The doors of Dirks-Anderson Elementary will be closed to students this coming school year due to a controversial decision by Fort Davis ISD’s new superintendent, Jason Crow, to consolidate campuses to save the rural district money.
Crow said in a recent interview with Marfa Public Radio that his decision to shudder the elementary school was made “in conversation” with the board of trustees. The closing was discussed at the board’s May meeting, he said, and announced to the community at an informational meeting held by the district later that month.
The decision to transition out of the century-old facility prompted a staff exodus and community backlash from locals who are fighting back against the closure and who have begun voicing broader concerns about the district’s finances and an alleged lack of communication from the current administration and school board.
Fort Davis resident Nancy Davis is among the most vocal of those opponents. Her husband, Bill, worked primarily as an art teacher for Fort Davis ISD for 20 years before retiring in 2015, when the district gutted its art and band programs.
In a recent interview, the couple said they’ve been hesitant to get involved with the school ever since, but felt now is a critical time to speak out. In such a small rural community, the health of the school is a barometer for the health of the town, they said, and they worry about the ripple effects of the elementary school closure.
“ The businesses suffer, the housing market suffers, the restaurants close,” Nancy Davis said. “It’s a domino effect. How it is affecting the community of Fort Davis when the school has problems?’”
Multiple families have recently decided to leave Fort Davis ISD, including local parent Krystal Bencomo. In an interview with Marfa Public Radio, Bencomo said her elementary school aged children will be homeschooled next year.
“ We don't trust them anymore,” Bencomo said. “We pulled our kids out.”
Jill Smith, another local parent, told Marfa Public Radio she enrolled her kindergartener in Alpine ISD next year. She helped circulate a petition earlier this summer asking for a pause on the consolidation, classroom stability for teachers and fiscal transparency that garnered over 150 local signatures. Smith said she feared retaliation for that petition if her child returned to Fort Davis ISD next year.
“ I honestly think that the only hope that we have for keeping an ISD is a [state] takeover, which is not the answer that anybody wants to hear,” Smith said.
Crow — who was hired by the school board in part for his “fresh perspective,” according to a hiring announcement on Facebook — said while closing the elementary school might have been unpopular, it was time to “rip off the Band-Aid,” given the district’s unsustainable financial trajectory.
“I have the duty to take the emotional side out of it and be like, ‘How do we make this sustainable long term?’” Crow said.
New superintendent argues something has to change
Fort Davis ISD joins 130 other public campuses across Texas that have been slated for closure or consolidation over the past two years due to declining enrollment, according to a new report by the Texas Association of School Boards.
Other local districts are also struggling to educate fewer students with rising facilities costs; Marfa ISD proposed a bond in 2022 for a new K-12 building, which would have led to campus consolidation if it won voter approval. Fort Davis has an older population, Crow pointed out, and isn’t attracting enough new families.
Crow has over 30 years of experience in education and most recently served as a high school principal at Timpson ISD in East Texas. He is a first-time superintendent and began in his new role at Fort Davis in March. He maintains that if the district is going to survive it can’t remain stagnant.
“I moved 10 hours from where I came from. I live in a camper. I understand change is hard,” he said. “But in order to provide Fort Davis with a school for as long as you can provide Fort Davis a school, I felt like — we felt like — tough decisions had to be made.”
In the public presentation Crow gave in May on Dirks-Anderson’s closure, he shared slides that detailed Fort Davis’ declining local enrollment. From 2009 to 2022, enrollment dropped by 49%, with 35% of that decrease occurring in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2009 the district had 347 students. At the end of the last school year that number was down to 127 students, Crow said.
While the elementary school can hold up to 330 students, enrollment at the end of last school year was around 59, meaning the facility was roughly 18% utilized, according to Crow’s presentation.
His plan for the consolidation next year is to shift classrooms so that K-12 students and teachers are more or less under the same roof. Crow said the current plan is to move pre-K through first graders into an old administration building, second through fifth graders into the junior high, and junior high into the high school. He said the district has been freshening up facilities over the summer to prepare for the changes but no major renovations have taken place.
Crow said the move to consolidate is expected to save the district half a million dollars. Roughly 40% of the district’s utility expenses went to the elementary school, he said.
Still, the district will keep up basic facility maintenance and explore the possibility of renting the building out to generate additional revenue “ whether it's with local government, law enforcement, daycare,” Crow said.
Another major expense associated with the elementary school was staffing, Crow said, which was running the district around $200,000 to $300,000 a year.
Nancy and Bill Davis said they are aware of 13 staff members that have left FDISD in the past four months due to the current administration — many to work for neighboring school districts.
“ We're a poor school district. Everybody knows that,” Nancy said. “The only reason you stay teaching in Fort Davis is because you love the community, you love the kids or your family is here.”
One of the employees who has recently left the district is Stessa Miles. She wrote in a June social media post that she was resigning after 14 years with Fort Davis ISD because “recent events have made it clear that community involvement, student achievement and faculty success are lesser priorities for the current leadership.”
Crow said that while he was not planning to fire anyone in the consolidation process, the district is also “not looking to replace” every teacher that left because the elementary school was already overstaffed. He said that the district is covered as far as staffing goes for the upcoming school year, with some hybrid virtual-in person classes planned. Crow will take on the role of K-12 principal in addition to serving as the superintendent.
“ Small school, everybody pulls a lot of weight, wears a lot of hats,” he said.
Local parent Jill Smith said she still has lingering questions about staffing for the upcoming school year and the whole consolidation plan, which struck her as poorly planned.
