LIVE OAK, Texas – Families in the Judson Independent School District are frustrated as the school board debates ideas from its Growth and Planning Committee.
The ideas include moving students to different schools and moving programs from current schools to new ones.
The district’s superintendent, Dr. Rob Fields, III, said he understands the changes are “not going to be comfortable” but also said changes are the most fiscally responsible way to move forward.
Suzanne Kenoyer, Judson ISD Board of Trustees president, told KSAT these changes are about leveling out overcrowding.
“We can’t have one school that’s bursting at the seams,” Kenoyer said. “Another part of that is also safety. It doesn’t make sense to have overcrowded schools.”
During a district workshop on Wednesday evening, the JISD Growth and Planning Committee made recommendations to the school board. The committee is comprised of JISD community members who are both affiliated with the school and people who live in the community.
While no decision is final yet, the expectation is that the dual language program at Coronado Village Elementary School will move to a school set to open next school year: Selma Elementary School.
The current Spanish immersion program at Wortham Oaks Elementary School will likely be phased out beginning in August 2025.
“Next year, we would not have a first-grade class, and those first graders would matriculate up to second grade … And once they finished fifth grade, then the program would be gone completely,” Kenoyer said.
Another major change is the JSTEM program at Judson Middle School. The Judson Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics competitive program is likely to move to Kitty Hawk Middle School, along with all the students and faculty who are in the program, in August 2025.
Nearly 50 percent of Kitty Hawk Middle School’s current students will move to Cibolo Creek Middle School. Cibolo Creek Middle School is a new school being built at the far north end of the Judson ISD area.
“By dividing that up, we can send many of those students to the new middle school and allow for growth,” Fields said.
“I would say move the incoming sixth graders and the incoming seventh graders to Kitty Hawk and leave the eighth graders, the incoming eighth graders such as myself at JMS, so we could finish our year and just be with the people who we know and have that familiarity with,” Judson ISD student Mercedes Weakland told KSAT.
An idea was mentioned to allow seventh-grade JSTEM students to vote on whether or not they want to move schools. As of now, that plan is unlikely to pan out.
“I said that I’d be interested in going back and looking at something like that,” Fields said. “But I also said that I needed to speak to our directors and some of the things that Ms. Kenoyer just brought up in terms of the technology duplication, the staff duplication, the transportation, inability to coordinate drop-offs and pickups with transportation.”
A final decision on students moving schools and programs being phased out or moved will take place during a regularly scheduled Judson ISD board meeting on Dec. 19.
The meeting will be open to the public.
More coverage of this story on KSAT: