SFDR-CISD Holds Second Town Hall for Proposed Middle School Reconfiguration

A second town hall meeting was held at the Student Performance Center on Monday, October 8, 2024 to discuss the proposed Middle School Reconfiguration which would involve dividing the 6-8th grade level students between three separate middle school campuses. 

SFDR-CISD Superintendent, Dr. Carlos Rios, reiterated some of the points made during the previous meeting, discussing the challenges that the current middle school campus faces and the benefits to staff and students of this proposed reconfiguration. 

Superintendent, Dr. Carlos Rios presents the steps that the District is currently and will be taking as the middle school reconfiguration conversation moves forward.

He began by restating that the current middle school would hold a D academic rating as a campus and outlined the challenges that the campus has faced over the last 20 years. With an average population of 1300-1500 students on the 7th-8th grade campus alone, the main issues are safety, decreased student enrollment at the middle school level, failure to form the desired supporting relationships between staff, students, and families to yield high attendance and low failure rates, a culture and climate that portrays DRMS as a campus that is too large to manage student behavior appropriately, and a lack of student participation in athletics, fine arts, UIL, and other leadership groups and extracurricular activities. 

He also restated evidence and research supporting the idea that smaller campuses have higher success rates academically with smaller class sizes, more opportunity for teachers to engage with students in diverse and personalized ways, teachers having more time to spend with students and parents, better adaptability in teaching styles and a less stressful environment where teachers can maintain order and discipline in smaller classrooms. 

“It is a difficult situation and we aren’t doing this proposal for any other reason other than we should be able to do better by each one of our students, there’s no financial gain, it’s all about student achievement and student safety,” Dr. Rios stated. “It’s urgent that we take action.” 

Dr. Rios presented the proposal for the reconfiguration again, outlining that the current DRMS campus, the San Felipe Memorial Middle School campus, and the Garfield Elementary campus would be converted into 6-8th grade level middle school campuses, housing about 750 students max each as opposed to the current single middle school campus holding around 1500 students each school year. 

“Every one of the middle schools that are being proposed here would have the same programs that DRMS has right now, we’d have athletics, we’d have band, we’d have choir, we’d have the CTE courses,” Dr. Rios began. “The only thing that would be different is that the 6th grade campus currently has the New Tech Middle School concept.” Dr. Rios stated that a proposed idea would be that the SFMMS would continue the New Tech concept, serving as a magnet program within the new middle school.

The proposed reconfiguration would include having 3 separate middle school campuses housing a maximum 750 students each at DRMS, SFMMS, and Garfield campus.

He also restated that the reason those three campuses were chosen, including the Garfield campus, is because all three campuses would need a competition gym, large cafeteria, a band hall or equivalent space, and those are the three campuses in the district that have those elements. He also clarified that the only extracurriculars that would need to be accommodated would be tennis and track and field, students at SFMMS and the Garfield campus would be bussed to the DRMS or high school campuses for those programs due to their lack of tennis courts and tracks. 

Dr. Rios also announced that the district has partnered with the City of Del Rio to begin renovations on the Cody Wardlaw Gymnasium so that it can be ready and functional for students at the proposed Garfield middle school campus as soon as possible. 

When asked what would happen to the students and staff at the Garfield Elementary school, Dr. Rios stated that there are two options currently in discussion: the first being a smaller neighborhood elementary school in the current Blended Academy facility with Blended Academy students and staff to be relocated, and the second being the rezoning of current Garfield students to either Dr. Lonnie Green Elementary, Buena Vista Elementary, or Dr. Fermin Calderon Elementary, depending on which campus is closest to their residential area. 

Dr. Rios and the Board of Trustees plan to hold conversations and meetings with the Garfield staff and the parents within the affected neighborhoods to address the best course of action for their students should the reconfiguration move forward.

When asked by several parents whether there is enough room at the remaining elementary schools to rezone Garfield students and whether this would affect class size and academic achievement at the elementary level, Dr. Rios replied, “We have almost 1,100 more chairs than we do students at the elementary level, that’s more than one school, we have 1,100 more desks than we have students.” He also assured that the state mandated student to teacher ratio in the classrooms would not change. 

Dr. Rios went on to state that he would be amending his recommendation to the Board of Trustees to better serve the needs of the Garfield community and those affected by the reconfiguration, “I’m gonna ask the Board of Trustees to approve the Middle School Redesign Concept but leave the boundaries for a later date, to engage the families in this neighborhood and ask, do you want a small neighborhood school that’s not gonna have a gym, or would you rather we rezone Garfield because there’s plenty of room in the rest of the district.” 

The demographic study has not been completed yet therefore Dr. Rios could not give parents a definitive answer on how the rezoning of schools would work but assured that socioeconomic factors, distance from home to campus, and equal access to opportunities for all students would be taken heavily into consideration. 

As the meeting concluded, Dr. Rios informed those in attendance and at home watching that the Middle School Reconfiguration would be up for a vote at the School Board meeting on Tuesday, October 8, 2024 where he would be making his recommendation to the Board of Trustees to approve the reconfiguration but leave the Garfield rezoning up for discussion at a later date. 

He also stated that the board would be voting on the appointment of a Facilities and Operations Committee composed of 14 parents, 7 teachers, and 3 administrators to assess future needs and oversee the progress of the reconfiguration including the results of the demographic study. 

This is an ongoing story and Connect Del Rio will continue to follow it and inform the community of any updates.