Ten days after voting to close or consolidate 17 campuses, Tulsa Public Schools unanimously approved moving Henry Zarrow International School into Hoover Elementary starting next fall, according to a Tulsa Flyer report published October 29, 2026. The decision came during a special board meeting Thursday and adds another campus to the district's consolidation list. District officials say the combined efforts aim to bring more than 1,200 students into TPS, reversing enrollment losses of roughly 6,000 students over the past 10 years.
The relocation will boost Zarrow's total capacity from 516 to 638 people at its new Hoover site on 2327 S. Darlington Ave., the report states. The district plans to add at least 65 seats in preschool and kindergarten at Zarrow, Superintendent Ebony Johnson said. The waitlist for Zarrow's dual-language immersion program stood at 186 students in July, mostly from other district schools. Following all consolidations, TPS expects to create 285 new seats at the elementary level and 1,170 in secondary grades. The board already approved shifting Felicitas Mendez International School to Anderson Elementary, a move estimated to add at least 220 dual-language seats, Johnson said. Zarrow's current building at 3613 S. Hudson Ave. will sit vacant with no repurposing plans.
Johnson told the board that community members made their position clear over weeks of public sessions: they wanted Hoover to stay open. "I heard that loud and clear that the community is not at all interested in that building being closed," Johnson said, according to the report. She added that simultaneously, there's community desire to expand enrollment for Zarrow International students. "The work of sunsetting sites is not the only work, we also at the same time work towards attracting and retaining our current families," Johnson explained. Students currently at Hoover will be redirected to Skelly Elementary and MacArthur Elementary, though they'll need to apply to remain at their home site.
District leaders hope that leaning into virtual options and expanding highly demanded magnet programs will help fight enrollment decline, the report states. The strategy reflects a balancing act between community pressure to preserve neighborhood schools and the need to fill seats through specialized programs. Dual-language students from closing elementary schools Springdale and Sequoyah will get priority access to the new Mendez seats, administrators said. But the approach has left some residents uneasy. Kate Cofer, a former Hoover parent and local resident, expressed concern before Thursday's meeting that the district is "pushing out kind of a low-economic school or a low-attended school or the one that's not showing the data that you're looking for to bring in a shiny new object in the middle of our neighborhood."
The tension reflects a broader trust gap between families and district leadership following rapid changes, Cofer said. She noted she's not anti-TPS and will keep supporting the district, but officials "need to work really hard to earn back the trust" of families and staff affected by closures. Still, she acknowledged benefits: having a school in the neighborhood means the building won't sit vacant and home values won't drop. Board member John Croisant had requested clarity on any school moves before the October 19 vote on closures, saying he wanted to know "if there's any moving parts where they're going to move into one of the buildings that we are listing here." The Zarrow relocation wasn't included in that final package, which Croisant supported anyway. Funds from the district's bond package will follow students to their new sites, and construction dollars will be allocated by a bond oversight committee that hasn't been appointed yet.