It was not inevitable that the majority of the closed schools be Title I. It wasn't inevitable that black students in the district be disproportionately affected by closures 3 times that of white students, or that Hispanic students be are disproportionately affected 2 times that of white students. And yet, here we are. When asked about why certain schools were left off the closure list in a recent Chronicle article AISD staff “noted that Barton Hills and Zilker "do not have a partner school in the proximate area we could send kids to. We looked for pairs of schools that not only had a low percentage of utilization but had room to accommodate more students as well." https://tinyurl.com/y3ef4x4t Here’s what we found: Zilker is 2 miles from Dawson, while Barton Hills is 2.1 miles from Joslin. Both Dawson and Joslin are slated for closure. Those are shorter distances than 4 pairs of current closed-consolidated schools: Webb-Dobie (2.9 miles apart), Pease-Zavala (2.5 miles apart), Brooke-Linder (3.9 miles apart), and Perez-Palm (2.5 miles apart). The district could also close Barton Hills and send those kids to Zilker (which is less than a mile away) while rezoning some of the Zilker neighborhood to Joslin or Dawson. Below is a graph that shows the distances between all schools in the current proposal that will be consolidating students (in red). Then I show Zilker, Barton Hills, Bryker Woods and Lee (that are not on the closure list) and the distances from them to the nearest proposed closed campus (in green). I also included the distance between Zilker and Barton Hills, because the district could consolidate, and rezone the eastern part of Zilker's boundary to Dawson. There are viable options that include closing schools with high concentrations of whiteness, but the district didn’t include these in the plan for closure. That was a choice. I don’t know the intent behind those decisions - if they purposely avoided those schools or if the formula they followed just happened to exclude them. But in the end, what matters is the impact, not the intent. However they got here, this plan inequitably burdens students of color - and it didn’t have to. https://tinyurl.com/yxfu9mpx They could have made different closure choices that did not put a disproportionate burden on our black and brown students. Why didn’t they? Why isn’t Lee on that list? What isn’t Barton Hills? The district has not given compelling answers. It is not the natural order of things for black and brown communities to get the short end of the stick - that happens because of the choices we make, the systems that we chose to function in. When we make public policy decisions without taking into all of the histories that got us here (1928 master plan, real estate redlining, school segregation, disinvestment in low-income schools, etc. etc. etc.) we just build upon an inherently unjust system. We didn’t start the system, but we are responsible for how the system continues to operate. The plan the district is putting out now is the biggest change for our schools we will have in a generation. It is important that we do it right, and not make decisions that perpetuate inequities. To see the interactive version of this graph, visit the tableau: https://tinyurl.com/yxfu9mpx
Comments are closed.
|