On Aug. 5, Renee Watson stood in front of the navy-blue velvet curtains covering the auditorium stage at Frederick Douglass Elementary holding her great-aunt’s framed high school diploma and wearing the distinctive orange and green of the Sam Houston High School Hurricanes.
“I'm a product of SAISD," she said, "Gates Elementary, Riley Middle School — before it became MLK [Academy] — and Sam Houston High School.”
“And I'm walking these halls with my maternal great aunt's [1932] diploma from Douglass High School,” Watson told a couple dozen people sitting in the auditorium’s wooden seats. “So, I'm invested.”
Before Douglass became an elementary school, it was a segregated high school for Black San Antonians.
Watson is part of an advisory panel invited by the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) to represent the community in discussions about how to use buildings left empty by school closures.
She and two other panel members, Jason Mims and Amanda Lee Keammerer, were at Douglass Elementary to introduce themselves to San Antonio’s East Side residents and answer questions on plans to repurpose the buildings alongside district officials and trustees.
Nearly a year ago, SAISD held a similar meeting at Douglass to discuss a proposal to close the school in order to consolidate resources after decades of declining enrollment. Last September the noticeably fuller auditorium was mostly attended by parents, students, and staff. But in November, SAISD’s board of trustees voted to close Douglass and 14 other schools.
When San Antonio ISD welcomes students back for a new school year on Aug. 13, Douglass will be left empty.
Most attendees at this year’s meeting were older residents and nonprofit leaders.
SAISD District 2 Trustee Alicia Sebastian, who represents the neighborhoods on the East Side that feed into Sam Houston High School, started off the meeting by promising that Douglass Elementary will not be demolished.
“I always get calls, 'is Douglass going to be closed? Is it going to be demolished? What is going to happen?' We can tell you right now, Douglass is definitely not going to be demolished,” Sebastian said to applause.
“We know the historical value that Douglass has to this community, and it's just been a staple,” Sebastian said. “And so, we want to figure out ways — again, with the support of our rightsizing advisory committee, with the support of the community — to envision the best use for the building.”
SAISD Senior Advisor Brad Jupp told the audience the district is in the process of hiring a consultant to lead efforts to find uses for Douglass Elementary and 18 other buildings left empty by school closures.
“As a school system, we have one position dedicated to managing real estate, and that's currently vacant,” Jupp said. “We don't have anybody on our staff that would know how to put a building on a market on the fancy terms that we're bringing it forward.”
In addition to the 15 schools trustees voted to close last year, SAISD added four more schools closed earlier to the list. Seven of those 19 schools are located in SAISD’s District 2 on the East Side.
SAISD got expert advice on repurposing the empty buildings from real estate consultants earlier this year. Their final report is expected soon. Jupp said one of their recommendations was to hire a consultant.
Once that consultant is hired, a process will be laid out to accept to proposals for using the buildings. All told, Jupp said it will likely take more than two years for all 19 buildings to be occupied. “We hope to get some in sooner than two years. We know that not all will get done in that two-year timeline,” he explained.
“We need to choose a small number of sites to use to prototype the process. I don't think we're going to be able to manage conducting the process 19 times simultaneously,” Jupp said. “And that lease agreement will also take some time, especially depending on the complexity of the lease.”
Debra Seward of the San Antonio African American Community Archive and Museum asked Jupp about that two-year timeline. She later told TPR she was hoping to build synergy between her organization and Douglass, which district officials have suggested could be turned into a museum.
“Once that consultant gets in place, we will start receiving proposals. So, if SAACAM has a proposal for an idea for a campus, you need to get it in,” Watson told Seward.
“The building is ready,” Watson told the audience. “It's a matter of how much your finances is and how you're going to make the building available for what you're trying to do, because the district is not — and we have to be having a hard conversation — the district is not putting money into these projects.”
Until decisions are made, Jupp said district police will patrol areas around the buildings, and maintenance staff will keep the schools in good condition.
“We're going to be doing the usual mowing of lawns. We're going to be making sure that if there's a broken window, that we repair it,” Jupp said.
He directed audience members to the district’s repurposing website to submit questions and sign up for updates.
Watson said the website also has a breakdown of the properties, which organizations should use as a framework for their proposals.
SAISD plans to hold meetings to update the community on plans to repurpose the empty buildings in each of the seven districts trustees represent. The next meeting will be Aug. 20 at 6pm at Jefferson High School in District 7.
