Fewer students enrolled in San Antonio Independent School District schools this year than originally projected, underlining the urgency district officials are sharing in neighborhood meetings where they are discussing the process of closing 19 schools starting next year.
Last week, the district hit the mid-point of a planned 22 neighborhood meetings leading up to a final decision about school closures and mergers on Nov. 13.
In the most recent enrollment data, however, five of the schools slated for closure in an initial recommendation had more students enroll than originally projected. Those number, which were obtained by the San Antonio Report through an open records request, ranged from five more than projected to 27.
The district did not respond to questions about whether the updated metrics would be used when determining a final recommendation for school closures.
Lamar Elementary, which has a capacity of 351, enrolled 27 more students than projected, bringing it to 92% capacity, up from 84% when the school was initially added to the list of 19 schools.
That was highlighted by parents at an emotional meeting that stretched late into the evening Monday, where they argued that the district was making a mistake by closing the school.
In response to the parents at Lamar and those at other meetings, Superintendent Jaime Aquino has laid out the situation in some of the most dire terms since the district began discussing school closures earlier this year.
“In five years, if we took no actions, meaning not only right-sizing but if … we continue spending as much as we’re spending today and we get no more kids, our budget … deficit will be around $342 million,” he said. “We will go bankrupt, and the state will take over, and then we will have no district.”
Aquino pointed to the situation in Houston, where the largest school district in the state was taken over in June following years of poor academic achievement at one school. That situation was not financial, as noted by another parent, but the prospect is still possible, he said.
“We got some great feedback today here,” Aquino said. “But it’s also the survival of our district.”
Despite those remarks, the district has said the school closures are focused on resources and educational quality, and not finances.
The meetings so far have been long, tense and emotional, with Aquino and other staff being drowned out by jeers on several occasions.
Victor De La Cerda, a teacher at Lamar, pointed to that data during the Lamar meeting while also pointing out the difference in curriculum and academic achievement between Lamar and other schools, including Hawthorne Academy, where students would transfer if Lamar closed.
“We have an urgency here around the critical need to teach students to read,” he said. “The district lacks, to an intense degree, academic coherence.”
Other parents pointed to the brief window the district used to analyze enrollment data, presenting statistics that show the school has rebounded since a dip amid the COVID pandemic.
Despite the increase over the last year, however, district officials pointed to nearly two decades of declining enrollment, with the most recent peak at 379 in 2019.
At the Lamar event, Trustee Sarah Sorensen went off-script when sharing the guidelines for the meeting — tapping into the emotion and opposition to the process that has gripped the Lamar community in recent weeks.
She began with a written statement provided by the district about how the conversation and meeting would be centered on educational justice. Sorensen went on to say that she had just returned from a conference on the same topic.
“What we don’t talk about when we are at education justice conferences is closing schools,” she said. “We talk about creating a vision together for our schools and for our community.”
She invoked the teaching of Jitu Brown, an activist who has highlighted school closures as a civil rights issue. She recalled his remarks at a recent event about Dyett High School, on the south side of Chicago, where a group of parents led a hunger strike for 34 days, halting the closure of the school.
“That is education justice,” she said. “That is community self-determination.”
“These are our schools and we need to remember that,” she added.
Enrollment down at receiving schools
There were more than 600 fewer students across the district this year than anticipated, meaning $3.7 million less in state funds at a bare minimum.
For now, the district still maintains virtually the same number of buildings that it has had for the last two decades.
Many middle schools and academies had at least 100 fewer students than projected enroll this year, including Hawthorne Academy, which is set to accept students from Lamar in the event it closes. Data, which was obtained through an open records request, shows that the district over-projected enrollment at that school by 117 students.
Similar declines are seen in Tafolla, Rogers and Poe Middle Schools.
A group of Lamar community advocates did an informal poll of around one-third of parents at the school, which they presented at the meeting Monday.
Only 12.5% said they would go ahead with the district’s plan to move to Hawthorne, while 45% said they weren’t sure what they would do. Another 24% said they would send their child to a public school outside of SAISD, with 14.6% opting for another public school within SAISD. 4.2% are making plans to send their children to a private school next year if Lamar closes.
At that meeting and others, parents are criticizing the timeline of the process — calling for more time to work out concerns about a complex shuffling of students presented along with school closure recommendations.
Merging concerns
One of those concerns came up at the neighborhood meeting at Brackenridge High School, where parents from Green Elementary and Bonham Academy traded barbs over the potential for clashing cultures between the two communities.
Under the plan, both buildings will remain open, with pre-K through second grade moving to Green Elementary School and third through eighth grade moving to Bonham.
Several employees and a parent said they had overheard teachers making derogatory remarks about the students at Green Elementary.
Aquino said there would be an initiative called “blending the familia” in the event the merger is finalized in November.
“We’re going to work from November to May to bring both communities together, doing field days, bringing staff together so we can start blending the familia and creating an even stronger culture.”
With the concerns brought up by parents, however, some community members near Green Elementary School proposed an alternative plan to merge with Riverside Park, which is slated to close, and allow Bonham to use the Green campus to expand.
Other districts have altered closure plans in response to community feedback recently, including Harlandale Independent School District, which in March swapped one of the schools it initially planned to close after hearing from parents.
District officials have said any changes will be based on the framework, which is informed primarily by data.
There will be 11 days between the last neighborhood meeting and the board vote.
