The Lewisville Board of Trustees on Monday voted to close five elementary schools on the list on the School Retirement and Boundary Adjustment Proposal.
The five schools closing are feeder schools into five Lewisville ISD high schools, which include:
- Garden Ridge Elementary School
- Polser Elementary STEM Academy
- Creekside Elementary School
- Highland Village Elementary School
- B.B. Owen Elementary School
It was a tough crowd for the students of Hebron High school. They tried to bring some holiday cheer to the Lewisville ISD board meeting Monday night, by singing Christmas carols But the audience sat stern faced knowing the gift they were getting was a closed school.
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"The school board doesn’t care about children, they care about money," said Alex Mitchell, a parent from one of the impacted schools.
Parents donning school colors filled every seat at Monday's meeting. They were trying to show the board their level of concern over a plan to close five schools in the district.
The board blamed low enrollment and more significantly, less money coming from state lawmakers to operate schools.
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"This was an incredibly difficult decision and it's one none of us ever wanted to face," said Jenny Proznik, President, Board of Trustees, in a prepared statement. "The outpouring of support for our schools from families during this process has been a testament to the deep care and passion our community has for each campus."
In an interview with NBC 5 in October, Superintendent Dr. Lori Rapp said they're having to adjust since enrollment continues to drop and it's impacting funding.
“We have peaked in enrollment in around 2015-16 at 53,000, and over the next 10 years, we're forecasted to stabilize at enrollment of about 45,000,” Rapp said. “As we have to face this trend, enrollment trend, one of the things that we thought we would do is, we would gather a community committee together to look at our enrollment trends, to study all of our schools. And so, we created this efficiency assessment with efficiency indicators.”
The district is facing about a $4.5 million budget deficit.
On Halloween, parents and kids used the night of trick-or-treating to pass out flyers and petitions to save their schools.
"A lot of us bought our homes specifically for this school and specifically for the culture and the walking and just for the friendships we've made,” said Olga Reed in October. She's a parent who helped organize the evening.
The board tried to explain the position they were in but when the board voted unanimously to close all five schools. Parents broke into tears. Shouted back at them and walked out of the meeting angrily vowing to vote them out.
"It’s just devastating, we bought our house because of the school. and I can say same thing about so many people I know," said Kelly Cummins, a parent at Garden Ridge Elementary.
"Let me say one thing returning 5 schools doesn’t get us to not be bankrupt," said Reed after the vote. Previous to the vote she and other parents said they realized the budget shortfalls came from state lawmakers not properly funding education for the past few years, but after the vote, those same parents couldn't help but blame the board. "We don't give a s*** about Austin. We care about them not having their jobs," said Reed, referring to the board.
Lewisville is the latest among several North Texas districts making this decision.
Richardson ISD voted to close and consolidate several elementary schools earlier this year. Over the summer, Plano ISD also voted to close four campuses at the end of the school year. Coppell ISD voted in October to close Pinkerton Elementary School, the district's oldest elementary school. Last year, Irving ISD voted to close a couple of schools.
Many districts have similar reasons for the closures: families are moving further into the suburbs to find affordable housing, there is a lack of state funding, enrollment is declining, and birth rates are lower.
