Disruptive rightsizing plan based on flawed data

If the San Antonio Independent School District board of trustees enacts its rightsizing proposal on Nov. 13, more than 5,000 San Antonio children will lose their schools, ushering in another year of disrupted learning for these students, as well as another nearly 10,000 students whose schools would receive them.

The district has failed to justify the loss it is about to impose on our children and communities.

District officials give conflicting reasons to support their plan. They say the cost of running our schools is unsustainable, but also that closing schools will not save money, arguing instead that it will merely spread costs more fairly. The plan for school closures won’t make education more equitable.

The district’s arguments fly in the face of logic, data and research on school closures. Closing schools is exceedingly disruptive, for the displaced children and their new classmates.

Researchers studying school closures nationwide have documented learning losses for kids, job losses for teachers, reduced school involvement for families and a loss of community spaces for neighborhoods. The disruptions disproportionately harm vulnerable populations. Closures can produce long delays in special education evaluations, leaving children without support, for example.

The benefits that districts promise when they close schools are based on predictions that are difficult to evaluate, but we can learn from other districts. Studies from other cities show the promised financial benefits of school closures turn out to be modest or nonexistent.

SAISD officials say the district needs to close schools because enrollments are declining. Schools targeted for closure have lower enrollment, lower facility use, a higherthan-average cost per student or some combination of those characteristics.

But the COVID-19 pandemic created a massive aberration in patterns of attendance over the past three years. The district’s enrollment data from before the pandemic shows many of the schools now slated to close were recently excelling according to the district’s criteria.

In relying entirely on postpandemic data, the district presupposes none of our schools will return to prepandemic enrollments — even as some schools are already recovering. Why, then, should the district shutter schools based on enrollment data from 2020-23? Why close schools forever over a threeyear enrollment dip? SAISD claims that when schools close, it will ensure educational continuity by re-creating their unique programs, such as dual-language education, project-based learning and Montessori.

That’s hard to believe. I’ve seen how much work goes into establishing and sustaining valuable educational programs at our current schools. It would be a miracle to recreate a thriving program from scratch at a school already experiencing the disruption of a massive influx of students.

I’m deeply concerned about equity in education. It’s telling that local organizations with a record of commitment to educational equity — including Our Schools San Antonio and the San Antonio Alliance — oppose SAISD’S proposal. When the district makes a proposal to support equitable, inclusive education, we will support it. This rightsizing proposal is not it. Ronni Gura Sadovsky is a philosophy professor at Trinity University and the parent of a first-grader who is thriving in Lamar Elementary’s dual-language program.