressing some of the things that really need to be addressed at those campuses, and I support it,” Lynch said of McLean Sixth Grade Center.
The vote comes about three months after the board pulled items from a May meeting agenda that proposed closures of Kirkpatrick Middle, transferring students to J.P. Elder Middle; Daggett Middle and McLean Sixth Grade Center, transferring students to McLean Middle; and Morningside Middle, transferring students to William James Middle. Several community members at the meeting pleaded with the board to keep all the schools open.
Tuesday’s vote only included McLean Sixth Grade Center and McLean Middle.
Some community members criticized officials during public comment, stating that they felt betrayed by the district changing its use of a $1.2 billion bond that voters barely passed in November 2021 to renovate individual campuses. Other community members spoke in support of the consolidations, stating it would be for the greater good long-term.
The school board also approved an agenda item terminating a previously approved contract to renovate McLean Middle and McLean Sixth Grade Campus and approving a new contract for consolidation that is “not to exceed” about $5.1 million, according to district records. The school board also transferred bond funds earmarked for each respective campus and combined them to create a $73.7 million budget for the consolidation.
McLean teacher Karen Gonzalez said she was disappointed in the district’s community meeting held last week to discuss the consolidation. She said the campus keeping sixth-graders separate from older grades allows them to avoid pressures from their peers and thrive better as a result.
“It was a sales pitch. There was no opportunity for anyone to offer a counter argument as to why these schools should not be combined,” she said of the community meeting. “I am also concerned about the legality of using bond money for projects that voters previously rejected.”
Jessica Morrison, a parent of a sixth-grader at McLean Sixth Grade Center, spoke in favor of the consolidation and urged officials to listen to community feedback during the design phase of the consolidation.
“I am speaking in support of the consolidation of McLean Sixth and McLean Middle School, so that we can ensure that the middle school bond money is used as intended, to improve the learning environment for middle schoolers. If the bond money is spent at McLean Sixth now, and that building is repurposed or sold in a few years, middle school students would not get the benefit of the bond investment long term,” she said.
The school board also received a brief update Tuesday on its facilities study by consultant Tracy Ritcher , who spoke about the creation of a community task force that will provide input toward the study over the next six months. The study, expected to include “rightsizing recommendations,” was originally planned to be finished by the end of the year but was extended to March to account for more community involvement, Ritcher said.
“All of this vetting and vetting and vetting (is) to make sure that when we come to some conclusion to what a 10 or 15 year facilities portfolio of this district looks like, that we have vetted it very well,” Ritcher said. “This is to really address every campus, every building in this district, and what it’s going to look like in the future. And so this task force is going to be critical to that and have very, very much a community lens on this throughout the entire process.”
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