San Antonio Independent School District to close these 19 schools

Fourteen elementary schools, four early childhood centers and a pre-k-through-8th grade academy are targeted in the re-engineering package for a school district that’s suffered from decades of declining enrollment. Many of the campuses have graced older neighborhoods for generations.

The district plans to begin holding meetings as early as this weekend to engage parents and describe the process. 

DATABASE: Average base salary for teachers in various San Antonio school districts

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For the next two months, school board members who ultimately will vote on the recommendation will need to lead with transparency and empathy, “for families that are going to have to change their habits, (and) for educators that are going to have to publicly go to a different school,” board president Cynthia Martinez said after the staff’s “rightsizing” plan was released at a board meeting Monday night.  

“I know that tonight is going to be hard for some of our families and some of our educators after hearing the news,” Martinez told about 100 people attending in person and another 500 virtually. 

The plan, explained in a series of online videos and the district’s rightsizing link, was presented after 26 people, mostly parents, addressed the board. Many were concerned the changes will uproot children, disrupt their education and force them to travel to unfamiliar campuses.

Emily Baker, mother of a preschooler and 5th grader at Lamar Elementary, one of the schools targeted for closure, said she’s worried about students, teachers, sports staff and the possibility of “leaving our school buildings as a blight upon our neighborhoods.” 

Lamar, along with other old elementary schools such as Frederick Douglass and Collins Garden — also both proposed for closure — have deep cultural ties to San Antonio. The plan calls for students of some of the closed schools to move as a group to another campus, but would split up others for relocation at two or more other schools. 

“You can’t just take a community that has had some successes, take those students and teachers and export them to many different schools and expect those successes to continue, when some of the success stems from the community of trust and support and mutual advocacy,” Baker said. “That community spirit can’t be measured by the size of the school.”  

READ MORE: SAISD ‘Rightsizing’ criticized by community groups 

Ashley Treviño, a parent at Kelly Elementary School, which is proposed for a merger with another another school, was one of several parents afraid children will lose ground on academic and social progress they’ve made. 

“In closing the smaller schools, we strip the community of its very identity and sense of security,”  Treviño said. “Personally, having a daughter that struggles with speech and seeing the amount of growth that she has had, as well as her rise in confidence and clarity, has been amazing. I know for a fact that at a larger school, this wouldn’t have been possible.”

Treviño said she and other parents worry their children will “just become a number in a system that gets overlooked.”

In a 5-2 vote in June, the school board supported a study of its building use and capacity, launching a “rightsizing” process to fight the effects of enrollment declines that have lasted 40 years or more. The shrinking number of students has become unstoppable, SAISD officials believe, because of falling birth rates in San Antonio’s historic urban core and gentrification that has made housing unaffordable for many young families.

The draft recommendation this week is subject to change following a second round of community meetings, although some parents were skeptical their voices are being heard. It was produced after 14 such meetings since the process began, held in every trustee’s district.

Superintendent Jaime Aquino said the district will work with community partners to ensure vacated buildings are adaptively reused. But the focus is on children, he said.

“The process of rightsizing a school district is not about diminishing its potential. It’s about maximizing opportunity for every student to thrive,” Aquino said. “Together, I believe we’re not just making history. We’re shaping our future. Our collective efforts will leave a lasting impact on generations to come. We’re building a legacy defined by excellence, compassion and resilience.”

By reorganizing the district’s facilities and resources, SAISD hopes to expand capacity for schools and academic programs that now have waiting lists. It will allow the district to consolidate services for dual-language students, provide more fine arts and music offerings, add library services, eliminate “split” classes with mixed grade levels and offer more instructional assistants, special education services and mental health specialists.\

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Having to maintain old buildings draws resources away from the district’s core mission, officials said.   

Trustee Sarah Sorensen, the board’s most vocal skeptic of rightsizing, continued to question its scale and pace.

