It’s a new phenomenon: Parents are clamoring to get their kids into Lakewood Elementary, even engaging in the rock concert-like behavior of waiting in long lines at wee hours. But not far away, neighborhood parents are steering clear of Lakewood Elementary’s virtual twin — Sanger Elementary in Forest Hills — as Sanger struggles to sign up five neighborhood kindergarteners for the fall and fights constant rumors of low performance and unwarranted fears of danger.
Why is one school “hot” and the other “not”?
Nothing surprises Michelle Thompson these days.
As principal of Lakewood Elementary, she has received letters from parents detailing their soon-to-be kindergartners’ quest for “enriching experiences.” She has answered phone calls from ministers extolling their young congregants’ many virtues. She hasn’t yet been offered an outright bribe, but she has been asked by parents if there is anything they can do to improve their child’s chances of getting into Lakewood.
Her answer is always the same: I’m sorry, but no.
“We’re not like private school,” Thompson says. “We don’t look at whose parents do what, we don’t look at income, we don’t look at ethnicity, we don’t look at what preschool they went to. It doesn’t matter who you know — it’s just space available.”
And there aren’t many extra desks to be had this year at Lakewood Elementary.
That’s not good news for the dozens of parents who lined up at the school’s doors at 6 a.m. March 1, the first day Dallas ISD schools began accepting transfer requests for the upcoming school year. Or for the dozens more who have turned in transfer applications since then — the stack of requests on Thompson’s desk is now piled 200 high and rising.
“I’m still getting letters from parents that say, ‘Please think about my child.’ And I say, ‘It’s not you, it’s not your child,’” Thompson says. “One parent said, ‘Well, it’s just one more.’ But how can I pick your one versus their one and their one and their one … we just can’t squish any more children in here.”
In recent years, accepting transfer students was somewhat of an annual ritual at Lakewood. But with DISD opening 12 new elementary schools this fall, schools such as Lakewood, which reached 150 percent of its capacity in past years, are getting some elbowroom. Thompson will no longer have to create classrooms out of rooms originally intended for tutoring, and she’ll no longer have to file students into the lunchroom at a time more appropriate for breakfast. Even if she wanted to accept more transfers, she couldn’t, because the district is providing Thompson only enough teachers for the projected students within Lakewood’s boundaries.
So for parents wondering how to guarantee their child’s spot in Lakewood, Thompson has one suggestion: Buy a house in the Lakewood attendance zone. Otherwise it’s a gamble, and the odds aren’t good.
Meanwhile, a bit east of Lakewood across Garland Road, Sanger Elementary faces a completely different situation. While Lakewood is virtually overrun with parents who want to be involved at the school, Sanger has relatively few; most potential Sanger parents from the Forest Hills and Little Forest Hills neighborhoods opt for private school or try to transfer to other DISD schools, primarily Lakewood.
In fact, the majority of parents hoping to transfer their children to Lakewood this fall live within Sanger’s boundaries in Forest Hills and Little Forest Hills.
Ironically, this phenomenon has turned Sanger into the DISD school with the highest incoming transfer rate because the 70 or 80 spots for neighborhood children go unfilled each year, leaving plenty of openings for other parents looking for a good school nestled in a safe neighborhood.
Sharon Sandell’s daughter starts kindergarten in the fall, and the question of where she will attend school has been an issue ever since Sandell’s family outgrew their Lakewood home and moved to Forest Hills.
“Everybody had been shaking their heads and saying, ‘Oh, what are you going to do about school?’” says Sandell.
Sandell says she turned in a Lakewood transfer request, but then she and her husband decided to pay Sanger a visit. What they discovered was a calm, clean and orderly facility run by a principal who knew every child by name and had evident rapport with the teachers. It made her wonder why so many of her neighbors are clamoring to get into Lakewood Elementary when they have such a good school right in their back yards.
“I think most people haven’t actually done the research,” Sandell says. “They see a bunch of little brown faces and a bunch of buses, and they think to themselves (that Sanger is) a school full of little Mexican kids being bused in, which is not the case.”
The buses, she says, are for children who live just across Garland or along Ferguson and can’t safely walk to school because of the busy streets and lack of sidewalks. But there’s no doubt that Sanger is predominately Hispanic — 74 percent last year compared to 16 percent black and eight percent white.
