High-performing Maple Lawn teachers won’t be guaranteed a job at their school next term
DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
taffet@dallasvoice.com
Teachers at Maple Lawn Elementary School, on Inwood Road at Cedar Springs, have been told that their school is likely merging with Hernandez Elementary, just a few blocks away on Inwood at Maple Avenue, and that they are not guaranteed to have a job for the next academic year.
At a meeting on Wednesday evening, March 21, at Maple Lawn, school officials explained to parents that plunging enrollment in the area was affecting Maple Lawn and Hernandez, as well as Medrano Elementary on Lucas Street and Sam Houston Elementary on Throckmorton Street, a block from Sue Ellen’s.
In the early 2000s, Maple Lawn was expanded with additional classrooms so that the school can now accommodate 1,078 students. But only 446 are now enrolled this year. Hernandez was built at about that time with a capacity of 943 children. Only 301 attend that school this year.
Sam Houston, which at one time had about 800 students, now has fewer than 200.
The proposal, which is not final, is to combine the students at Hernandez with those at Maple Lawn. While class size won’t exceed the 22 students per class limit, combining the schools may result in fewer classes per grade, meaning fewer teachers will be needed.
Parents attending the meeting weren’t happy with the idea because Maple Lawn students are excelling, with double-digit gains in testing over the past few years. Hernandez scores, however, are much lower.
Because Hernandez is a tougher school to staff, its teachers were given three-year contracts, while the faculty at Maple Lawn, which has a large number of LGBT teachers and is easier to staff, have only one-year contracts.
In Oak Cliff, neighborhood groups blame charter schools, which have exploded across that area of the city, for decreasing enrollment in DISD schools. Because of the high price of land and skyrocketing rental rates in Oak Lawn, however, charter schools haven’t caught on in Oak Lawn.
So school officials blame Oak Lawn’s construction boom on the plummeting enrollment at all four neighborhood schools. Affordable apartments have been replaced with luxury properties. And any families with children that have moved into the area aren’t sending their kids to public school.
Keeping two smaller schools open that are just three blocks apart is difficult because of budget constraints and state cutbacks, DISD officials said. Because of low enrollment, combining Hernandez and Maple Lawn makes sense.
But here’s what wasn’t clear from the meeting: All four schools will remain open. Maple Lawn will be the large neighborhood school. Rather than close Hernandez, the district will turn it into a Montessori school. Houston will become a “personalized K-2 innovation school.” And something similarly innovative will be done with Medrano.
Students assigned to Maple Lawn would have the option to attend the other schools should a program be available at their grade level. If Maple Lawn is counting on the influx from Hernandez to fill its classrooms, school officials didn’t explain where the students that will fill the other three schools would come from.