After the DISD board of trustees voted to close 10 elementary schools including the extremely successful Bonham Elementary last year, they received some harsh criticism.
Why would an urban school district with 33 unacceptable schools close this exemplary, blue-ribbon school just to save $1.4 million, a drop in the DISD bucket?
But it turns out, the people who made that exemplary, blue-ribbon school are moving, en masse, to a brand-new school, Adelfa Botello Callejo Elementary School in Pleasant Grove.
“We’re really excited that we have the opportunity to serve a new population and a new community,” Bonham principal Sandra Fernandez says.
One P.E. teacher, a foster mom who lives in Arlington, is the only Bonham employee not moving to Botello; she found a job at a school 10 miles from her home.
Other than that, everyone is moving to Callejo — custodians, cafeteria workers, teachers, secretaries.
“That says a lot,” Fernandez says. “Is it crazy following crazy?”
More like successful following successful.
Fernandez and staff are not planning a ceremony to mark the school’s closing. She and the teachers decided it would be too sad. Instead, they are planning to say goodbye to students, as at the end of every school year, on field day, May 24.
