FLASH BRIEFING

Data raise questions about school closures

Austin district collected campus data but didn't use weighted metrics to evaluate it

Julie Chang
jchang@statesman.com
Brooke Elementary School is one of 12 Austin campuses proposed to close. [BRONTE WITTPENN/AMERICAN-STATESMAN]

Although parents and community members have called for the release of a scoresheet used to determine which Austin schools would close over the next five years, school district officials say they didn’t use one.

Instead, the district relied on subjective data, like community and staff input, as well as 28 sets of quantitative data, including student demographics, facility conditions, accountability scores and teacher experience at campuses to come up with its plan, according to district officials and data they released to the Statesman this week.

“People always tell me, ‘What’s the calculation for it?’” said district operation officer Matias Segura. “And it’s analytical to a point, and then at that point it becomes more qualitative. Academics by nature, there’s subjectivity in it. We always trying to validate that whatever we were doing was moving us in the right direction.”

The district over the last few weeks has held community meetings about the proposal, including at schools slated for closure where parents peppered administrators with questions about how they arrived at their proposal to close and consolidate 12 schools over the next five years — Brooke, Dawson, Joslin, Sims, Maplewood, Metz, Palm, Pease, Pecan Springs and Ridgetop elementaries, as well as Webb Middle School and Sadler Means Young Women’s Leadership Academy.

Parents and community members said they have not been satisfied with the district’s answers and are lobbying the district to hold off on closures until the district can conduct a more objective analysis, or at the very least, be more transparent in how exactly officials used qualitative data to arrive at their decision.

“One of the reasons the district is getting the pushback is because they don’t have a rubric that they can sit down in front of the community with and say, ‘OK, this is why school A and not school B,’” said Roxanne Evans, a member of the East Austin Coalition for Quality Education.

RELATED: This time they mean it: Austin district trustees move closer to school closures

Slated for a vote by the school board as early as next month, campus closures are among 40 proposals for sweeping academic and facility changes, which includes admission policy adjustments to prized magnet schools, grade realignments and teacher housing. It also calls for a significant investment of new programs in underserved communities, including placing many of the students whose campuses would close into new school buildings. District leaders have said the proposal aims to provide more academic opportunities for low-income, Latino and black students.

It’s not clear how exactly the district used the 28 data categories to arrive at any of the 40 proposals.

A Statesman analysis of the data found that among the 12 campuses chosen for closure:

• The average low-income student percentage is 71%.

• The average Hispanic student percentage is 66%, and the average white student percentage is 16%.

• The average 2017-18 state accountability score was 74, ranging from 59 to 88.

• The average facilities conditions assessment scores were 49 out of 100, and the average deferred maintenance cost is $10.5 million at each campus.

• All but two schools, Maplewood and Ridgetop, are underenrolled.

Leading with academics

In deciding many of the elements of the proposed school changes, district leaders said they relied heavily on public input provided during meetings in the spring and summer. Using that as well as the 28 categories of data, the facilities master plan from 2017 and guiding principles the board approved earlier this year, administrators internally generated the scenarios. Another set of staffers vetted the scenarios for problems, and the district ultimately released the plan in September.

Throughout the process, improving academic programming was at the forefront, officials said.

“Whenever we look at any opportunities for any of the scenarios, we always start with academics and what our long-term vision is. What we’re always trying to balance in this organization is how do we move money from facilities into classrooms,” Segura said. Officials are proposing expanding multicultural, social justice, early college, fine arts and health and human services programs, among other academic changes.

To pay for the expansion of academic services and construction of modern school buildings, district officials reasoned they had to close and consolidate schools to free up money. For at least the last 25 years, district officials heard from consultants and state officials that they needed to close underenrolled and aging schools because they were inefficient.

Although the community weighed in on academic changes and how closures should be handled, district officials themselves came up with the 12 schools to be closed and consolidated.

“They certainly understood the facility implications, but it’s really hard for a community member to sit there and say, 'close my school,' and you don’t want them to say close the other school either,” said Lisa Goodnow, an associate superintendent.

District officials said they couldn’t rely solely on underenrollment as the basis for closing schools because it would result in about a third of campuses being closed.

