District Gives Update on Middle School Redesign

Middle School Redesign Updates were presented to the Board of Trustees during the November 18th Board Meeting.

During the November 18th Regular School Board Meeting, SFDR-CISD Chief Administrative Officer, Sandra T. Hernandez gave a brief update on the progress that has been made on the Middle School Redesign Project since its approval last month.

She began by presenting the categories and components of the redesign which will be taking place in August of 2025: Leadership, Rezoning, Technology, CTE Courses, Special Education, Athletics, and Facility Needs for DRMS, SFMMS, Garfield, and Blended, and Staffing. Noting the milestones that have already been completed in each category. “The process has already begun, we’ve had several of the activities and conversations in working towards leadership and these particular categories, rezoning, technology and certainly CTE and athletics,” Hernandez stated at the beginning of her presentation. 

Hernandez then went on to share the milestones in the leadership category that had been completed since the last school board meeting. Beginning with the posting of the position, interview process, and board approval of the middle school principal for the third campus in October. Board action has also been taken to approve roofing, plumbing, and A/C repairs for  the Cody Wardlaw Gym, held a meeting with all middle school principals once the third principal was hired to prepare for the middle school redesign, and held their first citizen’s committee meeting on November 7, 2024. 

“We had a wonderful turnout, and these are the citizens which the board approved at the previous meeting and so at this particular meeting we began to share an overview of what we had presented here at previous meetings and led them up to the discussion of the transition going into the middle school redesign process,” Hernandez shared. “Dr. Rios shared with the committee the demographic study, the purpose of that study was to be able to identify the zoning and the areas for the students so that we would divide them equally amongst the three middle school campuses.” 

“When we look at the demographic study, we look to make sure that we’re providing that equal amount of students in the area, however if you look at SFMMS, the idea is that this middle school will be the New Tech Middle School, so the next step here, if you see a lower number, it’s because we are moving towards recruitment of students who will go into the new tech program, so in hopes of doing that we left a little bit of room so that students would be attending that campus after recruitment for new tech.” 

Then, Plan A for Elementary School Rezoning was presented, “Because Garfield will be a middle school campus, the demographer has allowed us to identify where the students would be rezoned into the other elementary campuses,” Hernandez began. “For all the remaining elementary campuses, they are within the population of 700 so they fall within the ballpark of each other.” “Again, the purpose of the demographic study is to be able to look at where our students are populated in our community, look at attendance boundaries, so that we see that they are as close as possible.”

After meeting with the demographer and completing plans for rezoning Garfield Elementary students, including Plan B which would be the rezoning of a certain number of students to Blended Academy, these plans were presented to the citizen’s committee during the November meeting. “We stressed that these plans were preliminary because we are looking at the middle school and the new tech program and looking in the next few weeks to do a promotional campaign to recruit students to go to the new tech middle school at SFMMS.” 

The next step will be to meet with the parents of the Garfield Elementary students who would be rezoned, those who live in the closest proximity to the Garfield campus would be rezoned to Blended under Plan B, the rest of the students to the remaining elementary schools. 

The Garfield Rezoning Meeting is set to be held Wednesday, November 20, 2024 in the Garfield Cafeteria at 5pm. All of the parents on the rezoning list were contacted and invited to attend. 

After the presentation the floor was opened for board members to ask any questions or voice concerns. Board member, Joshua Overfelt asked if the demographic study had taken the new Ceniza Hills campus and the removal of the Garfield Elementary campus into account and whether the data presented was accurate in terms of capacity and student population to which Dr. Rios replied, “This data is taking every student into consideration, assuming that Garfield will not exist as an elementary school and they’ve been farmed out to different schools,” he began. “Ceniza Hills is right up there with Buena Vista and Garfield in terms of capacity.” 

Board President, Raymond Meza, asked if each of these campuses had the technology and updated facilities for computer labs, libraries, and so on. “We’ve met with the Director of Technology, and he’s made a visit to every campus and identified what is needed to ensure that they have the capacity for not only computer labs but CTE labs to make sure that everything that is offered at DRMS is replicated and he has a solid plan,” Dr. Rios replied. “One other thing that was not added to the presentation, is that the committees will be holding campus visits to make suggestions on what improvements can be made.” 

The Director of Technology assured that the infrastructure for computer and CTE labs is present at each of the proposed campuses. 

Board member, Diego Almaraz followed with a question about the preparedness of the district for both Plan A, rezoning all Garfield students to the other elementary schools, and Plan B, a small community school at Blended and the rest of the students rezoned. Dr. Rios responded that now that the demographic data has been collected, either plan could be completed virtually overnight once meetings have been held with parents to decide which plan they prefer.