A portable classroom at Lakewood Elementary School.
No, not a redrawing of boundaries that would send Lakewood Elementary students to Eduardo Mata Elementary. Instead, the possibility exists that Mata, which is now an underused facility with only 223 students this year, could become a Montessori and dual language magnet school.
Richard Vitale, president of the Woodrow Wilson High School Community Foundation, says Mata is a “great school” that is “basically underutilized at this point,” so the idea to turn it into a magnet would “help fill it up, use it to its fullest capacity and draw kids from areas that are seemingly too full for some parents.”
If the idea does pan out, it wouldn’t happen this year. Any change of this magnitude would need vetting and approval from Dallas ISD administration and trustees, and that kind of process takes time.
Vitale specifically mentioned Lakewood as having overcrowding problems. The school has eight kindergarten classes this year divided among 198 students, according to the most recent numbers. Do the math, and that exceeds the 22 student-to-teacher limit the state places on kindergarten through fourth-grade classrooms.
Pryce Tucker, a Lakewood Hills resident who has a kindergartner and second-grader at Lakewood Elementary, says parents recently received a letter from Principal Kaye Brookshire letting them know that a “leveling” would take place by November. The school sent a request to Dallas ISD before the start of the year for more teachers but was denied, the letter stated, so now that class sizes are illegal, Lakewood has to hire additional staff to level the numbers, taking some kindergartners out of their current classrooms and putting them in a new class. DISD also could request a state waiver on the class sizes with a plan to bring the classrooms into compliance.
With the recent enrollment figures, and even before the school year started, Tucker says people in his neighborhood, which is south of Gaston and Lakewood proper, “expressed concern that, hey, we’re going to be cut off.” That prompted an email to DISD trustee Mike Morath, who responded that “there aren’t any changes planned for the Lakewood attendance zone” and let Tucker know what could happen with Mata.
Tucker says he believes a lot of parents would be interested if the plan moves forward. Lakewood has only one dual language class, which is difficult to get into, he says.
“We love Lakewood, but having said that, if class sizes are going to consistently be 24, 25 kids, I would like there to be an alternative available,” Tucker says. “My hope is this Mata deal goes through, and if LEEF is successful, that those things combined would provide enough of a release valve to address this issue.”
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