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YES Prep Northbrook High School junior Gabriela Rodriguez couldn’t hold back tears Monday as Spring Branch Independent School District trustees voted to close five campuses next year.
Gabriela and her classmates have been tense for weeks, knowing this could be the final school year her campus is open. They’ve stressed over Spring Branch’s plan to slash $35 million from the district’s budget, in part by shuttering several schools on the district’s north side.
Now, with the school’s fate sealed, Gabriela pledges to make her last semester at YES Prep Northbrook her best one yet.
“We feel loved, we feel cared for here. … We’re a big family,” Gabriela said. “I’m just gonna have to start over. … But one thing I’m not gonna find again is this community.”
The 6-1 vote Monday to close five campuses — Treasure Forest Elementary School, the Panda Path School, KIPP Courage at Landrum Middle School, YES Prep Northbrook Middle School and YES Prep Northbrook High School — marked the bitter conclusion to weeks of pushback from community members.
Many families with children at the schools, each of which serve a student population that’s over 90 percent Hispanic and 80 percent economically disadvantaged, have argued the closures are disproportionately hurting underserved families in a district with many affluent neighborhoods.
“I’m angry, I’m hurt, I’m sad,” said Nicole Marino, who has a son in eighth grade attending KIPP Courage at Landrum and another that graduated from YES Prep Northbrook. “They chose the path of least resistance. We don’t have anybody who represents us on that board.”
District officials, meanwhile, have blamed the state Legislature for failing to designate more funding for public schools in recent years, putting them in the difficult position of cutting costs as inflation quickly rose.
“This financial crisis is not about our actions or actions that the district has or hasn’t taken, but rather the failure of the state leadership to fully fund education in our community,” said Trustee Minda Caesar, the only board member to vote against the closures.
Spring Branch Superintendent Jennifer Blaine has addressed the community’s inequity concerns by assuring families the cuts revealed so far are only the beginning, with every corner of the district impacted in coming months. To serve all students in the district, “sometimes that means we have to cut programs that impact smaller numbers of kids,” Blaine said. Roughly 2,100 students are impacted by the closures.
In recent weeks, Spring Branch trustees have approved a list of cuts to the district’s roughly $387 million operating budget. As a result, families will see pre-kindergarten tuition increases, higher teacher-to-student ratios and a pause on bond programs, in addition to school closures.
To date, the board has only approved measures that total roughly $11.1 million, less than a third of its $35 million goal. Trustees have yet to unveil details on future cuts.
The school closure vote ends a 12-year partnership between Spring Branch and two of the region’s largest charter school operators, KIPP Public Schools and YES Prep Public Schools. The programs, which operated inside existing Spring Branch campuses, were routinely cited by supporters as an example of how traditional public schools and charter networks could team up to support students from lower-income backgrounds.
Spring Branch parent Stella Sanchez, who attended Landrum Middle and Northbrook High as a child, said campus leaders at YES Prep Northbrook helped her freshman son map out his next four years and advise him on college possibilities. Now, she’s not sure what comes next.
“All those students, kids from Treasure Forest, Northbrook, Landrum, they’re all Hispanics, just like me,” Sanchez said. “It’s not fair. Not fair at all.”
Spring Branch officials said they will expand enrollment at two other district charter campuses, Westchester Academy for International Studies and Cornerstone Academy, though they won’t be able to accommodate every student.
For María Sofía Prisciliano and her oldest daughter, Gissela Flores, the closure of the Panda Path School marks the end of a vital fixture of their family and neighborhood. Each of Prisciliano’s five children went to the school, and Flores began teaching several years ago in the same classroom she attended as a child.
Prisciliano didn’t drive a car while Flores was growing up, but the campus’ location allowed her to get to school by foot — which many families do today. Now, students will be rerouted to Lion Lane School, which is three miles away from Panda Path. Spring Branch does not provide transportation for preschoolers.
“I have parents that don’t even drive. They come walking from home,” Flores said at a recent community meeting. “Parents who are immigrants, it’s hard for them to find resources, (to) find someone to help them out.”
Treasure Forest Elementary students will be routed to Housman and Ridgecrest elementary schools, each located roughly one mile away.
Spring Branch Trustee Shannon Mahan said the decision to close the schools is the hardest decision she’s faced since joining the board in May.
“They are doing wonderful things at that school and for their community,” Mahan said of Treasure Forest. “And I don’t want that to be forgotten or ignored. And it’s definitely not a decision that’s because of a punishment, or because you’re doing anything wrong.”
As Marino, the parent of the KIPP Courage at Landrum Middle eighth-grader, decides where her child will be educated next year, she’s not sure she can trust Spring Branch with her child anymore.
“They dragged this out, thinking that if they just hold off for longer, we won’t come out (in protest),” Marino said. “They don’t expect the north side parents to come out and say anything.”
Spring Branch officials have yet to vote on one other potentially major cut: the removal of a gifted and talented program from Bendwood Elementary, a southside campus that houses roughly 900 third- through fifth- graders one day each week for specialized programming.
A resolution to pull the program from Bendwood was not on the agenda Monday, but trustees proposed several weeks ago to close the campus and deliver this instruction to students at their home campus. Families benefiting from Bendwood have argued this will not replace the immersive learning students receive.
Correction, Dec. 12: A photo caption in an earlier version of this story contained an incorrect spelling of Spring Branch Independent School District Trustee Minda Caesar’s name.
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