Sixth grader Phong Pham has been a student at the KIPP charter schools in southwest Houston since he was 3 years old, balancing his studies with art class, tutoring, and the Vietnamese martial art Vovinam. When Phong’s mother suggested he leave KIPP for another middle school, Phong refused — he wanted to stay with his friends.

Phong’s father, Thinh Pham, had other reasons. 

After bouncing between private school and Alief ISD schools with Phong’s older sister, Pham settled on KIPP because he believed it would get them better college scholarship opportunities. KIPP, he said, had a reputation for giving kids stacks of homework “this high,” holding his hand four feet from the ground.

“After you graduate college, your life begins,” Pham said. “A kid without a scholarship, who has to take out loans, they start in the negative for the long-term.” 

Pham is one of thousands of Alief residents choosing charter schools over Alief public schools every year, contributing to a major decline that’s putting the district on the brink of major change.

Over the past decade, Alief has lost about 8,000 students, or 18 percent of its enrollment, putting a dent in the district’s fast-shrinking budget. If the proud southwest Houston school district of about 38,500 students doesn’t stem the bleeding, it might be forced to make big cuts — ranging from bus route reductions, to staff layoffs, to campus closures in the most dire scenario.

“The low-hanging fruit is gone,” Alief’s assistant superintendent of business services, Charles Woods, told district school board members in early December. “We’ve made those cuts. Every cut we make going forward is going to hurt even more, going to be even more painful. …These are the cuts we don’t ever want to make.”

Like many large, urban school districts in Texas, the rise of charter schools and shift in demographic trends have sapped Alief’s enrollment in recent years.

Roughly 60 percent of Alief’s student losses over the past decade came from students leaving for charter schools like KIPP Texas Public Schools and Harmony Public Schools, which offer a safer school environment and better academic opportunities, some parents and community members say.

The other 40 percent largely stems from factors outside of the district’s control, including declining birth rates and rising costs of housing for families.  

Whatever the factors, Alief officials project the district could lose as many as 7,000 more students over the next 10 years if the trends continue. Alarmed by the doomsday projections, Alief school board members are mulling ways to make the district more appealing to parents, such as launching advertising campaigns, improving customer service, and better countering charter school messaging.

Board member Rick Moreno said he refused to let Woods’ predictions be foregone conclusions. 

“I want to fight these local charter schools for our students and tell them that we’re here, that this is what we have to offer in Alief,” Moreno said. “It’s the battle of Coca-Cola and Pepsi. We have to fight it.” 

Why parents are leaving

Families, community members and district leaders across Alief have different ideas for why students are leaving the 107-year-old district.

For some parents of the 10,500 students who live in Alief but attend charter schools, the draws include academics and location. 

Most Alief-area charter schools boast better accountability ratings, standardized test scores and performance on college exams. (Charter critics often argue that the schools attract higher-performing students by marketing themselves as college preparatory campuses, leaving behind some students with disabilities and other needs.)

In 2022, the most recent year with available data due to ongoing litigation, almost all of the largest charter schools in the Alief area scored A or solid B scores on Texas’ A-through-F academic accountability ratings. Alief schools averaged a low B rating, with several campuses scoring at C or D levels.

Genesis Ruiz, an Alief Hastings High School alumna, said she planned to send her then-3-year-old son to an Alief public school when deciding where to enroll several years ago. But when a friend told her that KIPP students were more likely to receive scholarship opportunities, she opted to send her child to a KIPP school on Alief’s southeast side.

“She was just really passionate about it and she convinced me,” Ruiz said. Her son is now 10 years old and she’s had no complaints, she said.

On a recent afternoon at KIPP’s southeast Alief campus, several parents also said the main draw of the charter school was having the elementary and secondary schools in one spot, making dropoff and pickup easier for families with multiple children.

Community members and educators who have stuck with Alief pointed to other reasons for families leaving the district.

Ronald Franklin, the parent of an Alief graduate and member of the district’s education improvement committee, pointed to two issues at the high school level.

The district puts middle schoolers into a random lottery that determines which of the district’s three main high schools they will attend. (Students also can attend two smaller magnet high schools, but they must apply.)

The decades-old policy aimed to maintain diverse student bodies across the district, Alief administrators said, though Franklin argued it separates students from their friends, neighbors and other community ties.

Franklin also argued some families have fled to neighboring districts with better high school sports, which matters to parents who see athletic scholarships as the best ticket to an affordable college. 

“After a while, parents are gonna go where is best for their kids,” said Franklin, who unsuccessfully ran for Alief’s school board in 2021.

Ronald Kotts, the president of the Texas State Teachers Association region that includes Alief, said ample extracurricular activities can set public schools apart from charters — but they’re often some of the first items on the chopping block when money gets tight.

“I didn’t get up in the morning because I wanted to sit in Algebra class,” said Kotts, who has taught computer technology, engineering and other subjects for 16 years in Alief.. “It was to go to those other activities. Those are the reasons students want to be here and keep coming back day after day.” 

More cuts ‘on the horizon’?

Over the past several years, Alief has tried to entice families to stay in the district with new facilities and programs that charters don’t offer.

On a recent mid-October morning, light poured into all sides of Alief’s Martinez Elementary Learning Center, one of two new facilities built with young toddlers in mind. Each classroom looked more like an interactive museum exhibit than a traditional desk-and-blackboard setup. In one room dubbed the “International District,” students can play grocer in their own La Michoacana market or sit atop a golden dragon in Alief’s Asiatown.

District officials said the center is meant to attract students and give them a head start integrating into the public education system earlier. Still, the state-of-the-art campus sits half-empty as district leaders struggle to get the word out to parents.

“I want all of these classrooms to be full,” said María Del Carmen Martínez, Alief’s early childhood coordinator. “If more families were to see what we’re offering and see this is the rate of success coming out, we would get more parents.”

Five miles up the road, Alief’s Marshall Center for Advanced Careers offers technical training and postsecondary certification to high school students in another bright, airy, modern facility. Alief began holding tours of the center this year for students as young as 9 and offer new audio tour guides like those used in museums to showcase the center.

In instructor Paul Frazee’s construction technology class last week, students sanded down charcuterie boards of their own design. Junior Jonathan Rubio shaped his board into a guitar, a tribute to his love of rock artists like Guns N’ Roses. 

“I like working with my hands and I like art,” Rubio said between sandings. “My dad wants me to get into mechanics, but what really interests me is carpentry.”  

Earlier this month, Alief Superintendent Anthony Mays told board members that the district could address student losses by continuing to advertise student successes, expanding school choice options and renewing the district’s commitment to innovative practices.

“We are probably as equally passionate and hardworking as our charter school peers,” Mays assured.

District leaders lamented the cost of advertising and lack of success with past marketing pushes. Board President Darlene Breaux said she supported “the continued work” of district leaders to attract families.

“We’re spending money on all of this advertising, which I wish could be used in other areas,” Breaux said. “The best advertising is the word of mouth from our parents.” 

If enrollment continues to decline, however, the district will have fewer resources at its disposal to improve student performance — even after voters approved a modest tax rate increase in November. Alief has already cut down on central office staffing, groundskeeping costs, and transportation, among other areas, in the past several years.

From there, administrators said staff cuts, benefits reductions and even campus closures may all be on the table — though nothing has been formally discussed by Alief board members. 

“The last thing we want to do is close a campus,” said Woods, the business services assistant superintendent. “But if enrollment continues to drop, that’s on the horizon.”

Update, Dec. 19: This story has been updated to include a comment from Alief administrators and remove a comment from Ronald Franklin on the reason for the district's high school lottery system.

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