Despite district leaders spending months explaining the need to close schools, some parents say the process is rushed and inequitable.
Ten-year-old Mateo Lopez and his mother, Julia Hernandez , walk home from Lamar Elementary School after the school day is over. Lamar Elementary is among the 19 schools proposed by SAISD for closure.Nearly every day on the way home from school, kindergarten student Eve and second-grader Ellie stop to climb a grand oak tree with sweeping branches and a broad trunk in front of Lamar Elementary in the Mahncke Park neighborhood. And they aren’t the only ones.
Declining enrollment and the small footprint of the school — which has a capacity of just 351 students — led district leaders to add the school toin the next two years. Similar concerns are mobilizing parents and community advocates across San Antonio to try and slow or reverse the process, which began in June.
Similar questions are being asked in neighborhoods across the district after enrollment declines were “I’m sure it’s overdue, but that doesn’t mean you then rush it to jump to conclusions in a several-month period,” he said. “The whole thing has been rushed so badly.” across the district are mobilizing, hoping to trim the list of schools or halt the process altogether before the Nov. 13 school board meeting, when trustees will vote on a final list.
Laura Short, a spokeswoman for SAISD, said that families at impacted schools would receive phone calls and flyers sent home with students detailing the upcoming neighborhood meetings. Similar arrangements would occur with other bond funds, with a facilities assessment planned if school closures are approved, according to Short.
For example, 90% of the district is Hispanic and 89% of students impacted by closures and mergers under the draft plan are Hispanic. Meanwhile, 89% of the district is economically disadvantaged, and 75% of those impacted by closures are economically disadvantaged. “We just live down the street so it is shocking that they’re going to close this school, which has been here for as long as I can remember,” he said. “It is going to be pretty tough.”
There are 30 charter schools in the district, Sorensen said, with many clustered around closing campuses or low-enrolled schools that will be receiving students from closed schools. But beyond the inconvenience, Sadovsky said she fears the loss of the dual-language program at Lamar, an offering that doesn’t currently exist at Hawthorne Middle School, where students will be sent if Lamar is closed, creating a Pre-K-8 academy.
Draft plans for relocation include a dimension of uncertainty, according to district officials, who said during the first neighborhood meeting since announcing the closure list that they could only finalize specific details after a final list is approved. That is because the entire restructuring process is interconnected, with the removal of one school from the closure list impacting the flow of students in every high school feeder pattern.
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