One public school district in North Texas is putting its students front and center as part of a new student recruitment drive.
Facing declining student enrollment numbers and increased competition from charters, Fort Worth ISD is trying to put its best foot forward. Students currently enrolled at the district’s Applied Learning Academy (ALA), a school of choice catering to grades 6 through 8, are helping boost new enrollment numbers. Their efforts will continue leading up to January 7, Fort Worth ISD’s schools of choice application deadline for the 2024-2025 academic year.
The strategy has been dubbed “authentic recruiting” by ALA principal Alice Buckley, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She said the recruiting approach aims to inform prospective students and their parents about the district’s programs and showcase real-life examples of what they entail in the day-to-day.
“We need to not just have the expectation that students are going to come to the school because we’re here,” said Buckley.
For instance, last month, ALA had fifth-graders from nearby Alice Contreras Elementary School come and visit during the school’s Wellness Day. They watched students perform in their annual fall play and participated in a series of activities prepared by the student-led Blue Zones Wellness Ambassador Advisory team. The fifth-graders had a chance to tour the campus and ask older students about their experiences in different ALA advisory classes.
Buckley told the Star-Telegram that the recruitment drive has already led to more applications than years prior. She said she hopes to deploy the campaign at more campuses next year.
As previously covered by The Dallas Express, as many as 48 of Fort Worth ISD’s schools — mostly elementary schools — are currently below 70% capacity due to the student body dropping from 87,233 in 2016 to 72,783 students in 2023. This number is allegedly expected to level out at around 55,000 students, according to projections from Superintendent Angélica Ramsey.
While the reasons for the steady decline are multifold and not limited to Fort Worth ISD, with Dallas ISD and other North Texas districts also seeing falling enrollment, Fort Worth has become home to several charter schools in recent years, which tend to offer programs in specialty subjects, such as STEM and the fine arts, and extracurricular activities. Such offerings have made such schools attractive alternatives for some families.
This was the case for Keasha Thompson, parent to Madison, who was formerly a third-grader at De Zavala Elementary School until transferring to the charter Rocketship Dennis Dunkins Elementary School this year.
“She was literally just going to school and coming home,” Thompson explained to the Star-Telegram, noting that Madison was so bored that she started having behavioral issues.
Now, Madison takes part in her new school’s fine arts program and gets additional academic support from teachers in an after-school program. Thompson said that she might not have taken her daughter out of the district had special programs been available to her.
Fort Worth ISD leaders are hopeful that the challenges brought by declining student enrollment will yield fresh opportunities for growth and change, as previously covered by The Dallas Express. For instance, the results of a capacity study costing $2 million in taxpayer funds will be revealed next year and are expected to help lead to significant “rightsizing” measures. These should help make better use of the district’s facilities and taxpayers’ resources.
Nonetheless, Fort Worth ISD has also seen significant struggles in terms of student achievement over the past few years. In 2021-2022, Fort Worth ISD saw just 32% of its students score at grade level on the STAAR, and its on-time graduation rate was 85.7%, according to the Texas Education Agency accountability report. For comparison, Dallas ISD saw only 41% of its students score at grade level on the same STAAR exam. Even worse, almost 20% of the district’s seniors did not graduate on time.
