Students danced alongside protestors outside the Lubbock Independent School District’s special meeting of the Board of Trustees. Inside, the audience overflowed from the main room into two more rooms for extra seating.
They gathered to hear what the future could be for Lubbock’s elementary and middle schools.
The school board heard from parents, teachers, and community leaders ahead of the report from LISD’s Future Focus Committee and their recommendations for possible closures and consolidations.
Many parents came from Harwell Elementary School, one of the only schools in Lubbock that offers a Dual Language Spanish Immersion Program.
Ivan Navarro is the father of a third grader at Harwell, but they live in the Frenship School District.
“I personally spoke with the Frenship ISD superintendent four years ago, when I first learned about Harwell’s program,” Navarro said. “The resources were not available in our district.”
Navarro said that’s when he knew where his son would go to school.
“We live two blocks from Crestview Elementary and Heritage Middle School in the Frenship district, yet my family chooses to commute 40 minutes daily to provide our son this level of education,” Navarro said.
Eric Reyes said he sent his daughter to Bean Elementary for the school’s bilingual program, but added he quickly found the school is more than language.
“The teachers there are amazing, always there for my daughter, bringing the best in her education-wise,” Reyes said. “Beyond that, I feel my daughter and all the students have been kept rooted to their culture, celebrating and keeping present traditions that I know she will remember as her life goes on, and that is all thanks to Bean.”
Amanda Smith is a fourth-grade math teacher at Hodges Elementary.
“As an educator, I've dedicated my heart and soul to ensuring that every student who walks through our doors has the opportunity to succeed, grow and become the leaders of tomorrow,” Smith said. “However, I stand before you today with deep concern about the future of our school and its ability to continue serving our most vulnerable students.”
Under the current proposal, Hodges would be consolidated with Bean Elementary into the O.L. Slaton Middle School building. Smith said despite challenges, she’s watched her school grow from a campus rated as “improvement required” to a B-rated campus.
“I believe it's important to revisit our district's mission statement, which guides everything we do in LISD: love people, develop leaders, and value data. These words aren't just lofty ideals,” Smith said. “They are the foundation of the work we do every day in our classrooms at Hodges Elementary. We live these values with every lesson we teach, every relationship we build, and every child we serve.”
Smith said she is currently teaching 40 fourth-grade students, of whom 14 are currently receiving special education services.
“These are not just numbers on a paper. These are children who come to school each day with unique challenges and needs,” Smith said. “Despite these challenges, we at Hodges have created an environment where all students, regardless of their background or ability, are empowered to succeed.”
In addition to the consolidation of Bean and Hodges Elementary, the final proposal from LISD’s Future Focus Committee included consolidating Overton Elementary School to Rush Elementary and splitting O.L. Slaton Middle School into Atkins Middle School and Dunbar College Preparatory Academy.
According to LISD, the consolidation of Bean and Hodges would save $14.2 million in capital renewal to replace or modernize infrastructure in old buildings, with $9.4 million in savings moving Overton students to Rush.
The three consolidation projects in the proposal are part of “phase one” for the 2025-26 school year, whereas other schools that were part of the committee’s initial conversations, like Harwell, are now considered part of later projects known as “phase two,” and could become a reality in the next few years if conditions don’t change.
LISD Superintendent Dr. Kathy Rollo said the current budget issue, with $14.8 million in the red, stems from declining enrollment in the district and stagnant support from state representatives in the legislature, where the state’s funding allotment has not changed since 2019.
Dr. Dewayne Wilkins, the Chief Financial Officer for LISD, said that allotment in state funding, which has not kept up with the rate of inflation, has become an increasing problem for the district.
“Starting in 2020 and remaining to today, it has not increased,” Wilkins said. “You can kind of see if we were getting paid what inflation should be, it would be around $7,900. The difference between the blue and the red is a little over $45 million.”
After multiple special sessions, the 88th Texas Legislature in 2023 hoped to pass an omnibus bill that would have changed the allotment from $6,160 to $6,700, as well as providing teachers and staff with a $4,000 bonus.
Gov. Greg Abbott rejected that bill when a coalition of Texas Democrats and rural Republicans voted to remove a part of the law that created education savings accounts, a voucher program that would allow students who exit the state’s public education system to receive $10,500 annually for private school expenses.
