Opinion: El Paso ISD should rethink school closures, board member says
On a warm October evening, dozens of students walked back to school, many of them hand-in-hand with their parents, from the apartments perched above campus. Teachers lined up their cars in the parking lot for Lamar Elementary's annual Trunk or Treat. A young boy dressed in an Iron Man costume hugged his teacher after clutching a handful of candy, as his sister toddled behind. Inside, nearly every cafeteria table was filled with parents and children.
You could call Lamar the happiest school in the El Paso Independent School District, a distinction acquired through hard work from a strong community and wonderful teachers. In a recent survey that measured belonging and teacher relationships, Lamar scored a 94. The next highest score in the district was 80. It was recently recognized for the second time as a National Blue Ribbon School. On the state's last official accountability ratings from 2022, it scored an "A."
Those statistics aren't typical for urban schools with Lamar's demographic profile — almost all its students are economically disadvantaged and most are English-language learners. Lamar has beaten the odds. Still, the school is proposed for closure as part of EPISD's plan to shutter 20% of its elementary schools over the next two years, without pausing to wait for anticipated state funding coming through the next legislative session.
In another neighborhood, eight minutes by car, the former Bassett Middle School sits empty, anchoring a historic street dotted with 100-year-old stately homes. Two elementary schools nearby, Rusk and Travis, are slated to meet the same fate.
When a school closes it leaves a void, not only for the families directly affected by the closure, but for the entire community. Allowing these schools to sit vacant does far more than alter a neighborhood's landscape — it derails its future.
From an urban development perspective, school closures are dangerous catalysts for suburban sprawl, stripping neighborhoods of stability and long-term growth potential, especially when they are not accompanied by a community-driven repurposing plan.
This phenomenon is no accident. An American Sociological Association study notes that school closures often turn thriving neighborhoods into hollowed-out districts, deterring new families and reducing investment. What family would choose a neighborhood where the closest school has been boarded up, its purpose and promise forgotten?
The rationale put forth by district leaders is the same refrain heard from education reformists: consolidation will allow students to attend better-resourced schools with higher-achieving peers, generating cost savings through economies of scale. As a former teacher, I am unfortunately all too aware that reality rarely matches this promise. Here in El Paso, we've already seen how this story ends.
In 2016 and 2019, El Paso ISD closed or consolidated a combined 24 schools, affecting neighborhoods across the district. Yet personnel costs, maintenance expenses, and central office expenditures never really dipped, according to financial reports from the Texas Education Agency.
The anticipated savings? Elusive. For all the talk of improving student outcomes, El Paso ISD's overall academic performance has declined, projected at a "C." El Paso ISD's school closure plans have followed every predictable outcome, and the rush to shutter elementary campuses en masse seems perplexingly at odds with the public interest.
The majority of schools slated for closure have student populations that are over 90% economically disadvantaged. Nearly all of those schools have been recognized as Gold Ribbon Schools — high-performing, high-poverty Texas schools. Yet EPISD's plan would transfer many of these students to lower-performing schools, directly opposing TEA guidance.
According to Education Policy Analysis Archives, school closures in these neighborhoods often go beyond education, uprooting students, fraying social ties, and leaving communities feeling ignored and disempowered. When schools close, the study finds, it is usually low-income, minority communities that pay the highest price, facing reduced access to education and greater challenges in adapting to new schools.
School closures too often test the resilience of already underserved communities, treating them as economic experiments. The closure of Beall Elementary in 2019 in Barrio Chamizal led to a lawsuit against the district and a settlement with Familias Unidas Por La Educacion, a parent advocacy group fighting to protect their neighborhood schools for underserved families.
In practical terms, these moves mean that students accustomed to smaller class sizes, tailored tutoring programs, and specialized resources may now find themselves in more crowded classrooms where these supports are stretched thin.
For parents, many of whom don't own cars, "consolidations" add transportation challenges and force families to adapt to unfamiliar schools with fewer supports in place. El Paso ISD's proposed and costly transportation plan would scale general bus routes to 112, double that of other districts in our region.
Neighboring school districts have been more measured in their school closure approach. Ysleta ISD, for example, has mostly adopted an approach that closes two schools and opens a brand new one. When closures happen outside this model, the district relies on trust built with community members, parents, and teachers to minimize the disruption to the district's academic systems.
While declining birth rates and shifting demographics necessitate adjustments in school infrastructure, closures do not have to come at the expense of community stability and urban vitality. El Paso ISD should adopt a more deliberate, community-centered, and transparent consolidation approach that builds trust by slowing down its rapid school closure agenda (especially in light of anticipated state funding and the tens of millions of dollars the district is potentially sitting on in previously closed schools) and investing in a sustainable future for each neighborhood.
Through a stronger plan, alternative cost savings and efficiency measures can be achieved to make up for this budget shortfall, with absolutely no layoffs for teachers and staff. Period.
The district must commit to a thoughtful repurposing plan for its properties that honors the needs of its communities and invests in neighborhood schools as essential models of success for socioeconomically disadvantaged students, ensuring stability and support where it's needed most.
Most importantly, given that some $20 million of the $21.3 million of the proposed savings would come from personnel cuts, El Paso ISD should commit to keeping as many excellent teachers and staff where they are most needed — right where they are.
Closing Lamar Elementary — and the many schools like it — is not a solution. It's an abdication of responsibility and a betrayal of trust. Once a school is gone, once a community anchor is lost, it cannot be restored.
By prioritizing the development and support of high-poverty schools, the district can honor its pledge to create a truly equitable "destination" education system for all of El Paso ISD's students — one that they don't need a bus to access. Our primary responsibility is to improve educational outcomes for every child, and we must commit to proven strategies, and not experiments, that elevate our students and teachers and strengthen our communities.
El Paso ISD now has a choice. It can pursue a path of short-sighted closures offering uncertain savings and the possibility of unsustainable added costs. It can chase an approach that bucks research, scatters children across the district, and strains families already facing obstacles. Alternatively, El Paso ISD can look to Lamar's success and recognize that real economies of scale aren't achieved by cutting corners, but by investing in the communities that need it most — communities that consistently rise to the challenge.
Leah Hanany is the elected representative for District 1, which includes the attendance areas and feeder patterns for El Paso High School and Bowie High School, on the El Paso Independent School District's Board of Trustees.
