Coppell Chronicle Vol. 5, No. 17
Private School Plans Coppell Expansion • Interim Superintendent Takes on New Tech • Longtime Pastor Retiring from Preaching • Consultant Disturbed City Council Members
This issue of the Coppell Chronicle includes five headlined articles. Consider that bonus article my Father’s Day gift to you. It’s in here because four articles were written before I learned of the news at the top of this edition.
Private School Plans Coppell Expansion
A Houston private school plans to open a new campus in Coppell.
The Saint Constantine School opened in 2016, and it expanded to Pittsburgh (of all places) last year. The school aims to start educating students at a third location this fall: the Church of the Apostles on MacArthur Boulevard.
On Wednesday evening, the Coppell Planning and Zoning Commission will conduct a public hearing on a proposed rezoning of the church’s property. According to documents attached to the commission’s agenda, the school plans to offer classes ranging from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. The anticipated enrollment for the upcoming school year is 60 students; as proposed, the size of the student body would be capped at 100. Some kids would go there every weekday, while others would be enrolled for only two or three days per week.
Matt Steer, an administrator in the city’s Planning Department, said in a memo that he initially had concerns about traffic due to the church’s proximity to Riverchase Elementary School, a Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD campus on Starleaf Street. However, those concerns were allayed by a circulation plan that shows Saint Constantine parents would queue their vehicles within the church’s parking lot.
A letter to the commission from Catharine Clayton, who is identified as the school’s Director of Operations, says Saint Constantine’s pickup and dropoff times would be offset from Riverchase’s by 30 and 45 minutes, respectively.
“We believe TSCS will be an asset to the City of Coppell as an additional high-quality educational option, and we look forward to serving families in the community,” Clayton wrote.
The Saint Constantine School of Dallas, as the Coppell campus has been branded, already has a website, and its Facebook page has been active since last August. The website says tuition fees range from $10,500 to $16,550. As I’m sure you’re aware, Texas has a new law on the books that will provide parents with $10,000 vouchers that can be used for tuition at private schools.
Wednesday’s hearing will be the second one this week regarding the Church of the Apostles. On Monday evening, the Coppell Recreation Development Corporation will welcome the public’s thoughts on the city spending $790,000 to buy the land under the MacArthur Park parking lot from the church. That hearing will be a formality, though, because the City Council approved that purchase in February.
Interim Superintendent Takes on New Tech
We don’t know how long Doug Williams will serve as Coppell ISD’s interim superintendent, but we do know he intends to get some work done while he has the job.
During the Board of Trustees’ budget workshop on Monday, Williams said he intends to facilitate a “New Tech High @ Coppell Transition Planning Project Team.” Composed of New Tech parents and students, Coppell ISD employees, and volunteers from the Coppell ISD Efficiency Review Committee, this project team will meet at least four times before making a recommendation about New Tech’s future to the trustees on Aug. 11.
“We want to look at where New Tech needs to be going forward,” Williams said.
Last month, before Williams took over for Brad Hunt, Coppell ISD administrators told the trustees about a plan to transform New Tech into the “Coppell High School Leadership Academy” by the fall of 2026. This plan would involve closing the New Tech campus on Samuel Boulevard. During the board’s May 19 meeting, there was some consternation about whether the administration could make such a drastic move without the trustees’ approval.
(See “Who Gets to Decide New Tech High’s Fate?” in Vol. 5, No. 14.)
On Monday evening, the phrase “Coppell High School Leadership Academy” was not uttered. And neither Williams nor any other administrators referenced what I called the district’s “constitutional crisis” in the article linked above. But Trustee Leigh Walker expressed her unequivocal view on who gets to make the call.
“No matter what happens, if we are doing something different with a small campus, you know, that action ultimately resides with the board,” Walker said Monday. “If we close a campus, that resides with the board, even if that program moves someplace else.”
Closing New Tech’s campus and moving the program to Coppell High would save the district about $2 million. During the May 19 meeting, Board President David Caviness requested some other options for cutting that much money from the budget, and the options the trustees saw on Monday were not pretty. Williams and Chief Financial Officer Diana Sircar stressed that these were not recommendations:
Provide only a 1-percent cost-of-living raise for teachers and staff.
Eliminate elementary STEAM and art programs, and share counselors between elementaries.
Eliminate professional librarians and nurses at all schools (replace with aides), and share assistant principals between schools.
Eliminate the district budget for athletics (support using boosters), and eliminate coaches in seven or more sports.
Eliminate band, choir, and theater at CHS9 and the middle schools.
