Northside Independent School District is not making building improvements at nine of its more than 80 elementary schools.
When voters in NISD passed a $992 million school bond in 2022, the district accessed funds for major facelifts, including HVAC replacements, classroom replacements and updated offices, gyms and cafeteria spaces.
The district is halfway done with its long list of projects, including the completion of a brand new $24.5 million sports complex near Sotomayor High School on the far Northwest Side.
Several other projects are still underway, and the school board weighs in on the bond process at several points throughout the year, including green lighting new contracts, naming new facilities or giving stamps of approval once a project is done.
But bond projects at nine elementary schools, located mostly on the West Side, have been paused because of low enrollment, NISD officials said.
These campuses include Valley Hi, Meadow Village, Hull, Cable, Linton, Powell, Glass, Glenoaks and Braun Station elementary schools. Except for Braun Station, all campuses are near or right inside of Loop 410, an area that’s seen the brunt of lowering enrollment as urban birth rates decline and development continues to move outside of San Antonio.
Valley Hi is the only school from the list that’s over-enrolled, but its capacity is very small at 276 students. With help from portable classrooms, the school currently serves 306 students. Built in 1963, Valley Hi was slated for $27 million worth of classroom replacements, but district leaders are reconsidering construction given the school’s small size and old age.
Jacob Villarreal, who oversees facilities and operations at NISD, said the $27 million would replace the school’s two brick and mortar buildings to update classrooms, but it wouldn’t address the overflow into the portables.
Except for Valley Hi, all of the other campuses with paused projects have enrollments under 85% of their capacity — a threshold school districts usually look at to gauge whether a campus has enough students.
The most under-enrolled campus from the paused projects list is Linton Elementary School, serving just 313 students with a capacity to serve over 700. Linton was slated for about $11.5 million in HVAC upgrades.
Effects of under-enrollment
Declining enrollment is not unique to these few schools or even to NISD. Once serving over 100,000 students, NISD has felt the loss of students steadily over the years and currently has 97,655 students.
The number of campuses serving less than 350 students increased from two to 10 since 2018, and campuses with less than 500 students went from 12 to 43. Overall, the district operates 133 schools.
Similarly large and urban districts like North East ISD and San Antonio ISD have also lost students — both have closed schools in recent years to deal with declining enrollment and multimillion budget deficits.
While NISD has yet to go the school closure route, it is currently undergoing an “optimization process” and considering going out for two different tax rate elections to deal with fewer students and the related budget issues. In Texas, public school funding is tied to student enrollment and attendance.
NISD has a $35 million budget deficit and several of its 2022 bond renovation projects have gone over their original budgets as a result of inflation and rising costs, offset by a handful of projects where the district was able to pay less than originally planned.
Expecting several more lifecycle renovations to facilities and technology, NISD may go out for another bond this year, though the district hasn’t determined an amount and is putting together a community advisory group to land on a list of projects it could sell to voters.
At the same time, the district is considering a voter-approval tax rate election that could give NISD access to funds that could cut into its deficits by supporting student programs, wages and other day-to-day costs that are separate from bond projects.
Check out the status of different NISD bond projects here.
What happens to the bond money?
Officials say pausing bond projects at these campuses doesn’t mean they’re explicitly being considered for school closures, but NISD superintendent John Craft said he’s being cautious given a recent trend is schools shuttering in the San Antonio and Austin area.
Austin ISD is closing 10 schools this year after recently spending nearly $100 million on them in bond projects, a move that’s been criticized by affected families and community members.
In San Antonio ISD, officials are devising a plan to keep millions of unspent 2020 bond dollars in the community of two schools set to close this year. The district unveiled its new strategy, dubbed “A New Way Forward,” in February, which entails knocking down older, under-enrolled campuses to build new state-of-the-art learning hubs.
NISD hasn’t quite reached that point, currently putting together “campus profiles” to gather information and later decide whether to go the consolidation, repurposing or even rezoning route.
At the same time, construction costs are expected to keep rising, meaning the longer a district takes in moving forward with aging and under-enrolled buildings, the more expensive it could be to build new or renovate.
Craft assured that the nine NISD campuses where projects are being halted are not “on the fringe of being shuttered,” but the district needs to reassess how to spend dollars.
“By holding for just a little bit until we have really clear vision as to what needs to happen to these campuses, we’re going to be better off in the end,” he said.
