About 50 parents, grandparents and other community members packed into J.J. Rhoads Learning Center last month after word spread that the South Dallas pre-K campus could be shut down. The Dallas ISD board of trustees is scheduled to discuss a school consolidation proposal at a meeting set for 4 p.m. Thursday at 5151 Samuell Blvd. in Dallas, and the list includes Rhoads along with five other campuses.
The proposal, as reported by The Dallas Morning News, names N.W. Harllee Early Learning Center, Arlington Park Early Childhood Center, Harrell Budd Elementary School, Ignacio Zaragoza Elementary School and Boude Storey Middle School alongside J.J. Rhoads. The district's agenda for the meeting does not include information about how the campuses were selected, and Dallas ISD officials declined to comment for the story, according to the same report.
Taylor Estelle, father of a three-year-old J.J. Rhoads student, launched an online petition in September calling on district leaders to keep the school open. By Monday, the petition had drawn 568 signatures. Estelle told the paper that taking the pre-K campus away would harm the community, and he said he worries about sending young children into nearby Bonton if Rhoads were to close and merge elsewhere.
Families Fear a Merger With a Bonton Campus
Families worry that J.J. Rhoads could be merged with H.S. Thompson Elementary School, a nearby K-5 campus in Bonton, if the board votes to close it. Estelle had been considering the pre-K program for four-year-olds at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Arts Academy for his son, who will turn four next year and become eligible for that program.
Lamarion Patterson, whose four-year-old daughter attends J.J. Rhoads, said teachers and staff helped her and her daughter feel comfortable on the first day of school. Patterson said she learned of the possible consolidation from a school staff message urging parents to attend last week's meeting, and she worries her daughter may not get a full two years at Rhoads before kindergarten.
Patterson, who has a 17-year-old son attending private school because of a learning difference, said she is now considering private school for her daughter too if Rhoads closes. She said she does not want her daughter placed in a class with 28 children.
A Campus That Has Already Reinvented Itself Twice
J.J. Rhoads served kindergarten-through-fifth-grade students for decades before the Dallas ISD board voted in March 2020 to change attendance boundaries, ending its run as an elementary school, according to Dallas Free Press. At the time, the district had said Rhoads would begin serving both Pre-K3 and Pre-K4 students in the 2020-21 school year while continuing to serve its K-5 population, and that the campus would remain open through planned building renovations, per a Dallas ISD announcement on the district's own news hub.
The campus reopened as a pre-K center for 3- and 4-year-olds in 2021, Dallas Free Press reports. Roughly a year later, in January 2024, the Resource Center South opened within the same campus. J.J. Rhoads Early Learning Center received a B in the most recent state accountability ratings, while two other schools on the closure list have struggled: Harrell Budd received an F in ratings released in August, and Boude Storey received a D in its most recent rating after receiving an F in 2025.
Trustee Points to Budget Pressures and Past Closures
Ed Turner, who represents the area around J.J. Rhoads on the Dallas ISD board of trustees, described the school as a pillar in the South Dallas community and urged parents and supporters to make their voices heard before the board decision, per the Dallas Morning News account. Turner said district leaders and board members faced difficult decisions because of the district's financial situation, and he said state funding had not kept pace with inflation.
Turner said Harrell Budd and Boude Storey have struggled for years and could put the district at risk of state takeover without action, while adding that some other campuses discussed for consolidation made sense to him. He said he supported what he called smart consolidation, and noted that Dallas ISD had mostly been spared the kind of closures seen elsewhere because district leaders had been fiscally responsible.
Dallas ISD cited rising state recapture payments, declining enrollment and state revenue not keeping pace with inflation as drivers of its budget deficit, according to the newspaper's reporting. Those same pressures were described by Dallas ISD itself when trustees approved the district's $1.8 billion 2026-2027 budget in May, which included a $56.4 million compensation package. The district has said it is projected to send $73 million back to the state through recapture in 2026, up from $60 million the year before, according to a statement posted on Dallas ISD's news hub.
A Pattern Playing Out Across Texas
Dallas ISD has largely avoided the sweeping campus closures seen in Fort Worth, Houston and Austin ISDs over the prior two years, according to the Dallas Morning News. The district did vote to merge Ignite Middle School and Personalized Learning Preparatory at Sam Houston Elementary into one campus in 2025, with officials saying at the time the merger was necessary because of declining enrollment; the combined school now operates as Personalized Learning Preparatory at J.W. Ray Learning Center in the old East Dallas building that formerly housed Ignite Middle School.
It is not the first time Dallas ISD has confronted closures. In 2012, the board voted to close 11 schools due to declining enrollment, a decision reported at the time to save an estimated $11.5 million; the district later reopened some of those campuses, including H.S. Thompson. Arlington Park, one of the schools now on the newest closure list, has seen its enrollment shrink by about 26 percent since 2019, per Census-adjacent reporting cited by the Dallas Morning News.
The pressures are not unique to Dallas. Texas public schools lost 76,000 students between the current and previous school years, the first non-pandemic decline in nearly four decades, according to Texas 2036 figures reported by the Houston Chronicle. Because Texas schools receive state funding based on attendance, falling enrollment directly squeezes district budgets, as Community Impact has reported. A consultant cited by Community Impact predicted statewide enrollment could fall by more than 100,000 students in the 2026-27 school year, and the outlet reported that at least 150 Texas campuses had closed or been approved for closure in less than three years.
Other districts have already moved. Houston ISD's board of managers approved closing 12 schools in February, citing enrollment declines and aging facilities, per the Chronicle. Austin ISD trustees voted in November 2025 to close 10 schools and approve turnaround plans for 17 failing campuses, Community Impact reported. Fort Bend ISD voted in March to close seven elementary schools; the Chronicle put the projected savings at $5 million to $7 million annually against a roughly $32 million shortfall, while Community Impact cited a $32.8 million shortfall figure for the same closures. Pflugerville ISD, meanwhile, has planned to close four elementary campuses at the end of the 2026-27 school year, with expected annual savings of about $9.8 million, according to Community Impact.
For now, South Dallas families are left waiting on Thursday's meeting, where the fate of J.J. Rhoads and five other campuses is set to come up for discussion before the Dallas ISD board of trustees.
