On Monday evening inside the Performing Arts Center at Liberty Hill High School, dozens of concerned community members including parents, teachers and coaches gathered for a town hall meeting hosted by interim Liberty Hill Independent School District superintendent Travis Motal in response to backlash created by the changes in faculty schedules for the 2025-26 school year and in particular the effect they will have on the Panthers athletic program.
Motal said he was compelled to call the meeting to help clear the air among stakeholders the sudden departure of former Panthers head football coach Kent Walker last week.
“Coach Walker has been instrumental to the community, not only as a community member and a parent, but as a head football coach,” he said. “I know him leaving left a void with people on kind of what’s happening next. How did we get here? What are the concerns? What are we going to do next, and so we thought the best thing was to just get in front of the parents and share a little bit about what’s going on as far as what led to the point of us really having to focus on the budget with some of those concerns, but also really kind of talk about what are some of our next steps to support our coaches and also the next steps to get a new head football coach.”
The primary focus of a slide presentation delivered by Motal was the implementation of a “7-of-8” schedule for coaches/teachers that will increase their classroom workload with one of two conference periods – typically used as athletics periods – over the course of the “A” and “B” block schedule being replaced with another academic class – a plan that has sparked controversy – especially with the district switching to a hybrid four-day/five-day week next year – a cost-cutting maneuver as the result of the approximately $7.5 million deficit LHISD is currently operating at.
In addition, class size was increased to a 27-to-1 ratio, with both measures aimed at being an alternative to cutting additional staff.
According to Motal, losing Walker was unfortunate.
“Ultimately, Coach Walker chose to go to a different opportunity and we’re very excited for him,” said Motal. “We’re thankful for all he’s done and trying to come in behind him will be difficult for anybody because he’s done a tremendous job, so our task now is to figure out how we regroup. Focus on the students, support our coaches and our staff and then really find the best person to come in and kind of pick that up and help us move forward now.”
While the search goes on for Walker’s replacement, current Panthers assistant coach David Seaborn has been named interim head coach.
Motal said the hiring process is one in which time is of the essence, yet can’t be compromised despite the fact only three months remain until the 2025 season begins.
“We’re definitely feeling the pressure – regardless of the timeline you have,” he said. “You always feel the pressure to have the right person come in and be part of the community, take on the values and the leadership we have and move forward. It’s even increased a little bit now with the timeline we have. We had the position posted last week and we’re going to see what candidates come in. We’ll evaluate both external and internal candidates and really try to make as quick a decision as we can, because I know our athletes really want to know who their coach is so when they come to the summer workouts, they’re ready to make a connection with that person and start getting ready and I think our coaches are wanting that same thing, too.”
Following the slide presentation, Motal answered questions from a list of online submissions as opposed to letting people ask live questions – a decision that was logistic in nature, he said.
“We wanted to be able to capture the questions first of all, so that way we could put all the answers together and send that back out,” he said. “So, that was one part of it – the other part was about the size of the room passing the microphone around and I didn’t want to spend more time facilitating goings on rather than people able to submit their questions.”
Motal said 29 questions were submitted, not all of which he answered.
“I was trying to on-the-spot, redo them and figure out which ones to answer,” he said. “There were several that kind of overlapped, but having them all in one place now gives us a chance to look at them, put all the answers out and share that with the community.”
In closing, Motal was thankful to those that attended and the opportunity it presented him with to address their concerns.
“We really appreciate our parents, our coaches, our teachers and I even saw several students here,” he said. “We really appreciate them coming out. I know it’s a difficult transition right now. I hope they can hear they have a commitment from us that we know we have some financial concerns. We’re working through those, but we have a commitment to really try to pick the pieces up where we’re at right now and find the best person going forward. We’re going to do that as quickly and efficiently as we can, but also make sure of due diligence to get the right person.”
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