Changes at Tulsa Public Schools aren’t done yet. Henry Zarrow International School will move into Hoover Elementary next fall as part of an effort to bring more than 1,200 students into TPS.
Ten days after the consequential vote to close or consolidate 17 campuses across the district, the TPS board unanimously added another site to the list in a special meeting Thursday. Over its weeks of community sessions, officials heard “quite a bit” around one issue in particular — the ask to keep Hoover open, said Superintendent Ebony Johnson.
“I heard that loud and clear that the community is not at all interested in that building being closed,” Johnson said.
“In addition simultaneously, here in the community, there’s a desire to grow our footprint or our numbers for our Zarrow International students,” she added.
Overall, district leaders hope leaning into virtual options and expanding highly demanded magnet programs will help fight its enrollment decline of about 6,000 students over the past decade. Following consolidation, Johnson shared Thursday, TPS expects 285 new seats in elementary and 1,170 in secondary grades.
“The work of sunsetting sites is not the only work, we also at the same time work towards attracting and retaining our current families,” said Johnson.
The waitlist for Zarrow, which offers specialized dual-language immersion, sat at 186 students in July, primarily from other district sites. Moving to Hoover at 2327 S. Darlington Ave. will expand the school’s capacity from 516 to 638 people overall. The district hopes to add at least 65 seats in preschool and kindergarten to Zarrow, according to Johnson.
The Zarrow building at 3613 S. Hudson Ave., next door to private Bishop Kelley High School and Undercroft Montessori School, will now be vacant with no plans for repurposing.
The board already approved another international school move, shifting Felicitas Mendez International School to Anderson Elementary, a site with greater capacity. TPS estimates that switch will add at least 220 dual-language seats at Mendez, Johnson said.
Dual-language students at closing elementary schools, Springdale and Sequoyah, will have priority access to those Mendez seats, administrators said.
Board member Stacey Woolley was absent from Thursday’s meeting.
Ongoing change for Hoover
Families, staff and students at Hoover Elementary — and the surrounding neighborhood — came out in full force to protest the site’s closure in the past few weeks. Thursday’s proposal is in part a response to their organizing, Johnson said.
But moving in a magnet program is leaving Kate Cofer, a Hoover parent and resident, with lingering concerns. By closing Hoover, largely a neighborhood school, Cofer feels local kids are being pushed out.
“You’re pushing out kind of a low-economic school or a low-attended school or the one that’s not showing the data that you’re looking for to bring in a shiny new object in the middle of our neighborhood,” Cofer said before Thursday’s meeting.
Hoover students will be redirected to Skelly Elementary and MacArthur Elementary. They will need to apply to stay in their home site.
“But as far as a resident goes, I’m super excited because that means there’s going to be a school there,” Cofer added. “That means it’s not going to be blighted or vacant and it means that my home value is not going to drop. So there’s a lot of positives to it as well.”
Funds from the district’s bond package will follow students to their new sites, administrators say. Dollars for construction projects will be allocated by the district’s bond oversight committee, which has not yet been appointed.
Moving Zarrow into a larger facility was among options floated by TPS administrators at an Oct. 5 board meeting, where board member John Croisant requested decisiveness before Oct. 19.
“If there is something where we know a school like Zarrow or Eisenhower, or if we’re moving anything else around — if there’s any moving parts where they’re going to move into one of the buildings that we are listing here, I would like that to be known when we make the vote,” Croisant said.
It was not added to the final package, which he voted to support.
Going forward, Cofer said it comes down to building trust.
“I don’t have trust with the TPS district right now based on all that change and it’s still occurring,” she said.
“I think they need to work really hard to earn back the trust, all the families and faculty and staff that’s affected by the closures and having a surprise last-minute meeting about only one school that’s now getting changed — it feels very much like a privilege.”
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