Parents are getting a preview of possible changes coming soon to Taylor Independent School District.
At a Feb. 6 town hall meeting at 3101 N Main St., district officials gave about 30 parents and other attendees a first look at the coming unstacking plan for the city’s elementary schools this fall.
Main Street Intermediate and Naomi Pasemann Elementary schools would both become 1st through 5th grade campuses, while TH Johnson Elementary School would house early education, pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students.
“As we grow, eventually a traditional elementary school model will help facilitate the growth of the school district as well,” said Superintendent Devin Padavil. “We’re going to get there, so we may as well help our schools get there now, so we can manage the growth.”
Currently, the district uses a “stacked” model, with students starting their education at TH Johnson from pre-kindergarten through 1st grade, then moving up to Naomi Pasemann Elementary for 2nd through 4th grade, and then to Main Street Intermediate for 5th grade.
At the meeting, the district revealed the draft of the attendance zone map and the demographic breakdown of the students slated to attend starting in fall.
Economically, the schools are similar based on the number of students receiving free or reduced lunches, but Naomi Pasemann Elementary would serve a higher number of Black and Hispanic students, with approximately 36% of their students having minority status versus 28% of Main Street Intermediate’s students.
Padavil said moving to the traditional model will help the schools not only adjust to growth, but also increase the continuity of the students’ education and encourage greater parental participation.
“If you’ve been a parent who’s had a kid go through the district, you feel this sense of disjointedness when your kid leaps from one campus to the other,” he said. “We’ve had a challenge with parent engagement in schools and we believe it’s hard for parents to get really involved in a (parent teacher organization) if their stint at a school is really short.”
While most parents expressed support for the move, a few shared concerns about how unstacking would affect the equality of the students’ experience.
Justin Irving, father of a Pasemann student, said inequality in attendance zone changes caused a crisis in a previous district where he lived.
“I’ve seen school changes kind of roil communities before,” he said. “I came from Austin not too long ago and we went through a massive consolidation and closure of schools and it was really traumatic, for kids and adults and actually the admin and teachers too,” Irving said. “This has to be good for all the kids, it can’t just be good for some kids, especially kids that have a bit more privilege because they’re going to be looked after anyway.”
Kyshia Blossom, who has four children in Taylor schools, said she attended the meeting because of her concern about socio-economic equality.
“What’s important to me is keeping a good divide, that everything is equally split,” she said. “I live on the south side so my kids would instantly be in that poverty section simply because of where we live and so I want to make sure they’re not looked down at, like ‘this is the poor school’.”
Padavil said equality is a priority for the district as well.
“We’ve spent hours agonizing over this to come up with what we believe were the priorities that were expressed to us in the very beginning,” Padavil said. “This is the closest that we could get it, but we’re willing to keep looking at it because demographic balance is a priority you expressed tonight and parents have expressed previously.”
Nevertheless, Padavil said that the draft might be adjusted based on the attendees’ comments, and then it will be shared publicly on the district’s website with a survey link for parents to give feedback. He also said that the public will have an opportunity to comment before the presentation at a future board of trustees meeting.
The plan and survey can be accessed through links here.
