Closing Schools
Districts Need To Save Money
By Daniel Muniz

It is ironic that saving money is not an issue for poor school districts. For example, it is a waste of financial resources to operate a half empty campus with declining enrollment. But instead of closing that school and transferring its student body to another low enrollment campus, area residents fight court battles to keep it open.

Such a reaction is outrageous and the subsequent lawsuits that follow don’t make any sense!

Don’t the residents know that money is tight especially in an impoverished school district? So shouldn’t saving millions of dollars a year be a top concern for the local community because every penny of scarce resources ought to be dedicated to the children who live in an economically disadvantaged part of town?
 

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Unfortunately, the answer is all too often a resounding no.

One such court battle occurred in my hometown but change all the names of the places and the story is not very much different than what is currently happening elsewhere in the country.

The South San Antonio Independent School District is a fairly small district that is home to many low income neighborhoods in San Antonio Texas. And since that part of town has yet to experience any kind of revitalization, people entering the great middle class prefer the suburbs and other parts of the city where there are better schools, lower crime rates, and better neighborhoods with higher property values.

In essence, it is just a classic case of urban flight which means that the impoverished parts of town continue to decline.

One high school in that school district is West Campus which had a shrinking low enrollment of 600 students and a growing operating deficit. The campus was designed to hold about 1300 students so it is very expensive to operate a half empty school with a student body that is getting smaller every year.

In the suburbs of San Antonio, there are so many high schools of the wealthier districts that are bursting at the seams with enrollments of 3000 or more students. So it is just natural that more people want to raise families in that part of the city which is why it is experiencing such a phenomenal growth rate.

The South San school board determined that they could annually save $2.5 million if they closed West Campus and merged its students with the neighboring South San Antonio High School which was also experiencing a declining enrollment. Such a move would be an efficient use of resources that could greatly slash operating costs. It also means that more money would be available to enhance the quality of an education.

In the business world, companies do that sort of thing all the time. They have to in order to survive changing markets.

Regrettably, the school board knew that the local community wouldn’t see it that way.

However, Mother Nature intervened. After a torrential downpour, West Campus sustained heavy damaged. So not only would the campus be expensive to operate, restoring the half empty school would also cost a lot of money. Accordingly, the students were transferred to South San Antonio High School out of necessity.

Some time afterwards, the school board voted to close down West Campus. And to no one’s surprise, there was white hot anger and a very public firestorm soon ensued. Parents and graduates of the school fought a bitter battle to keep the school open and that is where things got ridiculous.

I can be sympathetic to the nostalgia and all the fond memories of the people who graduated from that school but the harsh reality is that money doesn’t grow on trees. But more to the point, a group of buildings is not indicative to the quality of an education. A quality education takes money and poor school districts are in very short supply of that. So shouldn’t saving money be a top priority to area residents?

Sadly, too many poor people have grown up in an entitlement culture where they feel that the bottom line isn’t the issue. So in other words, to hell with the costs, this is what we want even if it is a waste of money and we don’t care that our children are getting screwed because of it.

Do I sound like such a snob, especially since I graduated from a suburban high school?

Absolutely not! Although I did spend my high school days in the suburbs, I also spent my childhood all the way up to eighth grade living in the barrio. And from my personal experience, it is imperative that impoverished schools be tightwads when it comes to operating budgets because every dime needs to be devoted to education.

But school boards and superintendents across the country have to fight this entitlement mentality.

Tempers flare and accusations get flung around even for something like the closure of elementary schools. Our public school system, and government itself, has to operate like a business. That means that hard nosed decisions have to be made because economic realities facilitate the acceptance that times change. And that also means that there are bigger goals at stake and it takes a level of maturity to recognize that such priorities are more important than nostalgia and a warm fuzzy feeling.

It is absurd to think that area residents would rather have less money available for their kids but that is exactly what is happening all over the country when people refuse to accept economic realities.

It is time for people in these neighborhoods to grow up. They love to complain about their schools being under funded, yet they insist that the school districts go right ahead and continue to waste money. They cannot have it both ways.

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