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.
The tree-climbing tradition stretches back years, a treasured part of growing up in the neighborhood northeast of downtown known for its active participation in the school.
Lamar students also take trips each spring to the community garden, which is within sight of the school, to see hundreds of ladybugs and butterflies climbing on various plants and crops.
Sitting on a bench in that garden, Shannon Oster-Gabrielson and Neil Gabrielson — the parents of Eve and Ellie — shared their concerns about the possibility of all of that going away if the San Antonio Independent School District’s draft proposal for school closures, which includes Lamar, is finalized in November.
Declining enrollment and the small footprint of the school — which has a capacity of just 351 students — led district leaders to add the school to the list of 19 schools recommended for closure in 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.
“We are at capacity with our early childhood classes,” Oster-Gabrielson said of Lamar. “It baffles me that they would close a school that people want to go to in a thriving community where you have the Botanical Gardens, you’ve got a beautiful community garden, you’ve got the Witte, … you’ve got all these amazing immersive experiences.”
While Lamar’s enrollment is at 85% of capacity, the school has only 296 students, down from 379 in 2019, according to district data. In determining the list of school closures, district officials decided that moving students to the larger Hawthorne Middle School would be a better use of resources.
Lamar’s small size and low enrollment put it “well above the district’s average cost per student to operate,” according to the district.
Parents, including Oster-Gabrielson, wonder what will happen to the school’s dual-language and special education programs, which were a draw for many in the community. If the closures are confirmed, the district has committed to continuing programs offered at all 19 schools.
Similar questions are being asked in neighborhoods across the district after enrollment declines were left unaddressed by district leaders and previous school boards despite clear downward trend lines going back decades. District leaders have said the situation demands swift action, with smaller schools resorting to mixed-grade classrooms and students missing out on extracurricular activities and high-quality educational environments.
Despite the district’s efforts in recent months to plan, prepare and explain that reality, disappointment and worry are resounding at dinner tables, neighborhood meetings and on street corners in every part of the district.
To communicate the necessity of closing schools, district officials have held 14 meetings and promise at least 22 more, in an outreach effort more thorough than other districts closing schools in San Antonio and across the country amid widespread enrollment declines.
Since 1998, San Antonio ISD’s enrollment has declined from 61,112 to 45,285 this year, according to the district.
Gabrielson said the data on the district level is clear, agreeing with officials that the extent of the problem demands action. But that isn’t a reason for a rushed process, he said.
“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.”
In response, parents from Lamar and the other schools set for closure 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.
The map above shows all SAISD schools. The orange markers are the schools slated for closure in a draft recommendation and the blue markers are the others.
Working to educate communities
While parents of Lamar students snapped into action within hours of the school district releasing a list of schools to be closed or merged, parents in other communities are still learning of the possibility of closures and the impact that could have.
That brought volunteers with the Schools Our Students Deserve Coalition, City Councilwoman Teri Castillo’s office and the Collins Garden Neighborhood Association to the pick-up line outside Collins Garden Elementary School one week after officials released the draft closure list with the school’s name on it.
Karen Speer, the president of the neighborhood association, and others handed out fliers to parents waiting in cars and arriving on foot to the school, which sits across from a park that serves as a community gathering place.
“I’m out here giving these flyers to parents that are picking up their kids since we are in a digital divide in this area,” she said. “A lot of people don’t have internet, a lot of people don’t have a smartphone or a computer.”
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.
But with meetings on the closures already happening, parent groups worry that word that Collins Garden could close will reach some students’ parents too late to mount opposition.
Aging schools
According to district data, Collins Garden is at only 58% of the school’s 737-student capacity, leaving much of the building unused.
The school was built in the early 20th century and will be difficult to bring up to date, even with total demolition, according to the district rationale. The school was put on the list since it is not well suited for “expanding into a 21st-century school.”
If the current list of closures is approved, the district could use bond funds slated for improving Collins Garden Elementary to improve two of the five campuses set to receive students from closed schools. According to the district, all receiving schools are in better condition than Collins Garden.
Similar arrangements would occur with other bond funds, with a facilities assessment planned if school closures are approved, according to Short.
The district could make changes to the draft list of closures according to a framework released months ago and refined based on feedback from parents, according to Superintendent Jaime Aquino.
