Starting from the 2026-2027 school year, fourth grade will expand to four homeroom classes instead of three, adding sixteen students to lower school.
Cyndi Lewis, Admissions Director of Enrollment Management, says the inspiration to add a new class came from an increasing number of students applying specifically to fourth grade.
“Dallas and Lewisville ISD have charter schools that are fourth grade through eighth grade, so a lot of families are looking for better schools and independent schools at the same time,” Lewis said. “We wanted to give these students an opportunity to apply.”
The decision to add a new fourth grade class to lower school has been on the table for two to three years.
“The conversations really began at the board level, then in various board committees,” Lewis said. “The talks continued with the head of lower school, Michelle Goldsmith, the fourth-grade team and the lower school team in general.
Lewis also participated in discussions around the potential of a new fourth grade class.
“[We had] discussions with the question of if we would have a strong applicant pool,” Lewis said. “Having had seen the applicant pools for the previous three years, I could say very confidently that we would have a very good group of kids to select from.”
Lewis said the addition of the new class won’t detriment Hockaday’s tight community.
“As always, we reevaluate enrollment annually to ensure that we maintain the close-knit learning environments and small class sizes that define the Hockaday experience,” Lewis said.
Michelle Goldsmith, Head of Lower School, said that with the new class, lower school is also making some changes to their Math and English programs and hiring new teachers.
“Instead of having one language arts teacher, one math teacher and one social studies teacher, we are creating a humanities program,” Goldsmith said. “So, we are going to have two humanities teachers and two math teachers, and they’ll each teach two sections.”
Goldsmith said there will also be an additional fourth grade musical added next year. Students will be split into two smaller groups for each play. The first musical will be during the winter, and the second later in the spring.
“Typically, you stay with your homeroom all day long in lower school,” Goldsmith said. “We have the opportunity to mix students up a little bit, so maybe they go to music with different people they were in math with.”
The new fourth grade class will include an array of students from different backgrounds.
“We are bringing in girls from a real variety of different schools,” Goldsmith said. “They’re coming from many, many different elementary schools, so it brings a lot of diversity, new thinking and a whole new mix of people.”
Goldsmith is most excited to see how the new students will bring change to the fourth grade.
“I think it’s going to be really exciting and good for our program to have this big new group of families, a new group of girls coming in, especially in fourth grade when [some of] the girls have been together for five years with the same people,” Goldsmith said.
Goldsmith said the process of adding the new class has been a collaborative effort among the lower school faculty.
“We had a retreat back in January with everyone who teaches fourth grade,” Goldsmith said. “Music teachers, art, world language, the counselor, anyone who interacts with fourth grade, and we went off campus for a full day retreat. It gave us the opportunity to really work together and reimagine what fourth grade could be like.”
