A portable classroom at Lakewood Elementary School
Starting today, for the next eight days, the Dallas ISD board of trustees is going to get an earful (or, more accurately, an eyeful) from Lakewood Elementary parents. The Lakewood Elementary Expansion Fund (LEEF) yesterday sent a “call to action” to Lakewood families, asking them to strategically send emails to each of the nine trustees leading up to a board briefing next Thursday, March 5.
What parents want is $12.6 million in “bridge financing” for new facilities that would replace 14 decades-old portable buildings, a too-small cafeteria, and other such problems. It’s money that could reach Lakewood, Stonewall Jackson Elementary and other schools with urgent facility needs much more quickly than a bond package would.
However, says LEEF spokeswoman Amy Fennegan, some DISD trustees don’t see Lakewood as a “needy” school.
“We are in a situation that is top of the list of tough situations in the district,” Fennegan says. “We’re performing around these terrible facilities; the numbers look good. It doesn’t matter if we’re producing those numbers from a closet or a room that is moldy and dank. We’re not a Title 1 school, we don’t have a lot of children on free or reduced lunch, so how could we be needy?”
Stonewall Jackson Elementary is in a similar situation. Its campus is even more overcrowded than Lakewood; it has 15 portable buildings. Parents have put together a steering team to attend upcoming board meetings and help secure funding for the school, including $5.3 million in “bridge funding.”
“The funding is a critical opportunity for Stonewall, Lakewood, as well as the entire district,” says Chris Peters, the chairman of Stonewall’s site-based decision-making committee.
Fennegan already has sent emails to the board, and Trustee Lew Blackburn, for one, responded that ” ‘bridge financing’ will pull funds away from other operating needs” and that “it would be prudent for the Board and Administration to assess the conditions of all schools, and determine the priority for repairs, renovations, and additions.” (Fennegan points out that “DISD staff has been examining facility needs and fiscally responsible ways to fund dire facility shortcomings for months and months. The district would not take away critical operating expenses to fund facilities.”)
LEEF organizers originally had planned to raise their own money to construct an addition “because we know what it’s like trying to get something approved by the board of trustees,” Fennegan says. The goal was $15 million, and they started by raising $500,000 from the community for architectural drawings, which they hoped would result in matching funds from the district as well as trigger $5 million in federal stimulus money toward the project.
“But upon closer examination, our school was disqualified because we’re not Title 1,” Fennegan says. “So the administration began to look at other avenues to not only match those funds but to find the funds to do the whole project, if possible.”
Lakewood and Stonewall are two of nine DISD schools administrators identified as having the most urgent needs. Fennegan says Lakewood parents are working with both Stonewall and W.T. White High School parents to campaign for needed funding, but other schools are reluctant to join the effort. “Sometimes the parents and administrators of other schools are scared to criticize or sound like they’re criticizing,” Fennegan says. Lakewood has been working on this for three years, she says, and LEEF organizers believe they are one of the driving forces in DISD’s recognition of school facilities that are in dire straits.
“We’re thrilled if it helps other schools,” Fennegan says. “In these really large urban districts, sometimes people feel helpless.”
Both Lakewood and Stonewall parents will be present at tonight’s meeting and speaking to this issue before the board, even though interim funding is not on tonight’s agenda. At the previous board briefing on bridge funding, the board requested that administrators find the money in existing operating expenses and come back with another briefing, which will take place next Thursday, March 5.
Fennegan says LEEF organizers aren’t worried that their email campaign could backfire.
“It couldn’t be worse,” she says of Lakewood’s facilities. “We are trying to inform and put pressure on the board to really take a close look at this. We are a part of DISD, and when you say you have to ‘treat students equitably,’ that includes us, too.”
