The End Of The Road For J. Will Jones Elementary's Success Story
| Photo courtesy savejwilljones.com |
At J. Will Jones Elementary, workers are busy retrofitting, and the staff is getting ready to leave for good.
"It's sad to walk through the building and see all the rooms empty, the library stripped clean," Brian Flores, the former principal, tells Hair Balls.
After a drawn-out resistance from angry locals and parents the 101-year-old school officially closed its doors, due to low enrollment, with the end of the school year. (It will be reopened next year for high school classes.) Flores and others have been scrambling to take care of mundane things like inventory and record-keeping before they're due out of the building on July 7.
Flores has won widespread admiration for taking a school that in 2004 was slapped with the Texas Education Agency's lowest rating and turning it into a model for how to succeed with disadvantaged kids. About half of the school's 300 children were homeless this year, yet it is projected to become a "recognized" school for the second straight year. It also won the Texas Governor's Educator Excellence Award from 2003 to 2005, among other honors.




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