“This makes it clear that we’ve got to choose between bad and bad choices,” Caviness said in reaction to that list, and Trustee Jobby Mathew added this: “If I even entertained number 5, I think my daughter would kill me.”
Later in Monday’s workshop, Caviness laid out a tentative timeline for hiring the district’s next superintendent. That timeline includes a town hall meeting on June 25 as well as a community survey that participants can fill out through June 27. The trustees aim to interview candidates in August, but when they will reveal their choice remains to be determined.
That lack of a defined end date for the hiring process led to a joke from Williams that got a lot of laughs on Monday.
“If I happen to be here in December,” he said, “I wear a large shirt, and I love chocolate.”
Trustees Get Preview of Compensation Plan
Coppell ISD teachers with five or more years of experience are going to get $5,000 raises, and teachers with three to five years in the classroom are going to get $2,500 raises.
Those pay hikes are mandated by legislation that Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law this month. On Monday, Coppell ISD trustees were briefed on what types of raises the district will be able to give its least-experienced teachers and all of its other employees.
“When it’s rolled out that there’s an 8 billion dollar increase to public education, when you begin to kind of carve that back, you realize that there’s just not a whole lot of discretionary monies available,” Interim Superintendent Doug Williams said.
Williams and Chief Financial Officer Diana Sircar explained that House Bill 3 prioritized teachers over other staffers such as librarians, nurses, speech therapists, and diagnosticians. While the district expects to receive about $3.6 million to cover the aforementioned $5,000 and $2,500 raises, Sircar said, Coppell ISD will get an estimated $500,000 to take care of everyone else.
“The problem that I have is, how can you not provide some kind of raise for these employees when our teachers are getting raises,” Williams said, “and really, some of these are the people that really need an additional salary bump.”
Providing $2,000 raises to teachers with less than three years of experience, combined with raises for other staffers based on 3 percent of the midpoint of their salary grades, would cost an estimated $1.4 million. Because the state is allocating $500,000 to raises for these employees, Coppell ISD would have to cover the remaining $900,000.
The trustees were also told on Monday that the new legislation doesn’t account for about $250,000 worth of benefits costs associated with the raises for teachers.
“I’m happy teachers got money, for sure,” Trustee Nichole Bentley said, “but this is exactly the type of unfunded mandates that we’ve talked about over and over and over again, where they market one thing — they make it sound all great and rosy — and there’s a real cost to us that no money is attached to.”
The trustees are expected to vote on the district’s compensation plan for the upcoming school year during their June 23 meeting.
In other Coppell ISD news …
• The 2024-2025 school year was the year of the Cowgirls. The Coppell High School girls soccer team won a state championship on April 12, and the Cowgirls golf team did the same on April 29, when junior Alicia Bellendir won gold as an individual golfer. Also worth mentioning is sophomore Maya Easterwood, who finished third in the 3,200-meter race at the state track meet on May 3, matching her cross-country bronze medal from the fall.
But those weren’t the only UIL medals secured by girls from Coppell High in the recently concluded school year. On May 19, senior Saloni Roy won a gold medal at the UIL Academic and Speech State Meet. This competition includes more than 20 events in fields ranging from math (Accounting, Calculator Applications, Number Sense) to journalism (Copy Editing, Editorial Writing, Headline Writing). Roy won the championship in the broader Science event, which encompasses biology, chemistry, and physics.
• Another Coppell High student, Harshva Vinoth Kumar, placed third in the Social Studies event at the UIL Academic and Speech State Meet. I’m familiar with Kumar, who just finished his junior year, because he interviewed me for his website about fact-checking and misinformation. He asked me to spread the word about a virtual event regarding AI that he will host on June 28.
• The trustees were informed on Monday that every Pinkerton Elementary School employee who wanted to keep working for the district will have a job this fall.
• The district is seeking volunteers to serve on a Library Advisory Committee that will meet periodically to help consider materials available to students.
Longtime Pastor Retiring from Preaching
If you’re a lapsed member of Coppell’s First United Methodist Church, you may want to grab a pew next Sunday. It will likely be your last chance to hear a sermon from the Rev. Tom Palmer.
After 12 years leading Coppell’s Methodist congregation, Palmer is retiring. When I asked him why during a recent phone call, he said it came down to the right timing — for him and for the church. He was ordained 40 years ago and has been a senior pastor since 1991.
“There’s something about the accumulated sense of being on all the time,” Palmer said. “I was feeling like I didn’t have the gas in the tank for the next leg. It was time to pass the baton to someone with fresh legs and fresh vision.”
