For the past two years, Brenda Bonce has made the short walk down Deep Forest Road to pick up her two children from Aldine ISD’s Smith Elementary School — a convenient stroll that could soon change.

Aldine administrators, staring down a gaping budget deficit, proposed last week to shutter Smith Elementary and six other schools, scattering students to 19 other campuses. Bonce, however, hasn’t heard anything from campus or district leaders about the proposal, including whether her first and third graders would be allowed to take the school bus to their new school.

“It makes me very worried,” Bonce said in Spanish. “It makes everything more difficult. I’ll have to drive. If I work, it will be harder to take off and pick them up.” 

A week after Aldine leaders presented a proposal to close seven schools at a sparsely attended school board meeting, many parents like Bonce remained in the dark about a key decision that could reshape their neighborhoods, daily routines, and relationships with school staff. The confusion follows several days of minimal communication from Aldine leaders, who have not yet posted information online, shared plans with families or scheduled community meetings about the proposal. 

In response to questions from the Houston Landing about communication with families, district leaders confirmed Tuesday that they plan to publish information about the closure plan later this week and start holding community meetings next week. 

Aldine board members are scheduled to vote Feb. 25 on whether to close campuses, which would save an estimated $32.5 million per year, district administrators said. The district ran a $65 million deficit in 2023-24 and passed a budget for this fiscal year with a nearly $100 million deficit.

“Stakeholder engagement is an important and valuable part of the process as we aim to keep them informed of district progress,” district administrators said in an emailed statement. “Community meetings will be scheduled soon for parents, community and staff to attend and learn more information.”

When district administrators unveiled their closure recommendation Jan. 7, a proposed timeline did not include plans for community meetings. Aldine Board President Kimberley Booker also criticized the Landing last week for publishing the district’s proposal before board members could vote on closing schools, telling a reporter in an interview that “I wish you had waited until we made decisions.”

Booker and Aldine Trustee Paul Shanklin told the Landing last week that the district did not want to unnecessarily frighten parents or campus leaders by notifying them about the proposal. Booker added that parents don’t need to be involved in the process because “they don’t know how much money we need to have to run a school district.”

“People see buzzwords like ‘closures’ and they get alarmed, they start worrying about their kid, pulling their kid out of school,” Booker said. Later in the interview, Booker said “we definitely want to bring our teachers and parents into every decision we make.”

If trustees approve the last round of closures, about 3,400 elementary and middle school students attending the seven campuses would be spread across 19 schools, most of which are located a few miles away from their current building. The school board voted last year to close three elementary schools, leaving the district with about 75 campuses.

By communicating and meeting with families ahead of a closure vote, Aldine would follow the blueprint of several large Texas schools that have closed campuses in recent years, including Fort Worth and San Antonio ISDs. 

Those districts spent months informing parents and gathering community feedback ahead of possible campus closures, given they are one of the most emotionally fraught decisions a district can make. Fort Worth leaders shelved plans to close campuses altogether after vehement public pushback.

‘I wasn’t prepared’

If approved, the campus closures would sever community ties, uproot students from campuses and potentially lengthen commutes for families. Many working parents in Aldine rely on public transportation or walk their children to school, making location all the more important. 

In interviews over the past week with 18 parents whose children attend one of the campuses under threat, all but one said they were unaware of the proposal to shutter their school.

Carina Zelaya, whose second-grade daughter has attended Smith Elementary School for the past two years, said she hadn’t received any information from district or campus leaders about the possible closure of the northeast Harris County school. Zelaya’s daughter would go to one of three campuses, each located about 1 ½ to 3 miles from her current school.

“Honestly, it does make me worried,” Zelaya said. “I didn’t know and I wasn’t prepared. Now I have to worry about my daughter, my commute, since this is obviously much closer (than any other campus).” 

Nasir Qureshi, whose 8-year-old son attends Smith Elementary, said he also hadn’t heard anything from district staff but may have seen something about the proposal in the news. Qureshi said campus staff have been fairly communicative in the past.

“They’re transparent to an extent, but no one is fully transparent,” Qureshi said.

Oleson Elementary School, an east Aldine campus on the chopping block, has meant a lot to Esther Martinez’s family. Her eldest son, currently a student at Aldine’s MacArthur High School, attended the campus several years ago. She lives in the neighborhood behind Oleson Elementary, picks up her son from school every day and volunteers at the campus.

Martinez said she found out about the proposal to move Oleson Elementary students to Johnson Elementary School, located about 2.5 miles away, when she heard school employees discussing it Monday.

“It’s sad,” Martinez said in Spanish. “My son just started and I told him, ‘Aww, you’re going to your brother’s school.’ And now they’re saying they want to close it. Hopefully they don’t.” 

The possible closure of two primary schools, de Santiago Early Learning Center and Stovall Early Learning Center, could particularly affect parents who don’t want to put their young children on the bus. Aldine expanded its prekindergarten programs this year from three campuses to 12, but the closures would reduce that number of 10. A small percentage of students would have to attend a campus five-plus miles away.

At Stovall Early Learning Center, Marete Reyes said she was shocked to hear that the campus where her 5-year-old granddaughter attends kindergarten may close. Students attending the school would be spread across three other early learning centers.

“It seems very bad to me,” Reyes said in Spanish. “There’s a lot of students here. … Where will they go?”

A different approach?

When district leaders voted in late February 2024 to close three campuses, they gave residents little advance notice of the decision. 

Aldine administrators didn’t publish any information about the potential closures in monthly newsletters sent in January and mid-February. They didn’t issue any press releases about the impending decision. And a web page about the closures with an FAQ section for parents went up after the vote.

Last week, district leaders appeared ready to follow the same playbook for the latest round of potential closures.

A timeline presented at the Jan. 7 board meeting showed plans for communicating with parents at potentially closed schools would start in March 2025, after the vote. A newsletter sent to families Thursday contained no mention of potential closures. 

In an interview Thursday, Shanklin said he was “very satisfied” with the community engagement work done to date, though when asked to elaborate what work had been done, he replied “I can’t.” At a board meeting four days later, Shanklin said at least six community members had approached him about the proposed closures.

“The word is out there,” Shanklin said. “I’m glad the word is out there. I’m hearing from the community.”

One board member, Viola García, has criticized district leaders for a lack of transparency, saying during the Jan. 7 board meeting that families were feeling “a sense of abandonment.”

In the past few days, district leaders appeared to heed García’s words — albeit with few details attached. At a school board meeting Monday, Aldine Chief Transformation Officer Adrian Bustillos, said district leaders plan to host another board workshop to receive feedback from the board of trustees before the official vote.

Additionally, Goffney said there is a draft list of planned meetings for the following weeks and a website detailing the proposal is in the works. 

“There are different ways in which we’re going to be working with all of our stakeholders, and so it’s a full schedule prior to our board meeting,” Goffney said.

The board’s ultimate decision will impact parents like Milton Arbalo, who paused to ponder the ramifications Monday while idling in the pickup line outside Stovall Early Learning Center.

“I don’t know what to think since I’m just now hearing about this,” Arbalo, the parent of a prekindergarten student, said in Spanish. “I have to talk to my wife, my kid. This affects our whole family, our schedules. This is the closest school. There are many, many things to think about.”

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