Lynn Walsh

Most of the people who sit on an advisory committee for the Houston school system’s budget are school system employees, documents show, but representation on that committee seems pretty balanced between schools and trustee districts.

Each of the nine school board trustees have a teacher or principal representative from a school in their district on the 32-person advisory committee — except for school trustees president Paula Harris. However, Harris said one of the advisory committee members, the Rev. Leslie Smith, is someone she knows personally and serves as her appointment to the Superintendent’s Public Engagement Committee.

Members of the advisory committee weren’t chosen with regard to ensuring that every trustee district had a representative, HISD spokesman Jason Spencer said.

Trustees Manuel Rodriguez, Harvin Moore and Anna Eastman each have two schools represented, and Juliet Stipeche has three.

Westside, Chavez and Lamar high schools are represented by principals or teachers, as are Marshall, McReynolds, Stevenson, Project Chrysalis and T.H. Rogers middle schools. One early childhood center, Martin Luther King, is represented, as are four elementary schools: Janowski, West University, Cage and Felix Cook.

In December, HISD employees provided the district with suggestions on how it could save money. Some ideas included cutting district travel, eliminating breakfast in the classroom, reducing magnet funding and turning off lights at night. (To submit a suggestion, send an e-mail to CFOcomments@houstonisd.org.)

To see a map of the trustees throughout the district click here.

The suggestions and the budget advisory committee’s work are intended to help the nation’s seventh-largest school system prepare for state funding cuts that could range from $203 million to $348 million next year, according to HISD. State law requires the district to approve a budget by June 30.

HISD also recently considering revamping its $17 million-a-year magnet program. Superintendent Terry Grier put those proposed changes on hold earlier this month.

HISD is also looking at the $10 million it will spend this year to help dozens of low-enrollment schools offer the same programs and services as larger ones. Part of the recommendations include possible closures or consolidations at four elementaries: Love, McDade, Grims and Rhoads.

More than half of the campuses with representation on the advisory committee have magnet programs. McReynolds and Project Chrysalis middle schools, Janowski and Cage elementaries and Martin Luther King early childhood center do not.

Of the eight campuses that do have magnets, five were recommended for removal by an outside consultant: Westside, Chavez and Lamar high schools, T.H. Rogers Middle and Cook and West University elementary schools. The consultant recommended keeping the magnet programs at both Marshall and Stevenson middle schools.

As Houston school board members consider whether to close four local elementary schools, district administrators on Thursday presented them with another list of schools with low enrollment to consider for possible closure or consolidation.

The list consists of 37 schools in the Houston Independent School District, 13 elementary schools, 19 middle schools and five high schools. This is almost half the number of schools HISD included on a similar list in December.

The list consists of the following schools:

Elementary schools and enrollment:
McDade – 272
Rhoads – 320
Memorial – 335
Pagie – 348
NQ Henderson – 349
Port Houston – 352
Gordon – 355
Pleasantville – 356
Stevenson – 357
Houston Gardens – 362
Grimes – 380
Burrus – 390
Love – 425
Middle schools and enrollment:
Ryan – 329
EO Smith – 406
MC Williams – 441
Key – 486
Black – 491
Attucks – 506
Fleming – 528
Thomas – 547
Cullen – 580
Fondren – 608
McReynolds – 645
Woodson – 687
Hogg – 733
Holland – 750
Edison – 791
Deady – 872
Revere – 883
Jackson – 912
Long – 934
High schools and enrollment:
Jones – 590
Kashmere – 603
Scarborough – 758
Washington – 908
Worthing – 939

View the 37 schools HISD could consolidate or close in a larger mapThe discussion has ranged from whether to close these schools, consolidate them, or do away with extra funding they receive, to letting them be. HISD trustees are set to vote in April on whether to close four elementary schools, Love, McDade, Grimes and Rhoads.

In anticipation of losing up to $348 million in state funding next year, HISD has brought the discussion surrounding the future of small schools to the forefront. This year HISD will spend more than $10 million providing additional funding to schools with low enrollment through the small school subsidy. That money is provided to schools to cover the costs associated with receiving less per-student funding from the district because of low enrollment.

