2019's Big Stories Shaping Austin's Path Into a New Decade

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Sept. 5: AISD Releases "School Changes" Scenarios, Including Plans to Close 12 Campuses

Rallying to spare Downtown's Pease Elementary (Photo by David Brendan Hall)

The Austin Independent School District began exploring the possibility of school closures in early 2019, and it took its board of trustees most of the year to get to a point where a thin majority could agree on a limited number of campuses to close. In the wake of years of fiscal challenges (reduced somewhat once the new school finance plan passed the Lege) and steadily declining enrollment, debate among the board and the community centered on how to rightsize the district while striving toward equity. The district committed to prioritizing "our most important asset – our students and their success" and to "interrupt practices that negatively impact struggling students," particularly in lower-income communities of color.

When AISD released the first draft of what it called the School Changes plan, much of the district's active community – students, educators, parents, and advocates – felt leaders had badly missed that mark. Community members pushed the district to reconsider, pointing out that most of the campus closures and consolidations would impact those living east of I-35. The district responded by embarking on a robust effort to gather feedback, meeting in school gyms and cafeterias throughout Austin to hear emotional testimony from angry and bewildered parents, faculty, and students about how school closures would be harmful to their communities and a betrayal of previous promises by AISD to reinvest in its challenged schools.

Community pressure continued to build, but the trustees remained firm: We have to close schools, and we're going to do it this time, after years of putting it off. The pressure did have some effect, as the initial list of 12 closures was reduced to four – three on the Eastside – in a second draft of the School Changes plan.

Largely, the community remained unsatisfied. Looking to Stephanie Hawley, who AISD hired in June as its first-ever equity officer, they pleaded for a pause on closures altogether. That didn't happen, and on Nov. 18, the board of trustees voted to close Metz, Brooke, Pease, and Sims elementary schools, despite startling and blunt testimony from Hawley that the closures represented "a map of 21st century racism."

After the vote, reporting revealed that Hawley had produced a report detailing how and why the yearlong process leading to the closures perpetuated structural inequities and devalued the perspectives of the people most affected – the legacy, she wrote, of a "white supremacy culture" in Austin and at AISD. But the report was not made public, or even shared with the trustees, until weeks after trustees voted to close the schools. (District staff said the report was undergoing edits and could not be released before the vote.) Now, AISD moves forward into 2020 trying to repair broken trust with communities who feel vindicated by Hawley's report, while deciding the fate of the eight remaining campuses slated for closure. – A.S.