READ MORE
Read our reporting on the possible plan to split Keller ISD into two districts.
Expand All
The Keller school board is set to discuss the possibility of splitting into two districts at a special board meeting next week.
But how, exactly, would the breakup work? What would happen to Keller ISD’s debt, funding, school board, superintendent and student body?
A spokesperson for Keller ISD did not immediately respond to a list of detailed questions about the split.
A spokesperson for the Texas Education Agency declined to comment on this specific proposal, saying the state agency usually lets such matters play out locally. He did not immediately respond to a request to discuss school district detachment generally.
The Star-Telegram consulted local education attorneys to get some perspective on a move about which school officials have not provided details.
Keller ISD approved just over $72.3 million in debt in its 2024-25 budget. Where would those millions go?
The Texas Education Code states that the new district “assumes and is liable for any portion of outstanding indebtedness of the district from which the territory was detached that is allocated to the new district.”
This means that the debt taken to the new district will be a “pro rata share, most likely,” said Dennis Eichelbaum, an education lawyer based in Plano.
“I don’t know how they determine that,” he said. “Do they determine that based on land size or number of students? I don’t know the answer to that, because I’ve never seen it happen.”
Eichelbaum asked if this proposal might aim to saddle one of the new districts with debt and free the other of this financial liability, while also ditching parts of the student body.
“The whole idea of, ‘Hey, we’re going to get rid of our debt and all the people we don’t want by creating a new school district, possibly an underfunded school district that can’t get, you know, anything, and we’ll take the buildings we want’ — what school district is going to approve that?” he said.
Stephen Dubner, a Lewisville-based school lawyer, asked the same question about the debt issue.
“You could say, ‘Hey, we don’t want to pay for this,’ carve out a section, leave that area with that debt, and then walk away from it by doing this,” he said. “That’s just crazy. The things that can flow from this, if that’s the analysis that’s dangerous.”
The question will ultimately have to be answered by district officials themselves, as they have yet to release details of the proposal, and, most important, the boundaries of the planned new districts.
As for district property, the Education Code states that the real property within the boundaries of the new district would transfer to that district.
Texas law requires school board trustees to live in the district in which they serve, Dubner said. Therefore, any Keller school board member residing within the boundaries of the new district would not be able to serve on the board of the other, and vice versa.
They would not automatically transfer to the new board. If created, the new school board trustees would need to be appointed by the Tarrant County Commissioners Court.
This requirement does not apply to the superintendent, Dubner said, though school districts usually try to hire people who live in the district.
“It’s hard to pass a bond if you’re not invested in the school,” he said.
The Texas Education Code grants a new district extra funding for five years in the case of one annexing another into its boundaries, but that perk is not offered in the case of a split, or “detachment,” as the law calls it.
Both Eichelbaum and Dubner said they believed these funding sources would effectively remain the same, just in proportion to the new sizes of the districts. But again, they reiterated their uncertainty about the situation, having not seen a district attempt to split like this in their experience.
Detachment of a part of one district usually involves annexation to another, Eichelbaum said, but that does not appear to be the case with what is known about what he called a “Keller 2.0” district.
“I don’t know,” he said. “There’s not a procedure for that.”
The Keller school board is expected to discuss the proposal at a specially called meeting on Jan. 16.
This story was originally published January 9, 2025 at 3:11 PM.