A South San Antonio Independent School District board meeting at which trustees were slated to vote on closing West Campus High School ended abruptly Wednesday night after police escorted Trustee Manuel Lopez out of the room and Trustee Ernesto Arrellano Jr. followed, leaving the board without a quorum.
The board was supposed to vote on whether to close West Campus High School, another step to cut back spending in order to avoid a financial crisis. The meeting was attended only by a handful of community members.
Board President Homer Flores repeatedly rejected attempts by Arrellano to make a motion and discuss how a recommendation to close West Campus was removed from a previous board agenda. Flores threatened to have him removed from the meeting for being “disruptive” and “hurling stones and accusations.”
As Lopez spoke, his microphone was cut off but he continued to talk and told Flores “the only one being disruptive here is you,” before being removed by a school district police officer.
“I have a right to sit here and state my mind,” he said.
Last month, South San trustees, faced with a $12 million budget deficit following years of declining enrollment, voted 5-2 to close three schools, two elementary schools and a middle school.
Superintendent Henry Yzaguirre in January suggested closing four campuses, including West Campus High School, but that school was removed from the March agenda.
“TEA, I hope you are watching,” Arrellano said as the meeting fell apart and legal counsel advised the remaining trustees that they would have to adjourn the meeting.
Trustee Shirley Ibarra also left the room as Lopez was being escorted out. Trustee Stacey E. Alderete was attending the meeting via Zoom, which does not count towards a quorum.
The board has been under investigation by the Texas Education Agency for dysfunction in the past and a monitor oversees the district as a result.
The monitor, Abe Saavedra, said in remarks before the abrupt end that the meeting was “a defining board meeting.”
“How you vote tonight is going to define this board as to whether you continue like many other boards prior to you, or maybe you’ll become the board that will right the ship and do right for our kids,” he said.
Past decisions, including voting on payouts for five superintendents in the last five years, have put the district in the situation it is in, he said.
“These are the decisions that have been made, in some cases by you and other cases by other boards,” he said. “This district will choke itself to death, quite frankly, at some point.”
After the meeting ended, Saavedra said it was indeed defining, “but not in a good way.”
He said the board’s actions were “highly unusual” and that they would be in his report to the Texas Education Agency at the end of the month.
Gilbert Rodriguez, a former South San trustee, spoke during the public comment period, reminding trustees that whatever they did, they would be held accountable.
He said he was disappointed in the board for closing the other schools and called Arrellano “gutless and cowardly.”
“The individual from District 2 had attempted to put on an Oscar-worthy performance about being sad [about] the closure of Kindred [Elementary School], yet he’s voted twice for its closure,” he said.
Angie Olvera, who has spoken at every meeting about the closures, urged trustees to vote for the high school closure, despite fighting against the closures for the last several months.
“I don’t want, and didn’t want, any of our schools to be closed,” she said. “But since y’all voted to close Athens, Kindred and Kazen, I hope that y’all decide to close West Campus.”
Olvera also was escorted out of the meeting at the end, although it was unclear why.
The high school, one of two in the district, had been closed before, in 2007, because of flood damage. In 2017, Athens Elementary and Kazen Middle School were shut because of declines in enrollment. All three were reopened in a controversial 2019 vote by trustees, leading to a TEA investigation. Kindred Elementary, the other school trustees voted to close last month, also has low enrollment, according to district officials.
Enrollment was lower than expected in the months after West Campus High School was reopened, according to reporting from the time, and only 355 students were enrolled at the campus in the 2021-22 school year, the latest TEA data available.
The special meeting was the third called this year where measures to close schools were discussed and voted on. In January, the board voted down a measure to close the three elementary schools and West Campus High School.
Board members disagree about how West Campus was removed from the agenda at the March meeting. Some trustees criticized Flores for removing the campus from consideration.
Arrellano, who has spoken about the need to reign in costs to avoid further state intervention into the district, told the San Antonio Report after the last meeting that he and two other board members sent a memo requesting a meeting to vote on the West Campus closure.
A copy of the draft agenda provided to the San Antonio Report, and given to all board members by Arrellano, shows an agenda item on the closure of West Campus originally slated to be voted on at the previous meeting.
Yzaguirre confirmed that the draft agenda was authentic.
Arrellano, who voted for the closures of the three campuses, said it was unfair to consider those closures without the high school, which has much higher operating costs.
“When you look at the totality of the four, the one that is the most expensive to continue to run was not on the agenda today,” he said last month. “So it’s a half measure.”
If West Campus is kept open, the board must also consider whether to complete millions of dollars in renovations on the campus, including a new cafeteria, Arellano said.
The trustee said that while the episode Wednesday was not ideal, the focus should remain on the problem at hand.
“I want to focus on the fact that here we sit, still in debt,” he said. “Because if those families from the three schools that have been set to close are already … having to adjust to that, and we’re still in debt, then what are we doing?”