“I’ve never said that we don’t need to have this discussion,” Sorensen said. “It does not have to be one that’s done in six months. It does not have to be one that’s done with 19 schools closing. That is a huge number of schools in our community.” 

Trustee Alicia Sebastian said she was pleased “after losing many nights of sleep” with the work Aquino and the staff have done. But she acknowledged that, while the proposed changes may generate enthusiasm for some parents, they’re certain to stir fear and discomfort for others. 

“It’s probably going to get harder before it gets better,” Sebastian said.  

Trustee Ed Garza, a former San Antonio mayor who has advocated examining school closures as a potentially necessary response to dropping enrollment, said Sorensen’s voice in the discussion is important,  capturing misgivings in the community. 

“I hope through this process, we can all get to a more comfortable place, whatever that decision when we come back in November,” Garza said. “We may come from a different perspective and a different point in time in our journeys to advocate for the students in SAISD, but we all want the public school system to be here for another hundred years.”

Somehow, he said, the district must deal with a reality, unseen by most, that more of its classrooms are being vacated each year and turned into storage space.

“They see cars pull up, they see the flag being raised on the flagpole. They see the students, patrols on the corner. But they don’t know that a whole floor is empty,” Garza said. 

Here’s an overview of the key changes, broken down by the board’s seven single-member districts and the comprehensive high school that anchors each one: 

District 1 (Brackenridge High School): Lamar and Pershing elementary schools would close, with Lamar students moving to Hawthorne Academy and Pershing students going to Cameron and Washington elementary schools. Gonzales Early Childhood Center would merge with Twain Dual Language Academy.

District 2 (Sam Houston High School): Gates and Miller elementaries would close, with students from both schools diverted to the Martin Luther King Jr. Academy, which would be transformed into a state-of-the-art facility using 2020 bond funds. Douglass Elementary would close, and its students would go to Hirsch Elementary. Carroll and Tynan early childhood centers also would close. 

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District 3 (Highlands High School): Forbes Elementary would close, its students sent to Highland Hills and Ball elementaries. Foster and Highland Park elementaries would close as early as fall 2025, after renovations are completed at Highland Hills and Schenk elementaries. Some Highland Park students would attend the newly redesigned Japhet Academy. Hot Wells Middle School and Bowden Academy would receive sixth through eighth grade students from Japhet. Steele Montessori Academy would move to Riverside Park Elementary. 

District 4 (Burbank High School): Lowell Middle School and Kelly Elementary would merge to become Kelly Academy for grades pre-K through eighth, with the Lowell campus renovated to accommodate younger students. Collins Garden Elementary would close and its students sent to the new Kelly Academy, as well as Briscoe, King and J.T. Brackenridge elementaries. Riverside Park Elementary would close and students diverted to Hillcrest Elementary and Japhet Academy. Knox Early Childhood Center would close as part of an effort to provide Head Start and early childhood education services at neighborhood elementary schools.

District 5 (Lanier High School): Ogden Elementary would close and its students sent to Fenwick and Crockett academies. Storm Elementary would close and students diverted to Barkley-Ruiz and King elementaries.  

District 6 (Edison High School): Beacon Hill Academy would merge with Cotton Academy, with students in pre-K through 2nd grade housed at the Beacon Hill campus, renamed “Cotton at Beacon Hill,” and students in grades 3-8 at the Cotton campus. 

District 7: (Jefferson High School): Baskin Elementary would close with students moved to Maverick Elementary, which would be enlarged using 2020 bond funds. Huppertz Elementary would close and students diverted to Woodlawn Hills Elementary and Fenwick Academy. Nelson Early Childhood Center would close. 

The package of changes would require considerable reprogramming of bond expenditures. Many of the schools on the closure list had been slated for major renovations under the district’s $1.3 billion bond approved in 2020. The largest in San Antonio history, it allocated up to $35 million per campus for new classrooms, labs, dining areas and offices at Gates, Collins Garden, Highland Park, Huppertz, Lamar and Storm elementary schools.