Austin trustees push back against school closure timeline

Austin school district trustees pushed back Monday night against a plan to close schools and consolidate campuses as early as August 2020, saying that a fast-track timeline would limit community input.

Some school board members also told district administrators that the plan lacked transparency and was absent their vision to carry out such decisions in an equitable way. Overall, though, the trustees have not voiced opposition to the possibility of school closures.

"There's not enough time for community engagement," said Trustee Ann Teich, "If we're going to do right by the communities who have not been done right by in the past, we need to be thoughtful and deliberative."

LEARN MORE: HOW AUSTIN SCHOOL CLOSURE PLAN CAME TO BE

Trustee Jayme Mathias said that if the board's agenda had described the discussion as a plan for possible school closures, rather than "planning for efficient use of campus facilities," the meeting room would have been packed with parents. Instead, as the discussion continued well after midnight, only one parent remained at the meeting. 

"If we're going to close schools, let's say we're going to close schools," Mathias said. "We don't want to be perceived in any way as misleading the community. I want to be thoughtful with how we move forward with respect to our engagement with our community."

According to the preliminary timeline, the district would work with a facilities committee that previously outlined some criteria for closures to create criteria and guiding principles for the consolidation plan by April. Administrators would specify schools for possible consolidation by May and trustees would make decisions on those schools in June.

It was the first time the trustees were able to discuss the administrative plan, and the school board meeting stretched into the early hours of Tuesday morning.

The majority of trustees appeared to want to draft an equity policy before moving forward with a consolidation timeline. It's unlikely there will be a vote on the proposed roadmap at the end of the month, but it is unclear exactly how long the timeline will be delayed.  

"Equity. That’s something that we need to make very explicit in whatever (plan) we come up with,” said Trustee Arati Singh. “Every page should have something on it that demonstrates to the community that we truly are looking at this whole process through an equity lens.”

But Trustee Yasmin Wagner told the board that while the timeline is aggressive, if staff members and a facilities committee being tasked with doing some of the work have the bandwidth to complete it, trustees should move forward.

"When we reach a hard decision or a tough conversation, we tend to go into analysis paralysis," Wagner said. "It seems to me that we keep perpetuating these conversations rather than confronting the difficult decisions that we actually need to make ...We need to just be able to just take the step forward and do the hard work and make the hard decisions."

Trustees have said  they want to help develop the criteria that determines which schools will be shuttered and have stressed that low enrollment will not be the only factor in determining which schools are consolidated.

The school district long has been criticized for holding on to chronically under-enrolled schools, and various state officials, consultants and district committees since at least 1993 have called out the district for inefficiencies, all recommending shuttering campuses. 

But talks about possible school closures have long been contentious in Austin, sparking outrage among community members and prompting protests by parents and students to defend their neighborhood schools.

Trustee LaTisha Anderson, who represents the eastern portion of the district, did not attend the meeting because of an illness, but she released a statement read by a fellow trustee. She said that the city and school district were built on inequities between white communities and those of color and that the district now "must turn this around and use this opportunity to be equitable."

"If closing schools is a way to save the district, then we must be mindful of which schools need to be closed," her statement said. "The process with this needs to proceed equitably and without bias."

In other board actions, the trustees postponed until next week a previously scheduled discussion on proposed revisions to the district's sex education curriculum. The Human Sexuality and Responsibility curriculum is being overhauled for the first time in more than a decade for grades three through eight, and includes introducing topics such as sexual orientation, gender identity and sexually transmitted diseases in elementary school.  

Administrators and the Student Health Advisory Council are recommending that defining sexual orientation and defining sexually transmitted diseases and ways of transmission be introduced in fifth grade; differentiating between and explaining expressions of gender be taught in sixth grade; and describing the steps of condom use be part of a lesson in eighth grade. Other topics include healthy relationships, anatomy and physiology, puberty and reproduction, pregnancy and reproduction and personal safety.

The proposed curriculum would include lessons for elementary students about consent and refusal skills, which are recommended to start in third grade.

Next week, the school board already was scheduled to hear a grievance against the district related to the proposed sex education curriculum changes. On Monday, the conservative religious advocacy group Texas Values sent out a tweet, calling for those opposed to the proposed curriculum to send emails to school board members.