Lakewood’s makeup has historically also been diverse; last year’s breakdown was 47 percent white students, 33 percent Hispanic and 17 percent black. But Lakewood will have a new look in the fall. With the new schools opening, DISD intentionally redrew boundary lines throughout Dallas so that students could attend schools closer to home.
For Lakewood, this means children will no longer be bused to and from apartment complexes north of Northwest Highway and east of Grand. The new attendance zones will make Lakewood much “whiter,” though to what extent is unclear because DISD would not release demographic projections.
“We will become less diverse,” Thompson says. “The only way I can say it without getting into something political is we will truly be a neighborhood school.”
If race or socioeconomic status of other students is a factor in parents wanting to transfer their children into Lakewood, “they don’t put that on the application,” Thompson says. But she sympathizes with parents concerned that their child will be a minority, whatever the race.
“Whether you are at a predominately white school and your child is Hispanic, or you’re at a predominately African-American school and your child is white, the concern is, ‘Will my child fit in? Will my child be welcome?’ And there are so many ways to be a minority,” Thompson says.
It’s not as simple as skin color, says Karen Zotos, Lakewood’s PTA president. Everyone wants to be in an environment with people who share their interests, she says, and the social aspect of Lakewood is a huge draw.
“We’re members at Lakewood Country Club, the kids are on sports teams together, and when you walk up to a PTA meeting, you know you’re going to see 30 people you know,” Zotos says. “And it might be uncomfortable for some people to walk up to a PTA meeting and hear it conducted in two languages.”
Not to mention that Lakewood has a longstanding tradition of being a strong school, she says, which is probably its biggest draw.
Getting to that point requires good leadership, great teachers and avid support from the neighborhood, Thompson says, and when she asks parents what it is about Lakewood that makes them so desperate to get in, the answer usually boils down to the third link in the chain — parent involvement.
“That’s what needs to go to each of the elementary schools so that this mass movement of students and this, ‘Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I have to get into that school,’ doesn’t need to happen,” Thompson says.
Parent involvement is the one area in which Sanger falls short, says Neal Farris, whose family is among the few in Forest Hills with a child at the school. It’s also the factor that could help turn the school’s perception around, he says.
“We have never gone to [principal Jerry Allen] with a concern that wasn’t literally acted on within a matter of minutes,” Farris says. “The sad part is that more changes could be made if we had more parents helping us out.”
Parental involvement is about the only thing that separates Lakewood’s and Sanger’s facilities, Sandell says. All of the improvements at Lakewood — the Outdoor Leaning Center, freshly painted lockers, new sprinkler system — were spearheaded by the school’s parent groups.
It’s not that Sanger parents don’t care deeply about their children’s education, Sandell says; it’s just that there are fewer parents involved at Sanger, and those who are involved don’t have as much time or as many resources as the collective group of Lakewood parents. So Sandell decided to launch a grassroots campaign and recently hosted an informational meeting at her home, targeting Forest Hills families with soon-to-be kindergartners and hoping that they would identify with her situation.
“It’s sort of sad but true — people think, ‘Well, you know, she’s a doctor and he’s whatever, and they live in this big house, and they’re sending their kids to Sanger, so maybe it’s fine,’” Sandell says.
Allen was on hand to clear up rumors about everything from Sanger’s reputation as a low-performing school (totally unfounded) to one mother’s “what if” scenario of her daughter wanting to play with a friend who lives in an apartment complex surrounded by barbed wire (which doesn’t exist).
When the dust settled and the fears had been discussed, five more Forest Hills families decided to give Sanger a try this year.
“The proof will be in the pudding, but I just have no reason to think we wouldn’t be happy,” Sandell says. “I would rather have my kid be one of five neighborhood kids at Sanger than have my kid be one of every other rich white kid at Lakewood with nobody having a particular interest in her for any reason.”
Any parents still hoping for a shot at Lakewood are welcome to call beginning Aug. 8, when the school should have a more accurate headcount, Thompson says. But Sandell is hoping that the Forest Hills families on the transfer list don’t wait around to find out.
“Trying to transfer your kid from Sanger to Lakewood is silly,” she says. “Instead, put your effort into turning Sanger into Lakewood.”
If you have thoughts or comments on Lakewood, Sanger or DISD’s transfer policies or attendance zones, please write or email us at editor@advocatemag.com or 6301 Gaston, Suite 820, Dallas 75214.
