Michael Karlis
The SAISD Board of Trustees voted 5-2 to close 15 schools and merge three pairs of schools during a meeting on Monday.
The board sealed the decision with a 5-2 vote during a contentious meeting that wrapped up around 11 p.m.
Board member Sarah Sorensen introduced separate amendments to remove six schools from the list and to save Lamar and Storm elementary schools from shutting down. However, the board ultimately approved a final resolution released Friday, which calls for the shuttering of 15 campuses.
Under that resolution, Green, Foster, Miller, Highland Park, Douglass, Forbes, Huppertz, Lamar and Storm elementary schools will close at the end of the 2023-2024 school year. Knox, Nelson and Tynnan Early Childhood Centers will also will shut down.
Meanwhile, Beacon Hill Dual Language Academy and Cotton Academy will combine, as will Kelly Elementary and Lowell Middle Schools and Gonzalez Early Childhood Center and Twain Dual Language Academy.
"Every single day I lose sleep, because every single day in our classrooms we are losing a generation of students … and this is hopefully a new beginning," second-year superintended Jaime Aquino said following the vote. "I am grateful that we had this public conversation that was long overdue. I hope that we all come together as a familia to do better for our kids."
Aquino's emotional statement drew jeers from the crowd. The superintendent has repeatedly argued that a "rightsizing" is needed due to years of dwindling enrollment within the district.
Much of public commentary during Monday's meeting involved an outside audit of SAISD's plans commissioned by the district that argued a prior round of school closures failed to provide better outcomes for students. The findings of that report, published at 6 p.m. Friday, rebuked claims by Aquino the campus closures will better serve students.
According to the audit, a 2015 round of SAISD school closures didn't yield better outcomes in attendance, grades or STAAR test scores.
"The historical data would suggest that if things weren't done significantly differently, then the same thing could happen," the report's author, University of Texas education Professor Terrance Green, told Aquino during the meeting. "I don't have a crystal ball, but there is a major onus on the district."
Green also said charter schools — which the district blamed for 20% of its enrollment drop — are "salivating" at the prospect of poaching children who are casualties of the SAISD school closures.
Groups opposing the closures requested that Green and his team be able to start their audit in the spring. However, the district only gave them three weeks to complete the study, which supporters said normally would take take months to undertake.
"The reason that our union and our coalition requested the report in the spring is because we knew the information that was going to be generated by it needed to inform the decisions that are being made, and I think that the board needs to do its due diligence and pause this process so that they can grapple with what's in [the report]," San Antonio Alliance President Alejandra Lopez told the Current.
Lopez was one of many people at the meeting who argued the board had moved too quickly and without transparency.
During the meeting's public comment session, District 2 City Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez urged the board to table the resolution until it can evaluate other options.
"What we're not prepared to address is the pain and irreversible harm that school closures cause," said McKee-Rodriguez, a former school teacher. "What I ask is that you vote 'no' on closures today, and we work together towards other means in addressing our district's challenges, including efforts to bring our children back from charter schools. School closures will never adequately address these problems, and I am worried that closures will only lead to further declines in enrollment and further financial uncertainty."
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