Lewisville ISD board members voted Monday night to close five of its elementary schools, a cost-saving measure officials say the district needs as student enrollment continues to decline and state funding for schools is uncertain.
It was a highly emotional meeting, with more than a dozen people taking to the lectern during the public comment section to beg elected leaders to delay a school consolidation plan. Some speakers joined board members in directing rage at the state Legislature, accusing politicians by name of starving public schools and hurting neighborhoods. Gov. Greg Abbott, state Sen. Tan Parker and state Reps. Ben Bumgarner and Mitch Little were all named as bad actors.
Parents wept, and then, before casting the votes to shutter B.B. Owen, Creekside, Garden Ridge, Highland Village and Polser elementary schools, many of the elected leaders wept and begged the visitors to “stand with us and take this passion to your state representatives,” as school board member Michelle Alkhatib said.
The elementary schools chosen for closure were from each of the district’s five high school feeder patterns.
Two schools in particular appeared to have the most community support. Parents and students from Garden Ridge Elementary gathered in matching green T-shirts, and Highland Village Elementary families sat together wearing their purple T-shirts. As the votes came down, one after another, people representing Garden Ridge and Highland Village gasped, cried and shouted at the board.
“You didn’t listen to us!” a man shouted.
In a November work session, Lewisville ISD reported that its longtime demography research partner, Zonda Education, forecast a declining student population that experts say will settle at about 45,000 over the next decade. The district is already seeing the effects of the trend. Enrollment peaked in the 2015-16 school year with 53,396 students, according to the district’s recently published School Retirement & Boundary Proposal.
“Right now, our school buildings have room for 62,508 students,” Superintendent Lori Rapp said in the proposal, “which means many of our classroom seats sit empty each day.”
Rapp noted that the Plano, Richardson, Coppell and Irving school districts have announced closures as enrollments decline.
The eroding enrollment rate, when paired with state lawmakers’ hesitance to increase the six-year-old per-student allotment, has sent fiscal shockwaves across Texas school districts. After deadlocking over vouchers in 2023, the 88th Legislature opted not to increase the per-student allotment.
But it did hand down millions in an underfunded mandate to put armed security on every Texas school campus. The security legislation, known as House Bill 3, came in a special session after a shooter murdered 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. Like its sister school districts in North Texas, compliance has cost Lewisville ISD millions.
One mother, Melissa Adams, who said her son attends a campus that wasn’t tapped for closure, told the board she didn’t blame them. She put the blame on Texas lawmakers and the governor.
“This crisis wasn’t born in this room,” she said. “It was created in Austin, and reinforced by decisions made right here at home. Mitch Little, Tan Parker and Greg Abbott have systematically starved our schools. They pushed voucher schemes disguised as choice, diverting public funds into private pockets while leaving districts like LISD to struggle for for survival.”
Ryan Ritter, a father of two Highland Village students, said “right-sizing” elementary campuses to eliminate unused space would just encourage state lawmakers to continue underfunding schools.
“It will send the wrong message to Austin, and one I fear they will use to justify their own delinquency,” Ritter said. “This is the same group of people that claim public school funding was voted down while conveniently leaving out that the bill required vouchers. Vote no tonight and delay this decision for a year. You will never have a more engaged group for advocacy than you will at this very moment.”
One speaker suggested closing the district administrative building instead of closing campuses, and urged administrators to travel between campuses like some teachers are required to. Another parent said she worried about how the disruption might affect students, especially those served by special education services.
Board members shared their agony over the austerity prescribed for Texas schools, and the consolidation they said is the best way to keep from bankrupting the district.
School board member Allison Lassahn said she understands the district’s challenges and needs, but cast the sole vote against closing Highland Village. She recalled her own experience with one of her children, who was a special education student in the district. Now as a board member, she represents District 1, which covers all of Highland Village and Copper Canyon and parts of Flower Mound and Lewisville.
“I have spent countless hours thinking and praying about what the right thing to do is. But because I represent specifically the Highland Village area, I believe I am elected to vote the will of the people of my district. And the will of the people at this time is not to close Highland Village. ... Please know that if any of these schools do not close by vote tonight, this may be only a temporary reprieve.”
As the meeting neared its end and the board accepted a financial audit that showed the district’s ever-thinning budget, board member Buddy Bonner shared his frustrations.
“In two hours and 30 minutes, we are looking at the two things that are driving this district into the gutter,” he said. “Right now, we’re looking at dropped enrollment and no money. Zero. We planned to give our a raise to our teachers this year after the audit came in. Once we had a better grasp on where our finances would land, and what that resulted in this year was a thousand-dollar one-time incremental stipend. ... There is no confidence that there will be any compensation or revenue to the district.”
LUCINDA BREEDING-GONZALES can be reached at 940-566-6877 and cbreeding@dentonrc.com.
