Kendleton Independent School District

Schools

The district had one school, Powell Point Elementary, which served students in grades pre-kindergarten through six. During the district's existence, secondary school students (grades 7-12) from Kendleton attended campuses in the neighboring Lamar Consolidated Independent School District.

History

In 1890 Common School District No. 4 opened on the original land grant of Elizabeth Powell, consisting of three area schools built by local African Methodist Episcopal churches. The district was all African-American. In 1903 Tellie B. Mitchell, a Kendleton native who graduated from Wiley College, returned to Kendleton and opened the Powell Point School, a two-room schoolhouse. In 1923 Mitchell persuaded the Rosenwald Foundation into funding the construction of a new school facility with six classrooms, an auditorium, and a library. Mitchell was the principal of the school until 1954. In 1995 the Texas Historical Commission established a historical marker at the school site. By that year Powell Point School became an elementary school.

In the late 1970s, a Kindergarten teacher was stripped of her license after she beat a student to the point of hospitalization. Not long after that incident, a third grade teacher beat a student from the buttocks down to the ankles with a switch, leaving large, bruised welps. That student was the older sister of the previously mentioned student who was abused.

Academic performance and closure

In the early 1990s the State of Texas forced the members of the school board of Kendleton ISD out of their positions. In 1993 the state warned the district that it could lose its accreditation, and also be merged into another school district, within two years. In 1994, the district was operating by itself and had gained a "favorable" rating from the Texas Education Agency; it had been doing so for the first time in 12 years.

Kendleton ISD received the state's lowest accountability rating of "Academically Unacceptable" in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. The Texas Education Agency (TEA) warned that significant improvements were required to prevent state intervention and closure of the district.

After receiving an "Academically Unacceptable" rating for a fifth consecutive year in 2009, the TEA announced on March 10, 2010 that it had revoked the accreditation of Kendleton ISD due to continued substandard academic performance. After receiving Justice Department approval in May 2010, the district was annexed into the Lamar Consolidated Independent School District and ceased operations effective July 1, 2010.