AISD considers school closure options

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Austin Independent School District’s board of trustees discussed potential plans to close Pearce Middle School and Reagan High School at a workshop session last night.

During last night’s meeting, President Mark Williams stressed, more than once, that AISD has no wish to close either campus. Both are slated for possible closure under the current state accountability system. These two schools could turn themselves around, which would make a state-required contingency plan outlining the steps for campus closure moot, Williams told the audience at the meeting.

AISD must prepare plans for both schools, however, because of requirements under current state law. It would be Pearce Middle School that could close first, at the end of the current school year. Pearce continues to have significant achievement gaps for Hispanic and economic disadvantaged students on reading, writing and science tests, gaps that must be closed for the school to stay open.

Last year, Johnston High School in Austin and Sam Houston High School in Houston were closed and reconstituted – re-opened as new high school models this year – by Education Commissioner Robert Scott. This year, six schools could enter a fifth year of academically unacceptable status and be forced to close: Polytechnic High School in Fort Worth; Spruce and Samuell high schools in Dallas; Powell Point Elementary in Kendleton; and Gabriel Tafolla Charter School in Uvalde.

Last night, Austin school administrators walked trustees through the logistical plan for Pearce’s potential closure, talking about the timeline for dealing with students, teachers, student records and even furniture on the campuses. Austin also is expected to file a potential closure plan for Reagan High School, which would be entering a fourth year as an academically unacceptable campus. The campus would not potentially close, however, until the 2010-11 school year.
Reagan, which does have broader community support than Johnston did, still has failed to meet standards on multiple measures for reading, math and science. The high school also had problems meeting the state standards for its graduation rate.

Closure plans are due to the Texas Education Agency by June 15. Those plans also must include what kind of new model Pearce might be, and where Pearce students will be sent elsewhere in the district to meet the state requirement of no more than 50 percent of the original students on the Pearce campus next year.

TEA intends to notify the campuses in danger of closing of their status in June, as soon as the scores are run through the accountability system, said Spokeswoman Debbie Ratcliffe. The agency wants to give schools that have failed as much notice as possible so that parents can be notified and students can be reassigned. That timeline could be delayed, however, due to delays in testing because of swine flu-related school closures. A number of districts around the state won’t be back in class until May 11, and some until possibly May 15.

Last night’s workshop also included a discussion of a new vision for both schools. Trustees had a tentative discussion last night about Pearce’s plans. Robert Schneider, in particular, was concerned with the quality of the committee that made decisions about Johnston. A bare majority participated, and instead of bringing three potential plans for Johnston, it only brought one.

“If it’s the same kind of structure and deliberative process, I’m going to be very curious about the results of this particular effort,” Schneider said.

Trustee Cheryl Bradley was insistent no student from Pearce should be transferred to another academically unacceptable school in AISD. If a child was going to be transferred from failing school to failing school, the board might as well fight to keep Pearce open, Bradley said.

“It’s not fair to the sending school and its not fair to the receiving school,” Bradley said of a transfer plan between failing schools. “If we’re going to be fair about educating all children, then we should focus on how we take our campuses from unacceptable to acceptable and then to recognized and exemplary.”

As for the Reagan High School plans, the early recommendation to move students off the campus would be another open-enrollment campus, similar to Johnston. Johnston students were given the choice to attend any school in the Austin district under the open transfer policy. Most who enrolled in Eastside Memorial, however, came from the Johnston High School boundaries.

Next year, Eastside will have two new high school models on its campus: a global tech with a focus on Asia and a green tech with a focus on green technology.

All this planning may be delayed for another year, however, under the proposed accountability bills being negotiated in the Legislature. And the new bill gives the Commissioner of Education broader options in terms of interventions and sanctions.