As for the church’s timing, FUMC Coppell is on track to be debt free by year’s end. In the spring of 2022, the church launched a campaign to reduce its debt load of almost $3 million. Palmer said that amount led to monthly interest payments of $16,000. Today, the church’s debt is less than $75,000.
Palmer also said the church’s staff is in a good place. When I asked about challenges during his Coppell tenure, Palmer talked about the significant demographic transition our community has undergone, and he said FUMC Coppell has been blessed with a pastor from India. The Rev. Sumesh Jacob is the church’s Pastor of Discipleship and Care Ministries, and the Rev. Danielle Buwon Kim is its Pastor of Community Transformation.
“We’re seeking to be the church for the community that is and will be, and not just looking in the rearview mirror,” Palmer said.
Neither Jacob nor Kim will replace Palmer as the senior pastor at FUMC Coppell. It was news to this reporter that Methodist pastors are assigned to churches by overarching organizations known as conferences. Palmer’s successor will be the Rev. Owen Ross, who has served as the Director of Multiplication for the Horizon Texas Conference. In that role, Palmer explained, Ross has been responsible for revitalizing churches and starting new ones.
Palmer said he looks forward to traveling and writing during his retirement, and he knows there will be opportunities for ministry on a fill-in basis; he said retired pastors are called on to be part of the church’s “pulpit supply.” Palmer will also get to enjoy more time with family, especially his wife, Lisa.
“We’ve never sat together on Sunday mornings except for vacation,” he said.
As the senior pastor of FUMC Coppell, Palmer is a leader of leaders. His congregation includes Coppell ISD Superintendent Emeritus Brad Hunt and Coppell Mayor Wes Mays. The mayor gave Palmer a shoutout during Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
“Reverend Palmer has been a strong supporter of the council,” Mays said. “We’re gonna be very sorry to see him leave.”
Although the church typically has two worship services on Sunday mornings (modern at 9 a.m. and traditional at 11), there will be one combined service at 10 a.m. on June 22. It will be followed by a lunch reception at 11:15 and a celebration program at 12:30 p.m.
FUMC Coppell partners with Metrocrest Services each summer to provide food to underprivileged children in Coppell ISD. So the church will also honor Palmer with a food drive benefiting Metrocrest next Sunday. Congregants are invited to bring canned goods and other non-perishable items to church.
“From the beginning, this church has had a heart for the community,” Palmer said. “I love how we’ve tried to fan the flame for that.”
Consultant Disturbed City Council Members
Mark Hill woke up before dawn on May 28, when his blood pressure rose faster than the sun could. The longtime member of the Coppell City Council was angry.
The source of his irritation was a presentation the council had heard the previous evening from the CEO of a consulting firm called Verdunity. Hill immediately pounded out some thoughts in an email that Mayor Wes Mays and City Manager Mike Land both said they received at 4:03 a.m.
I haven’t seen that email, but I can imagine what it said based on comments Hill made during the council’s work session on Tuesday. He said the Verdunity presentation was based on “preconceived notions,” a “skewed perspective,” and a “biased approach.” Hill said Verdunity CEO Kevin Shepherd seemed to be advocating for high-density residential developments in Coppell, which “would really change the sense of our community.”
Hill also didn’t like the sentence on the slide above that mentions Coppell’s limited potential for an “authentic civic identity” because so many people who work in this city don’t live here, and vice versa.
“I beg to differ with that,” Hill said. “I mean, many of you guys work outside the city, and you know this is a close-knit community.”
The council was discussing Verdunity’s contract on Tuesday because Hill broached the idea of terminating it. The council approved that $154,700 contract in January. It calls for Verdunity to “complete an in-depth fiscal analysis of current and future development patterns” that “will be used to educate all stakeholders on ways that the city can redevelop in a way that is financially sustainable,” according to a memo from Director of Community Development Mindi Hurley. Verdunity is being paid with federal dollars that Coppell received from the pandemic-inspired American Rescue Plan Act.
Although he didn’t wake up before 4 a.m. like Hill did, Mays said he was “certainly troubled by the presentation.” And Council Member Jim Walker agreed with Hill that Shepherd seemed to have a preconceived bias toward high-density housing.
“I hope, at the end of the day, we’re not paying a consultant 155 grand to explain with a half-acre footprint for a building we’ll get more revenue out of 10 stories than we will out of two,” Walker said. “I could have told him that for free.”
That said, Walker didn’t like the idea of terminating the contract. He advocated for getting as much data out of Verdunity as possible, so the council and the city staff can use that information to inform their own decisions. Mays said that seemed to be the consensus of the council, so the contract will remain in effect.
