Keller ISD trustees name interim superintendent amid controversial proposed district split
KELLER — The Keller ISD Board of Trustees named an interim superintendent amid the controversy surrounding a proposal to split the district in two.
At the end of its Thursday night board meeting, which ended early Friday morning, the board voted to pick Cory Wilson, the assistant superintendent of educational services, to lead the district through a proposed split. However, the board decided to put off a vote to accept Superintendent Tracy Johnson's resignation.
Johnson did not attend Thursday night's meeting.
Before the vote, the meeting lasted more than seven hours, much of it consisting of members of the public speaking out against the proposed split.
Stephanie Walsh, whose four sons attend Keller ISD schools, is part of a group of parents in north Fort Worth to advocate for their children, and against the split.
Many of them chose their current homes because of the school district and felt blindsided when a proposal to divide Keller ISD leaked a few weeks ago. Walsh told CBS News Texas before the meeting that the school board is creating chaos in the community.
"There's a lot of animosity, a lot of anger and I think they're destroying our community doing this the way that they're doing it," Walsh said. "I don't know if a split would be good or not because I don't have any information. But I do know that the board itself has done things that have put us in this situation and they're not doing anything to fix it."
The last board meeting on Jan. 16, which also lasted close to seven hours, saw contentious arguments between trustees and parents, who spoke overwhelmingly in opposition to the plan.
That was when Johnson told the board she was prepared to resign from her role because she didn't believe a split is in the best interest of students, so many parents feel she's being pushed out for expressing her disapproval.
Also at Thursday's meeting, the board heard a presentation on the results of a financial review, which found a series of missteps that led to the district losing money since 2021.
District leaders have cited financial challenges, along with increased local control, as the main reasons for the possible split on a website the district posted last week.
"The message from the board has been trust us, but the board in the past three years has basically driven us into a pretty terrible financial state, which has kind of precipitated the idea of the split," said Keller ISD parent Andrew Walsh. "And unfortunately now they're just asking you to trust us and trust them again with no data, no analysis, no rigor behind it."