Some parents are strategizing about how to use the framework — which analyzes programs at schools, enrollment, cost per pupil and facility usage — to change the recommendations.
Others are calling for the process to be stopped altogether, citing concerns about the inequitable impacts the closures could have on traditionally marginalized communities.
When it released its closure list, SAISD released a report detailing the impact of closures and mergers on demographic groups. According to the report, closures and mergers will impact students proportionally to the district’s demographics.
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.
But Castillo told the San Antonio Report that a more comprehensive audit is needed to inform closure recommendations.
Such a study will be conducted with Terrance Green, an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin, according to Castillo’s office. Amador Salazar, who works in the councilwoman’s office, said the district shared the news at the Collins Garden neighborhood meeting on the closures Tuesday.
The district did not immediately respond to questions about a timeline on the study Wednesday.
But the current situation, Aquino said, is already profoundly inequitable, underlining the need for a change.
“We, as a community, are dissatisfied with the current situation and the reality that we find ourselves in which smaller schools face incredible challenges in providing all the necessary resources and support for their students, their family and their staff,” he said.
Eyeing charters
JP Barreda exchanged worried glances with other parents as he picked up his son from kindergarten at Collins Garden on Monday. The uncertainty surrounding an institution at the center of the community has him concerned, he said.
“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.”
Barreda said that his uncles and mother also both attended the school, while he attended other schools in the district.
Despite his nerves, he said he would be sticking with the district.
Others aren’t so sure.
Anthony Garcia has a child at Kelly Elementary School — also on the closure list — and said he started to search for charter schools as soon as the list was released. He noted that Kelly is an A-rated campus in the state accountability scores.
“I think these students have been through enough from COVID to snow storms to Uvalde,” he said. “They should be able to relax and enjoy school.”
Charter schools are at least in part to blame for the decline in enrollment, according to a demographer report and SAISD Trustee Sarah Sorensen, who has said the charter impact needs more attention.
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.
The map above shows all SAISD schools slated for closure in a draft recommendation in orange and nearby charter schools in pink.
Continuity of programs questioned
For years, SAISD has offered parents the ability to transfer schools within the district, with a wide variety of choice and neighborhood schools, which comprise the bulk of the 19 schools slated for closure.
Lamar Elementary’s small size, dual-language program and prime location led families to move to the area and students living outside it to send their children there. According to district data, more than half of the students attending the school come from outside Lamar’s attendance zone.
Ronni Gura Sadovsky moved into Lamar’s attendance area and regularly bikes with her daughter to the school, then bikes to work at Trinity University. With only one vehicle for the family, a closure would complicate her commute.
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.
“Her ability to speak Spanish has been phenomenal,” she said of her first-grade daughter, Adva. “It’s something we value so much … and I don’t know how we would be able to sustain and support her Spanish if we didn’t have it at school.”
District officials have pledged to move the dual-language program to Hawthorne along with the students. But Sadovsky and other parents are skeptical.
“It’s impossible to accept 300 new students and build a brand new dual-language program all at once,” she said.
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.
Lamar Elementary has a high special-needs population, including bilingual students with learning differences.
Julia Hernandez said she saw firsthand the difference in the quality of accommodations provided at Lamar and Young Men’s Leadership Academy when her son moved there for middle school.
“Before my son graduated, the teacher … fought really hard for the school to provide a software so my son could learn to type on the computer,” she said in Spanish. “I haven’t heard about him getting this help in his new school.”
With another son at Lamar now, she said she is worried about what comes next.
How the kids feel
The children at the heart of the decisions were shaken by the news.
Ellie didn’t learn about it officially until the morning after the district announced the closure decisions, Oster-Gabrielson said, although she heard rumors in recent weeks.
“She was extremely upset. She cried a lot. We all cried,” Oster-Gabrielson said. “To the school’s credit, knowing that Ellie is a high-anxiety child, the principal reached out to me and said, ‘How can we support the girls this morning?’”
The principal greeted Ellie and took her to a teacher she is comfortable with, Oster-Gabrielson said.
Sadovsky’s daughter Adva was at the meeting when the closures were announced her mother said.
“She’s I think … kind of mirroring our attitudes,” Sadovsky said. “She’s coming at it with this kind of resilience, like she wants to understand so she can help and she can problem solve.”
Scott Ball and Brenda Bazán contributed reporting to this article.
