‘We know what’s best for our children.’ These Fort Worth parents are demanding better schools

Last weekend , a handful of parents sorted through stacks of backpacks, scissors, glue and other school supplies laid out on tables at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center in Stop Six, deciding which the children would need for the first day of school. Across the room, about a half dozen boys lined up for haircuts from a barber who’d set up a chair in a corner of the room.

A few feet away, Trenace Dorsey-Hollins talked to other parents about their neighborhood schools. Dressed in a yellow T-shirt with the words “Parent Power” written in black lettering, Dorsey-Hollins asked about other parents’ experience with the Fort Worth Independent School District. They talked about how their schools are performing in reading and math, and at the end of the conversation, Dorsey-Hollins handed them a flier.

Dorsey-Hollins is one of a group of parents who are banding together to advocate for better schools for their children, both traditional public schools and charter schools. She was one of three of the group’s members who, along with their kids, canvassed the neighborhood around the community center on Aug. 13.

Although part of the group’s purpose is to push Fort Worth ISD to do better, Dorsey-Hollins said she hopes district leaders will see the group as a potential partner rather than an adversary.

“We don’t want it to be us against the district,” she said. “We want the district to hear us as parents, know that we have opinions… We know what’s best for our children.”

Fort Worth group is part of Powerful Parent Movement coalition

The group, which as yet doesn’t have a name, is a part of the Powerful Parent Movement, a coalition of national parent advocacy organizations that also includes similar groups in San Antonio, Memphis and Nashville.

Over the past few months, members of the group have met with Fort Worth district leaders and members of the school board, Dorsey-Hollins said. About 15 parents and students in the group attended the board’s July 26 meeting, with three members also speaking during the public comment section. She said they plan to continue speaking with district leaders and advocating for better schools.

Dorsey-Hollins said parents are dissatisfied with underperforming schools in low-income, predominantly Black parts of the city. She pointed to outcomes at Clifford Davis Elementary School, which is the closest school to her home. The school received an overall rating of 67 in this year’s state A-F accountability scores, the same rating it received the last time the state graded schools in 2019.

During the 2020-21 school year, slightly more than 50% of students at the school were Black, and about 98% were economically disadvantaged, according to the Texas Education Agency. One in five third-graders met grade-level standards in reading on this year’s STAAR exam, up from just 6% the previous year. District-wide, 38% of third-graders met grade level in reading on this year’s exam.

Outcomes at Clifford Davis were worse in math: 8% of third-graders at the school scored on grade level on this year’s exam, up from 1% last year. Across the district, 27% of third-graders tested on grade level in math.

In a joint statement, district officials and Trustee Wallace Bridges, who represents much of southeastern Fort Worth, acknowledged that the southeast quadrant of the district is home to “schools that are doing well, others that are improving, and still others that present unique challenges.” They noted that a large percentage of the students who go to Clifford Davis are from refugee families, and the teachers there work hard to overcome language barriers.

District officials and Bridges have spent the last few weeks in conversations with school leaders and parents in that part of the city, listening to their needs and concerns, they said. Meeting those needs and improving student outcomes is a top priority for the district, they said.

“We know that some schools require serious work ahead,” the statement read. “As we have said previously, these campuses will receive additional focused support and resources in the year ahead. We are particularly focused on our middle schools and targeted elementary campuses. The District is providing opportunities for our school leaders to collaborate and work together to share best practices for student success.

‘Why am I sending her to a school that’s rated an F?’

Dorsey-Hollins’ oldest daughter began school in a Fort Worth ISD pre-K program for 3-year-olds that the district offered at a satellite campus at a YMCA. She did well in that program, Dorsey-Hollins said. But when she moved on to Christene C. Moss Elementary School the following year, her first report card said that she didn’t know things she’d mastered the previous year, like the alphabet and her phone number.

Dorsey-Hollins was worried her daughter had regressed over the summer, so she contacted her teacher. The teacher told Dorsey-Hollins that she’d given every student the same grade for the first six-week period.

So Dorsey-Hollins took a day off work, printed out the message exchange between herself and her daughter’s teacher and drove to the school to show it to the principal. The principal agreed that the grade didn’t make sense and offered to get it fixed, Dorsey-Hollins said.

