San Antonio Report
by Isaac Windes
A combination of increasing school choices, rising housing costs and falling birth rates in certain demographics has led to an educational landscape in San Antonio that is unrecognizable from the one seen just a decade ago.
In response, school districts are working to reinvent themselves and hold on to both teachers and students in the process. Some of those efforts could backfire, according to an analysis done in the lead-up to the San Antonio Independent School District Board of Trustees voting to close 15 schools amid declining enrollment and subpar academic performance.
Birth rates in the Hispanic population, which have historically been higher than other groups, are leveling off — a trend that has an outsized impact on the predominantly Hispanic urban core and the school districts that serve families within it. That’s according to Texas State Demographer Lloyd Potter, who participated in a panel on the shifting landscape during CityFest, an event hosted by the San Antonio Report.
Potter said that while growth in the city has lagged behind booms seen in other major Texas cities over the last two decades, it has been among the top fastest-growing cities in the country in recent years. That growth has occurred in suburban areas moving toward the north and the west of San Antonio between Loop 410 and Loop 1604, with newer development moving up Interstate 35.
At the same time, older families and younger single residents live in the urban core.
In order to adapt to the new landscape, which features a growing array of charter school options with specialized campuses tailored to meet the individual needs of families, school districts have opted to become districts of innovation. This gives districts more flexibility to create their own innovative and specialized programs and campuses, attracting students from other districts and other campuses within their own.
That shift has led to a massive shuffling of students within and between districts, leaving many traditional neighborhood schools half-empty while other programs have filled to the point of having waiting lists.
In an effort to realign resources to more logically reflect that new reality, the Edgewood, Harlandale, San Antonio, and South San Antonio independent school districts have voted to close a total of two dozen school campuses in the last year, with the possibility of more closures in the future.
School closures end outdated district set up
SAISD Trustee Ed Garza, who has long talked about the need to downsize the district, said during the panel that the current setup doesn’t make sense.
“Our infrastructure was built in the 1920s and 30s … to be neighborhood schools where kids could walk to school and was the only choice for many families,” he said. “Today they have … choices. And most students … and families are looking for schools that meet their academic needs over a school that’s in their neighborhood.”
That has been a “wake up call for districts,” he said, and has led to the creation of choice schools and in-district charter schools, which provide parents with those tailored needs while remaining in a traditional public school.
For SAISD, those options have attracted 5,000 students from outside the district. But even with that boost, the overall enrollment has continued to plummet at a rate beyond what was predicted as “the worst case scenario” decades ago.
The closures, aimed at ensuring equity in education across the district, rely on students moving to other campuses within the district since funding is tied to enrollment and attendance in the state of Texas.
But Terrance L. Green, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy, questioned what would happen if that doesn’t occur.
“If the number of anticipated students don’t go to the receiving schools, then what does that mean for providing the needed resources to support students?” he asked in an equity audit commissioned by the district.
Various data suggest that at least some students will leave the district as a result of the school closure process.
One region highlighted in the report on the South Side of San Antonio is now considered a “school desert,” where some families have no SAISD school within a mile of their house. Charter schools, however are in that area.
Other areas could face attrition as a result of disillusionment with the process.
A poll conducted by Lamar Community Advocates while the closures were being discussed found that only 12.5% of respondents (about one-third of parents at the school) would be moving their children to Hawthorne, the receiving school decided by the district.
Another concern raised in the equity audit is the high likelihood of teachers at closing schools leaving the district due to the process, which some surveyed teachers shared was confusing and not transparent despite months of public meetings and more than a year of staff meetings on the district’s resources.
In a survey of 111 employees, 27% indicated they would not consider leaving, 34% were considering leaving and 22% said they would be leaving if their school closed, while 17% were unsure.
Other teachers shared concerns in focus groups at a handful of campuses slated for closure, calling the process “shocking, moving too quickly and a ‘done deal.'”
School choice impacting growing districts
While school choice is a significant part of the conversation within districts facing falling enrollment, it is also a wrinkle in how quickly growing districts are planning for the future.
East Central Independent School District, for example, where population growth is forecast to double enrollment from around 10,000 to around 20,000 over the next 10 years, has seen charter schools eat into its projected growth.
Roland Toscano, the district’s superintendent, shared on the panel that in 2016, the district studied enrollment trends, facilities and population growth and asked voters to approve a bond to build new schools.
“They supported a bond referendum to respond to the growth that was happening in the rural sector of our community north of Highway 87, which was … 100 square miles of what was traditionally agricultural and ranch land … being developed rapidly,” he said. “After the bond passed, some new charter schools that we knew nothing about were approved.”
Given the rapid growth rate, the charter schools didn’t pose a significant challenge, but “the community would not necessarily have supported the same bond referendum if they knew that we were going to have an additional 400 or 500 students migrating out of ECISD,” he added.
In-district school choice is also being used as a tool in growing districts to balance out lopsided growth, according to Toscano, and to “manufacture enrollment to the areas of our geography that maybe are declining” to “maintain balanced enrollment and efficient utilization of all of … facilities.”
With another crop of charter schools set to open in the next school year and an ongoing push at the state level to allow tax dollars to be used for private schools, Toscano said the future is less certain despite continued growth.
“When we inform our taxpayers about our needs, particularly as you move beyond the immediate two, three and five years as you’re trying to project around the corner, it’s becoming more and more difficult,” he said.