Abbott has now insisted that the 89th Legislature, coming into session in January 2025, will pass both a private school voucher program and increased support for public schools, but many voucher opponents continue to say the program could pull potential support from public schools by decreasing support based on enrollment.
District 83 Representative Dustin Burrows addressed LISD’s possible consolidations in an op-ed to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal before the Nov. 5 Election, saying there was “politics at play” in LISD’s announcement and its timing.
Burrows described the failure of 2023’s omnibus education bill as the fault of lobby organizations like the Texas Association of School Boards and the Texas Association of School Administrators, pulling support away from vouchers. Burrows insisted that the voucher program would not be a problem for public schools because the voucher proposal would have created a well of funding separate from public education.
Other states that have implemented voucher programs in the past, like Arizona, have since reported their own budget shortfalls after the costs to maintain the program multiplied from under $65 million to around $332 million last year.
Neither Burrows nor District 84 Representative Carl Tepper, both of whom voted to install the failed voucher program in 2023, were in attendance for the LISD meeting on Thursday.
In the meeting, Rollo told the school board about the timing of LISD’s closures and the more important deadlines for trustees to decide, which came with the transfer window for families deciding where to send their kids to school as well as taking considerations of staffing timelines.
According to LISD, schools across Texas no longer have the same buying power as they did in 2019 when the $6,160 basic allotment was set, and many are now reporting deficits.
Rollo said this failure to provide any relief for public education through the legislature forced administrators to weigh the value of enrollment in older schools with programs that add expense but bring benefits and new students to the district, such as dual language programs. The hope with this plan is to try and preserve as many jobs and educational programs as possible while avoiding a bond.
“It's hard to think about losing programs where kids are thriving if we can make some facility adjustments to help make up some of that difference in that deficit budget,” Rollo said.
According to Rollo, the district has known that a deficit budget was possible since a 2% raise for most employees and 6% raise for paraprofessionals passed in June, as well as cuts to the increases for employee health insurance premiums.
However, many parents and educators, as well as members of the committee, said they weren’t aware that consolidations were a possibility until the past few weeks.
Transparency and inequity were the reason Lubbock’s NAACP issued a statement of no-confidence in Dr. Rollo or the LISD school board’s president, noting a concern that this proposal follows a historic trend of closures impacting schools in predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.
After an “in-depth review of data, participant voting, and community feedback,” LISD removed some schools like Wheelock, Honey, and Roscoe Wilson Elementary Schools from the list of possible closures, but schools in older Lubbock neighborhoods like Bean and Hodges remained.
Over the years, declining enrollment leading to budget issues has reinforced other closures and consolidations in Lubbock’s older neighborhoods like Guadalupe and Jackson-Mahon.
Months after Rollo took the position as LISD’s superintendent in 2018, the consolidation of three elementary schools into the new Anita Carmona-Harrison Elementary School was part of a $130 million bond that passed with almost 75% approval from voters. One West Lubbock school was closed with that same bond election.
According to LISD, combining those schools has saved $3,600. But citizens say it’s about more than money; it’s about what these schools mean for their community.
Phyllis Gant with the NAACP spoke to the Board in Thursday’s meeting, calling for a change in leadership.
“We can start over. We can be transparent,” Gant said. “We can tell the real truth, the only truth, and then, if we gotta cut and consolidate, everybody is on the same playing field, and then we can make some [headway].”
Former City Council Representative Shelia Patterson-Harris served on the Future Focus Committee and spoke to the school board. She says many parents and community leaders would feel better about the tough choices in public schools if the process was more open.
“I understand making decisions that people are not excited about. But having times of engagement for them, including them, is a huge part of making a difference and making it go down smoother. Gives you a little bit of sugar,” Patterson-Harris said. “People want to know what's going on and be a part of making that decision come to fruition, whatever it is. They may not like it in the end, but if they had a voice as a part of it, then it makes it a little bit easier for them to deal with.”
While some expressed that they felt the nearly two hours of citizen comments seemed to fall on deaf ears, many said they would continue fighting – and dancing – to show what neighborhood public schools mean for their community.
The board will vote on the future of LISD schools on December 4.
