Fort Bend ISD Board Votes To Name Four Future Schools

STAFFORD, TX -- The Fort Bend ISD Board of Trustees has settled on names for three new campuses that will open to students by 2019.

The names for three future elementary schools and one future middle school were approved by school board trustees at the Dec. 12.

Three of the four schools will be named for community members, while one will come from the pages of Texas history.

The district's 48th, 49th and 50th elementary schools will be named after business owner and Fort Bend ISD graduate Donald Leonetti, Texas Revolution soldier James C. Neill and former Fort Bend ISD teacher and administrator, James Patterson, who currently serves on the Fort Bend County Commissioners Court.

According to Deputy Superintendent Christie Whitbeck, Fort Bend ISD received more than 2,200 nominations for names for the four new schools and two other district facilities, during the month of October.

A separate committee for each facility decided on a recommendation based on those recommendations, she said.

Jenni Leonetti, who attended the meeting and whose late husband will have Fort Bend ISD's 48th elementary school named in his honor, said the families all wept when the board made their announcement at the end of the meeting.

Leonetti, who graduated in 1988 from Dulles High School, was a local business man until 2014, when he was killed during the armed robbery of a high-stakes poker game

"Once [the board] voted, we all just broke down crying," she told the Houston Chronicle.

Meanwhile, the district’s 15th middle school will be named in honor of former Willowridge High School band instructor Ronald Thornton, who was a fixture at the school from 1989 until his death in 2010.

Thornton introduced the high-stepping marching style to the Eagle band, and managed to increase membership in the band from under 100, to nearly 300.

The schools are expected to open over the next two years.

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