HISD Superintendent Terry Grier said 10 to 15 of these schools could easily be closed or consolidated. He said the administration created the list for trustees instead of just recommending which schools should be considered for closure. “This can get very political,” he said.
Trustees remained fairly quiet as the names of the schools were presented to them. Trustees Anna Eastman and Harvin Moore asked the administration to provide more information about the schools on the list. Eastman asked to see each school’s building capacity, state accountability ratings and enrollment trends in recent years.

All elementary schools with fewer than 400 students and all middle and high schools with fewer than 1,000 students made the list, HISD sad. Early childhood centers, alternative schools, early college schools and charter schools were left off the list.

HISD board president Paula Harris asked for the list to be updated to be consistent with the funding cutoffs for the small school subsidies. According to district policy, elementary schools with 500 students or less, middle schools with 750 or less and high schools with 1,000 or less qualify.

As Texas Watchdog previously reported, the conversation surrounding small schools in HISD involves more than just funding concerns. HISD trustee Larry Marshall said in December he believes HISD’s small schools were built to keep the school district segregated.

“They were not designed to be small. They were built to segregate,” Marshall said Thursday.

The Houston school system will spend more than $10 million this year providing extra support and resources for schools with low enrollment — funding that has come under recent scrutiny by administrators and trustees, leading to discussions of possible closures and consolidations.

No final decisions have been made about the future of these schools, and HISD trustees will have the final say, according to HISD Superintendent Terry Grier.

It “very well could mean closing schools, but that’s a board decision,” Grier said in December. “We want to talk to the board about options and see what they have to say.”

Nearly 90 schools in the in the Houston Independent School District receive a “small school subsidy,” a chunk of money HISD gives to schools with few students so those campuses can provide the same resources as larger schools.

In December, HISD released a list of 66 “small schools” that it considers under-enrolled. The list of 66 included nine high schools that serve less than 1,250 students (including Houston’s two oldest high schools for African-Americans, Yates and Wheatley), 15 middle schools with less than 750 students, 15 elementaries with less than 500 students and seven multilevel schools (including K-7 and K-8 facilities) serving less than 750 students.

View Houston’s ‘small schools’ in a larger map

The schools on the list of 66 serve less students than what HISD and some district trustees say is needed to run a school economically.

A majority of the 66 schools also receive the small school subsidy, which is one of four pots of individual school funding the district is looking at closely as HISD braces itself for cuts of up to $348 million from the state.

Texas Watchdog has created an interactive map that shows which schools are on the list of 66 and which schools receive the “small school subsidy” but are not on the list of 66.

The schools with red icons on the map are on HISD’s list of 66. The schools with yellow icons are expected to receive a small school subsidy from the district this year, according to HISD documents, but are not included in the list of 66.

The map also includes enrollment figures, state performance ratings, demographic breakdowns and “small school subsidy” funding amounts.

As Texas Watchdog previously reported, the discussion of whether to keep the small schools open isn’t just about money. It’s also about Houston’s complex racial politics and changing demographics.

Close to half of the schools receiving additional funding because of low enrollment numbers have student bodies in which three kids out of four are black, or three kids out of four are Hispanic, HISD records show. A dozen of the schools are at least 90% black or at least 90% Hispanic. At one school, Sherman Elementary in the city’s Fifth Ward, 99% of the student body is Hispanic.

A school must fall below certain enrollment numbers to qualify for the “small school subsidy.” For an elementary school in HISD it is 500 or fewer, for a middle school it is 750 and for a high school it is 1,000 or fewer.

The map includes “small school subsidy” amounts for schools in October and December based on enrollment figures at those times. The final school enrollment numbers used to determine each campus’ funding were not complete for the 2010-11 school year until mid-November, HISD Chief Financial Officer Melinda Garrett said.

Due to enrollment changes, some campuses, like Kelso Elementary near Sunnyside in Houston, received small school funding in October but not in December, and others, like Briscoe Elementary in the Lawndale/Wayside area of Houston, which are now receiving small school funding but were not in October.