The $1.1 billion bond from 2017 helped pay for a handful of modernized schools, which also played into the decision of which schools would close. Some Brooke students, for example, would move to the new Govalle Elementary School campus currently under construction.

Proximity played a role in deciding which campuses would close. Some campuses east of Interstate 35 are relatively close together because during the early 1900s, multiple segregated schools were serving the same neighborhood.

“Where can we identify an opportunity and have an impact that doesn’t disrupt that distance as best we can? So, we always look for schools that are close in proximity or in an area that we have a lot of density. … Then we say if we are going to look at consolidation, where are there seats?” Segura said.

Although parents are concerned that campuses receiving students won’t have the capacity to fit them all, Segura said the modernized schools they plan to build for those consolidated schools will have sufficient room.

District officials are banking on voters approving at least one future bond package to pay for many of the modernized campuses.

Solid metrics wanted

Evans said she wishes the district had used a weighted metric or rubric so that people could easily understand how officials arrived at their decision. The district in 2017 gave community members a rubric to weigh which campuses among Norman and Sims, as well as Metz, Sanchez and Zavala, were best suited to be modernized and receive students from the other schools, which were then expected to be shuttered.

“It’s well and good they got community input, but at the end of the day, there are some people who want to know with a certain level comfort that all of this was well thought out ... and based on solid metrics,” Evans said.

Clara Bradbury, a parent at Ridgetop Elementary School, questions the accuracy of the data the district compiled. She and other parents say district data makes it seem like Ridgetop has less room for students than it actually does. Instead of having room for 224 students, the school actually has room for 12% more, Bradbury said. District officials confirmed Wednesday that parents are correct and the capacity of the school should be 251.

“It begs the question if they miscalculated ours, did they have other inaccuracies in their data?” Bradbury said.

Valerie Stern, a former Austin school district assistant principal and an Austin parent, said the way the district arrived at the decision does not seem equitable.

“They’re putting all of this sacrifice and negative impacts from this plan on communities of color and low-income communities, and they’re not clearly explaining how this is an equitable plan. They’re saying, ‘Just trust us. It’s equitable,’” Stern said.

She said the district is putting too much faith on a future bond election passing to pay for the modernized schools without a contingency plan in place.

She is calling on the district to put a stop to the plan until an equity study can be done that examines how past bond dollars have been spent and who is being asked to sacrifice the most under the plan.

State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, who is a former Austin school board president, said she "would 100%" support the district pausing the plan. She sent a letter to the board detailing concerns she has heard from community members during meetings she recently hosted at four campuses on the closure list and within her House district. Her child previously attended Pease Elementary School.

“This is too much, too fast, and nobody understands why,” Hinojosa told the Statesman.

The road to closures

April 2017: The Austin school board approves the Facilities Master Plan, which has guided district decisions on construction, renovations and closures of schools.

June 2017: Prior to the board's vote to call for a $1.1 billion district bond package, documents obtained by the American-Statesman reveal a proposal to shutter handful of East Austin schools to lower the cost of the bond package.

Nov. 2017: Austin voters approve $1.1 billion school bond package, helping to pay for the construction of modernized campuses, into which students from some of the schools on the 2019 closure list would feed. 

Dec. 2017: District documents show six schools could be consolidated, with the first closing as early as 2018: Brooke, Norman, Sims, Metz, Sanchez and Zavala elementaries. Amid pushback, Superintendent Paul Cruz apologizes and promises to change timelines and involve the community in the closure process.

May 2019: The school board adopts the guiding principles of the 2019 School Changes plan.

April 2019: The district invites community members to four workshops (260 participants) to express concerns and opportunities for the 2019 School Changes process.

June 2019: The district recruits 110 participants to participate in think tanks, generating ideas for the 2019 School Changes plan. 

June 2019: District officials whittle down the ideas from the workshops and think tanks.

July-Aug. 2019: District officials generate the scenarios.

Aug. 2019: District officials internally test the scenarios.

Sept. 2019: District releases the School Changes 2019 plan containing academic programming changes and closures and consolidations of 12 schools.