Meanwhile, Land seemed to suggest that Hill and the others may have misinterpreted portions of Shepherd’s May 27 presentation.
“We’ve already told them that high density is not something this community is going to support. So they knew that,” the city manager said. “And I believe, in listening to the presentation, it was just, ‘Here’s the difference.’ … It wasn’t an advocacy for building X over Y; it was just showing there’s an economic difference.”
Chronicle Crumbs
• According to forms recently filed with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, Heights Wellness Retreat and Strong Pilates will occupy two of the suites in Cypress Waters’ new retail building at 3001 Olympus Blvd. Banners on the building promise that two other businesses are “coming soon” — Ari’s Pantry is an Italian grocer, and Kilwins is a purveyor of chocolate, fudge, and ice cream.
• On Thursday, I spied with my four eyes a sign that said “Double Egg Cafe” above the front door of the Coppell restaurant known as Double Yolk Cafe. A manager explained that the eatery is transitioning to a new name after running into some trouble registering a trademark for its original moniker.
• After one season skating for the Boston Fleet, Coppell’s own Hannah Bilka is moving on to Seattle. That city’s yet-to-be-named team in the Professional Women’s Hockey League selected her in an expansion draft last week.
• During Tuesday’s City Council meeting, City Manager Mike Land said Fire Station 5 on Moore Road should open in July, but he did not specify a date.
• City of Coppell administrative offices, the Cozby Library and Community Commons, the Coppell Senior and Community Center, the Biodiversity Education Center, Coppell Animal Services, and the Rolling Oaks Memorial Center administrative offices will all be closed on Thursday in observance of Juneteenth. But The CORE and the Wagon Wheel Tennis & Pickleball Center will be open, and trash will be collected by Republic Services.
• A friend of mine was inside Athletico Physical Therapy on Tuesday morning when a confused driver’s SUV crashed into the clinic on Denton Tap Road. Fortunately, nobody was seriously injured. This incident reminded me of the first time I took my younger brothers out for a drive without our mom. I got similarly confused while parking, and a brick pillar was the only thing that stopped me from plowing through the front window of a pet store. As I sat on the curb, wondering how I was going to explain things to my mom, a guy who worked at a military recruiting office in the same shopping center put his hand on my shoulder and said, “We can get you out of here right now.”
Community Calendar
Annie: Theatre Coppell will stage seven more performances of the musical about the little orphan featured in every form of media from comic strips to movies. The next show is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. today at the Coppell Arts Center.
Coppell Lions Club: DART representative Robert Sullivan will provide an update on the Silver Line when the Lions get together at 6:45 p.m. on Monday at the First United Methodist Church’s Ministry Center. All are welcome to get informed. The Lions’ general meeting will follow the presentation.
Northwest Dallas County Flood Control District: One of Coppell’s two obscure taxing entities has scheduled a board meeting for noon on Tuesday in the clubhouse of the Oaks Riverchase apartment complex.
Denton County Levee Improvement District No. 1: Coppell’s other obscure taxing entity will have a board meeting at 11 a.m. on Wednesday at 2951 Lake Vista Drive, which is right outside the Coppell-Lewisville boundary line.
Coffee With a Cop: Coppell police officers will hang out at the Coppell Farmers Market between 9 and 11 a.m. on Saturday.
Mike Super: Magician Mike Super will return to the Coppell Arts Center for two shows on Saturday, at 2 and 7 p.m.
Susannah Charleson: The author will discuss her book The Possibility Dogs: What I Learned from Second Chance Rescues About Service, Hope, and Healing at 2 p.m. on Saturday at the Cozby Library and Community Commons.
Celebrate Coppell: Party in the Park: Our city’s biggest annual party — featuring food trucks, lawn games, live music, a drone show, and fireworks — is scheduled from 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. on June 28 at Andrew Brown Park East.
Sensory Sensitive Fourth of July Celebration: The Sound at Cypress Waters will host a free event from 6 to 10 p.m. on July 3 that will feature LED bracelets from Star-Spangled Glow, animal encounters courtesy of the Creature Teacher, and live music from a Taylor Swift tribute band called Reputation. But the event will not include any fireworks.
Celebrate Coppell: Parade Down Parkway: The city’s annual Independence Parade will begin at 9 a.m. on July 4.
Coppell Youth Soccer Association: If you want your child to play recreational soccer this fall, sign him or her up by July 6.
The story about the military recruiter made me snort laugh!
CORRECTION: I mistakenly quoted the tuition range for the Houston campus of the Saint Constantine School. I’m told tuition at the Coppell campus will be between $7,200 and $13,500.