15 years and counting but no Mueller school
Now is the time to put ‘something good there,’ board trustees say.
When the city approved the Mueller development at the old Austin municipal airport site 15 years ago, 10 acres were set aside for a new school that still has not been built, or even figured out.
Now Mueller is more than 40 percent built out with 5,000 residents, many of whom are asking for some sort of elementary school. So far they’re haven’t received much of an answer.
There is no money set aside for it. There is no plan to work it into an already crowded field of Northeast Austin elementary schools — eight surrounding Mueller, six of which are underenrolled. And despite the buildup at Mueller, over the next four years demographers project those schools will have more than 800 empty seats in them.
Beyond all that are political difficulties that have kept previous school boards and administrators from pursuing it: redrawing boundaries; possibly closing and consolidating existing schools that are decades old and look their age; and issues of parity in an area of town that is gentrifying.
But the board leadership has turned over, with no trustee elected before 2012, and
this group says it’s willing to dive in.
“There is a potential partnership with the Mueller development and others to create something good there, and we don’t want to walk away without exploring possibilities,” school board President Gina Hinojosa said. “We are struggling with how to keep families in Central East Austin, but potentially this is part of the answer.”
Trustee Ted Gordon said the proposal for the school must be part of a comprehensive plan for East and Northeast Austin and must also address the loss of students in the area and the perception that the area’s middle schools are lacking and facilities are outdated. Gordon said he wants to come up with a plan within the next year that allows residents to give input for what they want to see done.
Gordon, who represents the area surrounding Mueller, said the district will never increase enrollment without investing in old and outdated campuses. And discussions about consolidating, cutting or eliminating schools or services in East and Northeast Austin bring back bitter feelings from the district’s segregated past as well as longstanding inequities, including when schools that educated mostly black and Hispanic students were shuttered during desegregation.
“To me, the possibility of Mueller is the possibility of an investment in the community,” Gordon said. “An investment not in the Mueller community but in the community of North and Northeast Austin. An investment that is going to need us to assess the needs of that entire area.”
Parent Veronica Castro de Barrera, who lived in the Cherrywood neighborhood before moving to Mueller seven years ago, said as city and district leaders are working toward keeping families in Austin, rather than moving to the suburbs, investments must be made not only in the older campuses, but also in new ones.
“If we’re going to live in the core, the school is one of the most important investments in the community,” she said. “Families will be attracted to not only remain in the core but also to move back to the core.”
Financing such projects may be challenging. More than two years ago, taxpayers voted down a bond package that included money for new elementary schools, and similar bond proposals may be more difficult if enrollment continues to decline.
Some trustees also worry that if they don’t move forward with a new campus, Catellus, the developer of Mueller, eventually will have no choice but to put in a charter school or some other competing educational facility.
Dee Desjardin, vice president of marketing and communication for Mueller, said Catellus doesn’t have a specific timeline to get a school in the ground, but feedback from the community, including Mueller residents, has been that they want the site developed with a campus, specifically an Austin district school, “sooner than later.”
“We’d love for it to come to fruition for an innovative AISD school,” Desjardin said.
A working group of Northeast Austin community members, district principals and staff, city staff and a Catellus representative has been discussing possibilities, such as a school that would serve pre-kindergarten through second grade, or pre-K through eighth grade.
The group also has discussed the district developing an enrollment process that would result in a student body that is diverse ethnically and economically, and has suggested the district consider a dual lottery system for students from largely low-income schools and another for those who are not.
Some have raised the concern that a new campus located so close to other neighboring elementary schools may drain enrollment from schools that are underenrolled or projected to be underenrolled, prompting closures.
Trustee Jayme Mathias said there’s been a history in the district that if a campus is closed or under threat of closure, there’s a strong, and often negative, reaction from the community. But when parents and community members have a say, he said, citing the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders and the two single-sex middle schools that took the place of the struggling Pearce and Garcia middle schools last year, the community has something to get excited about and can support the proposed change.
“We have enough seats. They’re simply not in the right places. Something has to be done,” he said. “These are crucial conversations that are going to be difficult, but we need to be having them as a community and as a district.”
‘Something has to be done.’ Jayme Mathias School board trustee