But by that point, Dorsey-Hollins was worried about what went on at the school. So she began doing research online and learned that the school was an F-rated campus at the time. The school received a C rating this year, up from a D rating in 2019. Dorsey-Hollins was shocked. She felt like she was setting her daughter up for failure by keeping her in the school.

“My child can’t bring home an F, so why am I sending her to a school that’s rated an F?” Dorsey-Hollins said.

So Dorsey-Hollins began researching charter schools in her area. She pulled her daughter from Christine C. Moss and enrolled her at Uplift Mighty Preparatory. Last year, her daughter moved from Uplift to IDEA Southeast, a new charter campus on Seminary Drive in southeastern Fort Worth, less than a mile east of O.D. Wyatt High School.

One of the things she found the most appealing about the staff at IDEA was their willingness to partner with parents, she said. Before enrolling her daughter there, she talked with school organizers about their hopes to be an A-rated school by the end of the year and how they plan to get there. She also sat in on interviews for candidates to be the school’s first principal.

Dorsey-Hollins said she’s never felt that level of parent partnership in Fort Worth ISD. But she doesn’t think there’s any reason it couldn’t exist there, as well.

Despite that experience, Dorsey-Hollins said she doesn’t necessarily consider herself a supporter of charter schools in general. Her youngest daughter and stepson still go to schools in Fort Worth ISD. She said she supports high-quality schools for every student. But she wishes it weren’t necessary for parents like her to look outside the district to find what their children need.

“I don’t feel like we should have to really take our children to charter schools and schools that are out of our district,” she said. “We need to just get those schools improved so that our kids can learn.”

Parents group canvasses Stop Six neighborhood

After talking to a few more families at the community center on Aug. 13, the group walked about a block down Truman Drive, knocking on doors and talking to anyone who answered about their thoughts about the schools in their neighborhood.

As she knocked on the door of a home on the south side of the street, Yolanda Seban called out to anyone inside.

“We’re not selling anything!” she called. “We’re just here to talk about education!”

When no one answered, she left a flier on the door and moved on to the next house, where a man working in his garage quickly slid the door closed when he saw the group coming.

The group has only existed for a few weeks, but Seban said she sees other parents beginning to take notice. A lot of people, especially in underserved communities, are dissatisfied with their schools, she said. But they don’t always know what to do about it, she said.

If the group succeeds, it will be noticeable, Seban said. Schools that are underperforming now will be better resourced and have better outcomes, she said. Students at those schools will do better academically, and they’ll feel better about themselves because of it.

Seban said she’s always tried to stand up for what she thought was right and correct what she thought was wrong. But she never thought of that work as advocacy until she got involved with the parents group, she said.

“I didn’t know that I was an advocate until now, at 42 years old,” she said.

About a block down the street, at a brown brick home with toys in the yard, Dorsey-Hollins talked with Asia Green about reading. Dorsey-Hollins told Green that she and other members of her group were concerned about reading scores at schools in the neighborhood. Green said she understood the importance of working on grade level and worked with her kids on it at home.

“We’re readers here,” Green said.

Mom hopes to see reading levels improve

Kim Truss, another member of the parents group, said she hopes the new group can help parents feel like they have a voice in their children’s education. Often, she said, parents feel like they’re the only ones struggling to get what’s best for their kids. She hopes that by rallying together, parents can push for change, not only for their own kids, but for students across the city.

One of her main goals is to see every student reading on grade level by third grade, she said. For students who aren’t on grade level by then, she’d like to see a system in place to identify them and help them catch up before they graduate from high school.

Truss said she became concerned about the district while she was working with an after-school program at several low-income housing properties in the city. Part of her job in that program was to monitor kids’ report cards. She noticed many kids in her program brought home report cards with Fs for several consecutive six-week grading periods. Struggling students didn’t seem to be making any progress, she said, and at the end of the year, they wouldn’t make it to the next grade.

Since then, Truss has been involved as a parent organizer with Rocketship Dennis Dunkins Elementary School, a new charter campus that opened this month in Fort Worth’s Stop Six neighborhood. She’s been impressed with how committed the leadership at Rocketship seems to including parents’ voices in decisions about the school.

But like Dorsey-Hollins, Truss said she isn’t necessarily a supporter of charter schools. She just wants to see a better option for Fort Worth students.

“And when I say better option, I don’t mean something different other than Fort Worth ISD,” she said. “We just want where we’re at to be able to perform up to what we need for our kids.”