The Edgewood Independent School District board of trustees will vote next week on a recommendation to close Winston Intermediate School of Excellence (WISE) and Wrenn Middle School, which was presented for the first time at a board workshop Tuesday night.
The district will closely monitor Cisneros Elementary and Gardendale Early Learning Program for possible future actions, according to district officials.
Next week’s vote will take place a day after San Antonio Independent School District trustees vote on closing 19 schools, making Edgewood the fourth district in recent months to close schools amid declining enrollment and other pressures.
Parents addressed the board during an emotional public comment session, including teachers and parents from WISE, which opened in partnership with Texas A&M University-San Antonio three years ago. TAMU-SA officials were not able to comment immediately Tuesday night.
Among the parents in the audience was Alma Lopez, who has two children enrolled at WISE. If the district votes to close the school next week, she said she will likely look to send her children to another district or charter network school.
“If I have to transfer to another Edgewood school, what assures me that once my child gets situated, they won’t say ‘we don’t have money for the school, so we’re going to close it down,’” she said after the meeting.
The anxiety comes in part from whiplash Lopez said she felt when WISE was launched as a partnership, removing younger grades and requiring her to move her younger child to Gardendale. The silver lining in that case, was that her child would be able to return to WISE.
Lopez and other parents also shared concerns about what could become of the buildings, which would be repurposed for “community needs,” according to the proposal.
“We don’t want your community center,” Lopez said after the meeting. “The best thing you can do for the community is leave a school there.”
According to data obtained through an open records request, the school is at only 30% of its overall capacity. Wrenn, on the other hand, is at 73% of its capacity, the highest of any school in the district. Other factors considered included the age of the building and the cost of renovations.
If approved, WISE students would have a choice for enrollment at other elementary schools, and the district would explore the addition of grades 6-8 to the Fine Arts Academy.
Students at the middle school would be offered a choice of enrollment at Gus Garcia University School, Brentwood STEAM School of Innovation, Las Palmas Leadership for Girls or Cisneros Leadership School for Boys.
The move follows decades of declining enrollment, an increase in charter schools in the small district’s geographic area and few increases to state funding amid record inflation, according to district officials.
The proposal was presented by the facilities and finance committee after it received an initial proposal of possible actions from a task force convened in August to explore the issue. A member of the task force told the San Antonio Report on Tuesday night that many parents were absent from the meetings.
Parental feedback shared during the meeting Tuesday included concerns about lacking transportation in the event WISE closes, with students possibly having to walk along or across busy streets.
Edgewood Superintendent Eduardo Hernández told reporters after the meeting that “the ride would be there for those that need it,” while also adding that ridership has dropped in the district since before the pandemic, with more parents opting to take their children to school themselves.
The looming closures come at the same time the district is also bracing for a fiscal cliff, as federal COVID-relief dollars run out and the share of revenues made up by state funding continues to decline along with enrollment, according to another presentation by district staff. Funding has been raised to soften that blow, however, with Myrna Martinez, assistant superintendent of business operations, making a commitment that “staff is not going to lose jobs.”
“We know we’ve been operating with extra funding,” she said. “So we applied for several grants … to buy things like technology so we don’t have to use the general fund. So what we’ve done is turn around and added to our fund balance.”
Susan Salinas, a representative with the Texas State Teachers Association, said the district should be prepared to fight for students in the event closures are approved, citing the marketing efforts of the charter network IDEA Public Schools, which has schools just minutes from campuses in Edgewood.
“The district should take this fight to IDEA,” she said. “The district should call up volunteers and community members to go door-to-door, explain what is happening, and celebrate the excellent programs at Edgewood.”
Hernández said Salinas would be an important person for the district to communicate with as the process moves forward, due to her connection with teachers.
The district leader also said that charters have always been working to recruit students.
“It is important to note that they have been around us for many, many years,” he told the San Antonio Report. “They always market, so we’ve been marketing our programs for the last five years.”
An IDEA official told the San Antonio Report recently that they are preparing recruitment efforts in the event of school closures, namely the 19 recommended closures in the SAISD, which also will be voted on next week.
Hernández said that while the process has played out in public over the last four months, it has been a topic of discussion for years within the district. While parental involvement waned during the later task force meetings, Hernández said the community voice has been a key driver in the process.
“People are living life like the rest of us,” he said. “I think everything competes for people’s attention and sometimes their life has responsibilities that draw them in that direction.”
