Declining enrollment and budget deficits have pushed North East Independent School District to close three of its schools. This marks the sixth San Antonio school district closing schools, contributing to 26 total shuttered schools across the city since 2023.
Nearly three months after the closure was proposed, the NEISD board voted on Feb. 10 to shut down Wilshire Elementary School, Clear Springs Elementary School and Driscoll Middle School by the 2025-26 school year. Students will be relocated to nearby schools.
The closures will save $5 million a year, which NEISD says will offset a $39 million deficit in its budget created by employee pay raises. NEISD superintendent Sean Maika also cites expensive operation costs as another reason behind the closures, with all three schools operating under 50% capacity and exceeding the district average in cost per student.
“It’s incremental little changes that happen,” Maika said. “One day, you wake up, and this incremental change has become a giant change.”
NEISD has seen a sharp decline in enrollment over the past decade, losing 12,000 students since the 2014-15 school year — equivalent to 17% of its student population. Declining enrollment is one of many problems school districts in Texas face as they grapple with declining birth rates, inflation and insufficient state funding.
Texas ranks No. 41 nationwide in per-pupil spending, according to an Education Data Initiative analysis of Census Bureau findings, and the last major boost in funding happened in 2019 through House Bill 3, from which NEISD received $27 million. For Maika, school districts can no longer rely on lawmakers for financial support.
“Hope isn’t a strategy,” Maika said. “There is this belief that a windfall of money is potentially headed to education. I just don’t believe that.”
The closure of the three schools comes during a time of uncertainty for traditional public schooling in Texas. Senate Bill 2 — which will give parents $10,000 per year for every student attending an accredited private school — was passed in the Texas Senate days prior to the NEISD board meeting. It now awaits voting in the Texas House of Representatives. President Donald Trump has also urged the closing of the Department of Education, a key distributor in public school funding.
NEISD Community Advocates, a group pushing back against the closures, asked the board to delay the vote for a year to conduct an audit assessing the long-term effects of the closures.
“School closures rarely deliver on their promises. They don’t save money, and they negatively impact student outcomes,” co-founder of the advocacy group, Nikki Shaheed said.
Opposition also came from the American Federation of Teachers, who echoed a delay in the vote and pointed out the imminency of the closures.
“We know that NEISD provides a much better education than charter schools. There’s no comparison,” Tom Cummins, president of the local AFT, said. “But that fact has to be communicated to the students and families who have left NEISD.”
As another school district in San Antonio moves forward with closures, other districts across Texas are tasked with proving their value in an evolving public education system.
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Dawn Arthur • Feb 20, 2025 at 7:42 am
When you close schools then turn around and build more schools doesn’t that waste money. Like the Spurs needing another place to play? Which cost way too much.