Raccoons On the Loose at McCallum High

A raccoon terrorizing students (photo courtesy of an anonymous parent)

The 11-second video, sent from a parent who wishes to remain anonymous, shows two people attempting to remove a large, healthy raccoon from a McCallum High classroom. As they maneuver a plastic trash can near it, the raccoon dashes out of a cupboard, along a wall, and into a corner of the ceiling, holding itself out of reach.

The video is the latest evidence of a raccoon infestation at McCallum, one of the city's flagship schools. On March 10, a dead raccoon was dug out of a wall above the lockers in the school's history wing. On April 10, a raccoon was captured in a live trap in a science classroom. On April 26, three raccoons were seen running through the school's hallways. The sightings have been so numerous that the raccoons now have their own Instagram account: MacRacoonUpdates.

"This is a multigenerational problem, the raccoons," said Austin ISD Trustee Kathryn Whitley Chu. "When I talk to the people who graduated from McCallum, they're like, 'Yes, we had names for them.' But parents are pretty fed up with it. And our teachers are taking on so much right now – they don't need to be animal control officers too."

For the record, AISD already has animal control officers on the case. "We are taking steps to address the issue in a humane and effective manner," district spokesperson Nayeli Santoyo said in a statement. "We have contacted our Pest Management Department, a professional wildlife removal specialist, and they have already started working to prevent them from coming into the building with exclusion work, as well as setting humane traps for any others that we may not know about. The team will safely remove the raccoons from the school grounds and will continue to monitor the situation to ensure that the problem is fully resolved."

McCallum was built in 1953 and is the second-oldest high school in AISD. Katie Malinski, the parent of a junior at McCallum, told us the raccoons are only one of the problems students and teachers face with the deteriorating campus buildings. "The molds in some areas are just terrible and are really causing or exacerbating medical challenges for kids," Malinski said. "The air conditioners have been a problem for a long time. There are some classrooms that are miserable when the weather is hot, almost intolerable. There are particular rooms where the teachers, when it starts to rain, pull out their rain buckets."

Santoyo told us these issues are on the cusp of being addressed. McCallum is scheduled for a $66 million phased modernization to begin this spring. A campus architectural team composed of parents, staff, and community members will soon meet with the district officials to determine the scope of the renovations, but they're expected to include improvements to the HVAC, electrical, and plumbing systems, as well as roofing repairs and upgrades of the athletic field. The project is expected to be complete in 2027.

* Editor's note Thursday, May 4, 11:02am: A previous version of this story misspelled Katie Malinski’s last name. The Chronicle regrets the error.