“ In my mind, a phase out would've been a better idea or giving people a heads up and saying, ‘Hey, we need X amount to continue’,” she said. “We have people that are happy to contribute more money to the ISD in fundraising and things like that and nobody's ever asked.”
District’s overall financial health has struggled despite lucrative partnership program
Public school finance in Texas is notoriously thorny — driven by a complex formula of fluctuating attendance rates, property tax collections and state funding.
Fort Davis’ finances are made even more complicated by a program adopted in 2022 under previous Superintendent Graydon Hicks referred to as the “early childhood education partnership program.”
The program involves dual enrolling preK through second grade students from private, early childhood schools across the state in Fort Davis ISD. The influx of state revenue generated by increased enrollment is split between Fort Davis ISD, which gets 55%, and partner schools, which get 45%, according to Crow.
As of May 11, Fort Davis ISD had a total of 818 students enrolled — 136 at its local campuses and 663 through the early childhood partnership program, according to Crow’s public presentation on the consolidation. Crow said the program generated $3 million to $3.5 million for the district this past year.
Fort Davis has developed a large administrative team to handle the development and maintenance of these partnerships. Michelle Hartmann, the district’s deputy superintendent who does not live in the area and works remotely, is at the helm of the department with six other remote employees under her management. Crow said the only expenses associated with the partnership program are salaries, which run the district $590,000 annually yet are entirely paid for by the program.
The initiative has come under scrutiny from some local residents who say they don’t understand why the cash-strapped district is paying so many remote employees. It was also previously cited by Hicks as the reason he was let go by the school board after 20 year-career with the district.
Despite the introduction of the lucrative early childhood partnership program, the district’s savings have been steadily dwindling since 2020 and reached an alarming low point in 2025, according to a recent Texas Education Agency report.
While Fort Davis ISD is not currently under investigation by the TEA, according to an agency spokesperson, it has undergone several reviews and corrective actions recently, including a fiscal management review that sheds light on the district’s financial situation over the past several years.
The review — which was closed in April — was triggered due to a dramatic decrease in the district’s fund balance in the 2024 fiscal year. The district’s fund balance fell from $1,050,841 to $333,645 that year, then fell even further to just $46,585 the following year.
“At this level, the district lacked sufficient liquidity to support even one week of normal operations, underscoring a critical cash-flow concern and the urgent need for fiscal corrective action,” the report stated.
Crow said it is recommended to have at least three months worth of operating expenses in a district fund balance account and one of his major goals is to build the district’s savings back up.
The situation got so dire in the summer of 2025 that the district had to take out a $500,000 loan to cover monthly operating expenses. Crow said the loan was paid back in a couple of months using revenue from the partnership program.
The TEA report states that the district’s reasoning for the sharp decrease in savings was due to “lower-than-budgeted” revenue and “expenditures exceeding budgeted amounts,” as well as “rising health care costs, increased property and building insurance premiums and teacher step increases.”
The report noted that given the persistent operating deficits, critically low savings, aging facilities and limited on site enrollment the district prioritize "conservative budgeting, enhanced financial oversight and long-term planning.”
Crow said the money generated by the partnerships was being spent, rather than saved, and should have been seen as supplemental income rather than being used for day to day operating expenses.
“That money is to be set aside for projects and whatnot, which is what TEA says should be happening here in Fort Davis,” Crow said. “You make that extra money, it goes into your fund balance.”
In its recent fiscal review TEA warned of the district’s “increasing reliance on temporary partnership-generated revenues.”
The state also recommended that Fort Davis ISD administrators assess the potential impact that the introduction of school vouchers, or Texas Education Freedom Accounts, will have on the partnership program this coming school year.
Private schools are not allowed to participate in the programs simultaneously since they both involve accepting public tax dollars. Crow said Fort Davis ISD has already lost at least one partner school — which dual enrolled 100 students — to the voucher program. The district is currently analyzing the situation as it works on its budget for the upcoming school year, he said.
“That's what we're navigating right now as we start to set our budget for next year because we do know we're gonna lose some of our enrollment from that,” Crow said.
Rising tensions ahead of the upcoming school year
Tensions have been rising between district administrators and community members as of late, due to the consolidation as well as other long-standing issues.
Law enforcement officials have been present at school board meetings, a member of the community was sent a letter from the school board president threatening their arrest if they “disrupted” any more meetings, and the district has been fielding a barrage of public records requests and complaints.
“You ought to really appreciate the fact that we have this large group of people who are interested in wanting to help the school system,” Bill Davis said. “We're not trying to destroy something. We're trying to build it up and help it.”
Two school board members — Pene Ferguson and Brenda Vargas — resigned this summer for “personal reasons,” according to Crow’s comments to trustees at the July board meeting.
School board president James Weaver declined a request for comment on this story.
Crow said it was “unfortunate” and “disheartening” to see misinformation about the school circulating on social media where students can see it. He submitted a letter to the editor to The Big Bend Sentinel to try and dispel some of the rumors.
Regardless, he said moving forward the D-rated district needs to focus on improving its academics and doing right by the remaining students in the hopes that other families will start to return.
“ That's what I told the staff: 'I don't know if we're gonna have 100 kids. I don't know if we're gonna have 60. But however many kids walk through the door, they're gonna get the best we got,’” Crow said. “ The hope is that people see, ‘Oh, okay, well, maybe it's not all bad and the sky wasn't falling.’ And maybe some of those people make a choice to come back.”
Zoe Kurland contributed reporting.
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