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Trustees for the North East Independent School District voted unanimously Monday night to permanently close Driscoll Middle School, Clear Spring Elementary and Wilshire Elementary at the end of the current school year.
Before the unanimous vote, Tracie Shelton made a motion to delay the vote until no later than April in order to give the district more time to answer questions from community members. Marsha Landry seconded the motion, but the vote failed 5 to 2.
Superintendent Sean Maika told the board the district wouldn’t have time to implement the school closures this year if the vote was delayed until April.
“I will not commit to you at that point that it can be done and done well,” Maika said before the vote on the motion. “And then what it will do is we will not actualize ten million in cuts, and so we will move that into next year to have to make some more decisions.”
NEISD officials have been working to cut $10 million from the district’s budget every year since 2023 to offset recurring budget deficits. District leaders previously said there would be $1 million saved per closed school, but Monday night they said the total savings would be closer to $5 million — including staff reductions. Maika said other district cuts combined with the school closures would allow NEISD to meet this year’s $10 million goal.
Shelton said she wanted to delay the vote to ensure community support.
“We need a longer runway,” she told the rest of the board. “I couldn't have given my boss something in December and told him that we were going to do something this big, that we were going to have to vote on it and make it a go in February without bringing the other people along.”
Trustee Terri Chidgey said that as a former NEISD principal, she knows the district and the campuses have already made all the cuts they can, and that the closures are needed even though they’re painful.
“They have cut and cut and any teacher in this room — if they're being honest — would tell you that that is true. The budgets have been looked at. They have been looked at line by line. The next thing we're going to have to do is look at people and programs. And that scares me too, because the programs are what get our kids to school,” Chidgey said.
“Could we have communicated this better to you? I think we could have, and for that, I'm sorry,” Chidgey added. “We need to evaluate how we did this, and I know that we will, but no matter how we did it or what the action is, it doesn't change that we've lost 12,000 kids and we have the same number of buildings and the same number of facilities.”
Maika first brought the proposal to close schools to the board in December.
He said NEISD has lost nearly 12,000 students over the past 10 years, dropping from nearly 68,000 students to a little over 56,000, and that the district’s buying power has dropped by $1,340 per student since 2020 due to inflation.
Community Response
NEISD Community Advocates, a group of parents that organized after the closure proposal was announced, held a rally outside the district’s central office before the board meeting to protest the closure vote.
Speaking in Spanish, Wilshire Elementary parent Judy Martinez said NEISD hasn’t provided translations or answers for Spanish speakers.
“Our people have a voice. Our people have questions. Our people have doubts,” she said in Spanish. “At a time with so much insecurity for our children, they haven’t come to us to ask what we need.”
Clear Spring Elementary parent Mylynn Cortes brought her children Klara and Kassius up with her to speak. Kindergartner Kassius held up a sign that said “Keep our school open” and fourth grader Klara held a sign that said “Don’t close our schools.”
“I know Clear Spring is considered an older building, which to me, only means there are long-standing families rooted to that school who have called this community home for years, not just building improvements that the district seems to be keeping at the forefront of their decision making,” Cortes said.
“We are extremely aware of the issue about saving money. We all get it. Budgets are tight. This isn't about resisting change just because we don't feel like adapting or ignoring a budget deficit,” she added. “It's about protecting our children, our families and our community. It's about finding solutions that help the budget and strengthen our communities, not tear them apart.”
Sixth grader Juliet Tominey attended the rally with her mother, Jennifer Tominey, to fight to keep her middle school open. They’re zoned to go to Harris Middle School, but they used school choice to go to Driscoll.
“I love how many people there are so kind and caring. The teachers are amazing. There's barely any fighting at all,” Juliet said.
Juliet said she found out her school could close from her mom in December.
“I was really upset, because I feel like they just decided to make the decision without asking anybody, even the kids, the parents, what they think,” Juliet said.
She doesn’t know if her teachers and friends will end up at the same school as her even if she goes to Harris next year. The Driscoll attendance boundaries will be split between Garner and Harris, and teachers will be offered jobs where there are openings.
The Tomineys are hoping to use school choice to go to Bradley Middle School instead of Harris, even though it would be a longer commute.
NEISD officials said families affected by the closures would be allowed to choose three options on the school choice application instead of one, and that they would extend the wait list application for magnet schools by two weeks.
More than 20 people signed up to speak on the consolidations during public comments, all of them against the closures. They repeatedly called the closures a rushed decision and asked the board to delay the vote. Several also pointed out that the schools being closed are on the southern and eastern parts of the district, where more students are low income and English learners.
