L.L. Hotchkiss Elementary’s Principal Katie Benningfield wants students to thrive

Katie Benningfield had just walked out of the lecture hall where she completed her LSAT exam at Texas A&M when a Teach for America (TFA) recruitment table caught her eye.

Teaching was not in Benningfield’s career plans at the time. Becoming an immigration attorney was. Still, she diverted over to the table with eager recruiters sitting behind it.

“(The recruiters) really spoke about this vision of one day all students, regardless of ZIP code, would have access to a quality education and great opportunities,” she says.

The recruiters’ words reminded her of the educational gaps she faced when she enrolled in her neighborhood’s high school in Santa Fe after relocating from San Antonio. Her school’s guidance counselor’s words immediately came to mind after talking with the TFA recruiters. 

“When I went to enroll at one of the public schools in Santa Fe, the (counselors) cautioned me about enrolling there because they didn’t offer the same number of AP courses as the other high school,” she says.

She says she couldn’t understand why her ZIP code was halting her from enrolling at a high school that did offer the courses she wanted.

While standing in front of the TFA table, Benningfield had a revelation. She wanted to create a solution to the problem of ZIP codes stopping children from receiving a quality education.

“I was like, ‘You know what? I can do this for a couple of years,’” she says. “And so I joined the TFA and was placed in Dallas.”

She arrived here in 2014 and began teaching for Dallas ISD at Blanton Elementary in Pleasant Grove.

“During my second year teaching, Blanton became part of the ACE 1.0 schools,” Benningfield says.

ACE, which stands for Accelerating Campus Excellence, launched during the 2015-16 school year at six historically low-performing campuses that had been designated by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) as “improvement required.”

Within the four years Benningfield spent at Blanton Elementary, the school went from one of the district’s lowest-performing campuses to one of its highest.

According to a 2018 D Magazine article, 82% of Blanton’s fifth graders met TEA’s grade-level standard on the 2017 math STAAR exam. By comparison, 79% of fifth graders in Highland Park ISD met the same standard.

“(The scores) just show that students can achieve when it’s just about the opportunities we provide,” Benningfield says. “It was that love and inspiration that actually had me then become a founding teacher at the School for the Talented and Gifted (TAG) in Pleasant Grove four years later.”

From 2018 to 2022, Benningfield worked closely with then-principal Ruby Garza and the TAG administration to build the program from the ground up.

Benningfield says the one question that remained at the forefront of the entire faculty’s mind when planning new initiatives for the students was, “What are the skills and opportunities and experiences that students will need in order to be college and career-ready?”

Benningfield and her team began envisioning ways to expose students to a variety of careers by bringing professionals from different fields to speak with TAG students.

“We were able to create pathways for robotics, theater and other (interests),” she says. “We were also able to start career days for our students to see what else there is in the world and to encourage them to pursue opportunities beyond what they normally would have had.”

Currently, the School for the Talented and Gifted offers a wide range of extracurricular activities, including academic pentathlon, Destination Imagination, esports, a crochet club and other activities for every type of student.

After four years at the School for the Talented and Gifted, Benningfield took the next step in her career, moving into school administration. She served as an assistant principal at Rosemont Primary School-Chris V. Semos Campus (Lower Campus) from 2022 to 2023 before becoming principal of Rosemont Primary in 2023.

Her transition from teacher to principal, she says, broadened her perspective on education. Her role was no longer limited to motivating students; she was now responsible for supporting teachers, families and the broader school community.

After spending four years at Rosemont Primary, Benningfield found out that a principal vacancy at L.L. Hotchkiss Elementary opened up. Eager to return back to her original roots, Benningfield applied.

“When I first moved to Dallas, I actually lived just down the road from Hotchkiss itself, and Hotchkiss was actually my voting location, so I was familiar with the school in that aspect,” she says.

This August marked the beginning of her first year at L.L. Hotchkiss Elementary as its new principal. She says she wants her Hotchkiss families to recognize that she is there to serve everyone and for her faculty and staff to understand that she is collaborative and adaptable.

“The three most common languages spoken are English, Spanish and Persian, so it’s special to be able to serve families of such diverse backgrounds,” she says. “The campus is also currently a pre-K through eighth grade campus, and that’s something I enjoy — getting to work with a variety of students across different grade levels.”

Benningfield says becoming principal at Hotchkiss Elementary has given her the opportunity to see education from a new perspective.

“Getting to add on and expand my knowledge and tap into a little bit more of the grade levels that I taught as a teacher and now getting to see them as a principal is really exciting,” she says.