Campaign Wrap Up: SAISD School Closures 2023

This past Monday SAISD school board, led by Dr. Aquino, voted 5-2 to close 15 of the originally proposed 19 schools. This comes as a blow to our communities that fought so hard to keep their neighborhood schools open. The 15 elementary schools will shutter their doors at the end of the 2023-2024 school year and the student body will move to their proposed new schools, go back to their home school districts if they were at a choice school, go to a charter school, or leave schools all together and be homeschooled. SAISD has set up an “Empowerment” hotline so that families can call with their questions but many parents are reporting that they are not being given actual answers-just being told to leave their names and numbers for call backs. With so much up in the air, many parents and students feel disposable and displaced. 

Southwest Workers Union/Centro Por La Justicia worked alongside the SA Alliance and Our Schools coalition to canvas and phone bank over 2,744 contacts and were able to send 1,937 postcards to the school board speaking out against the school closures. While we were unable to convince the school board trustees to listen to us and keep our schools open, we were able to build strong ties with parents, students, and community members across the district. We can use these connections to advocate for our students as these campuses close and our students go to their new learning destinations. 

To celebrate those community victories, we helped host a Drag King Story Time on Saturday 11/11/23. We had many SAISD families come out and the children painted a banner for our banner drop. It’s important to remember our wins, even in the face of losses, because the fight continues on. For more info on the Drag King Story Time event, read our blog! 

One way to stay involved is by attending Our Schools parent meetings every 2nd Saturday at the Alliance House (120 Adams) to continue to build coalitions with other SAISD parents