Pease Elementary School in Austin, located near the Capitol, stands as a poignant reminder of the community’s educational history.
Overgrown grass blankets the playground, and the marquee remains silent, while the gates are padlocked, signaling the school’s permanent closure since 2020.
Pete Salazar made a nostalgic visit to his old school after five years, recalling fond memories of his time there.
“They were really nice to me. There were no bullies or anything. No one was ever mean,” Pete reflected as he hopped over the fence to sit on the swings.
The memories flooded back—his third-grade classroom, the blacktop where he played—but so did a sense of sadness.
“I was sad to see it again because it reminded me of all the fun times I had here,” he said.
As the oldest continuously operating school in Texas, Pease provided an educational haven for transfer students, primarily the children of parents working in the downtown area.
However, when the school closed, students like Pete were dispersed to various neighborhood schools across the city, severing the connections they once had with their classmates.
Pete reminisced, “I was kinda sad because not all of my friends were going to the same schools as me.”
Noelita Lugo, Pete’s mother and a former trustee of the Austin Independent School District, watched with tears in her eyes as her son played on the swings.
“Oh my gosh, when I saw Pete go to the swings, and he was swinging, I wanted to cry,” she shared, donning a shirt featuring the school’s purple bobcat mascot.
Despite successful new friendships being formed, Lugo constantly questions whether Pete’s academic path would have been different had he stayed at Pease.
“Academically, I don’t know what could have happened. I don’t know what it could have been like had we been able to stay physically connected with other families and watch our kids grow up in elementary school together. Maybe he would have had a different trajectory,” she pondered.
The impact of Pease’s closure was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, creating further disconnection.
Pete and his former classmates faced not only the disruption of their schooling but also social isolation from each other.
The broader implications of school closures in Texas are rarely discussed, though districts from San Antonio to Fort Worth continue to make difficult decisions about campus closures.
Jeonghyeok Kim, an economist pursuing a PhD at the University of Houston, has studied the long-term effects of these closures.
Unlike past studies focusing on immediate impacts, Kim’s research looks at the repercussions well into adulthood.
His findings indicate a significant, lasting negative effect on students’ educational and economic outcomes.
“I find a decline in high school graduation rates, college attendance, college attainment, college quality, and also their earnings and employment rates,” Kim stated.
To provide context, Kim compared the outcomes of students affected by school closures with those who graduated from the same schools before they closed.
The struggle to transition to a new school contributes to long-term negative outcomes, according to Kim.
Yet, he acknowledges that sometimes school closures are unavoidable.
“If we need to close down schools, then we need to close down schools,” he emphasized.
In facing the dilemma of when and how to close schools, the question remains: what alternatives do districts have?
During a financially challenging year, Austin ISD is working on identifying schools for closure to address a nearly $20 million deficit.
Superintendent Matias Segura, who was part of the decision-making team in 2019 as the operations director, assures that the process will change this time.
“We know that we need to have better-resourced schools, and with the constraints that we have in our system, the only way to do that is to have fewer of them,” Segura explained.
He aims to finalize decisions on school closures by November, allowing families ample time to prepare for their children’s transitions to new schools.
Segura articulated the importance of the transition process: “The transition piece, to me, is as important, and that will be incorporated as part of our plan.”
As the old Pease building is set to become a child care center this year, its empty halls stand as a remnant of memories fading from the community’s collective memory.
Pete and the other former Pease students cherish their time at the school, even as they navigate new beginnings and varied experiences in different educational environments.
As Pete embarks on the journey of his first year of high school, he expresses a hopeful message for students facing similar closures in Texas:
“You’ll be fine. Nothing too bad will happen. Just make sure to remember everything.”
image source from：kut
