Elementary schoolers at Ridgetop, a McCallum feeder school, will be forced to move schools next year after the board of trustees voted to close their school on Nov. 20. The school board’s decision to close Ridgetop was part of the AISD districtwide consolidation plan to reduce the number of schools to close AISD’s 19 million dollar budget deficit. However, many parents have criticized the consolidation plan for closing high performing schools such as Ridgetop.
Ridgetop has consistently received an A-rating from the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and is known for its wall-to-wall dual language program. Every student takes half of their classes in English and the other half in Spanish, which allows for native Spanish and English to learn each others’ languages from an early age.
Clara Williams, a McCallum senior and Ridgetop alum, felt that being able to learn Spanish in elementary school made it easier for her to master the language. Scientific evidence backs up Williams’ belief- according to the ACTFL, it is far easier to learn a language at a young age, especially in a dual immersion program like at Ridgetop.
“It’s harder to learn a language when you’re older,” Williams said. “Being able to learn [Spanish] that young was really cool and it really set me up to speak a language better than people that just took Spanish in middle school.”
Williams frequently uses the Spanish she learned at Ridgetop in her job as a cashier, where she often has to communicate with customers in Spanish. Williams appreciates how learning Spanish at Ridgetop has opened up more job opportunities and allowed her to connect with more people. Williams believes that learning a language in elementary school should be more standardized.
“I think it’s really important to be able to learn another language to accommodate and do stuff for people,” Williams said. “I think that it’s kind of sad that it’s not more of an expected thing because Spanish is really good [to learn] here in Texas.”
However, Ridgetop parents don’t have a clearcut option to provide their children with the opportunity to learn another language once Ridgetop closes. Students who are zoned to Ridgetop will be relocated to Reilly. Although Reilly currently has a dual-language program, it is being replaced with a Winn Montessori track next year. Students who transferred from other neighborhoods to be part of the dual language program at Ridgetop can choose to go to their neighborhood non-dual language elementary school or request to transfer to Pickle Elementary, where Ridgetop’s dual language program is being moved to. It is unclear whether or not Ridgetop’s administration and staff will move to Pickle with the dual-language program, which recently received an F-rating by TEA.
In response to the confusion around student transfers, parents created the Ridgetop Group in the hope that Ridgetop families could work with the district to create a student relocation plan. Bob Libal, a non-profit organizer whose four-year-old son is currently enrolled in Ridgetop’s pre-K program, helped establish the Ridgetop Group. The organization immediately met with their school board trustee Kevin Foster to see if there was any way they could keep Ridgetop open.
“[The district] said this had to be a comprehensive process and that no part of the plan could work without all of the parts of the plan working so you couldn’t just take one school off because it was special or unique or had the most vocal parents,” Libal said.
Foster then agreed that if the district removed other schools from the list, he would vote against the consolidation plan, according to Libal. However, only six days before the board of trustees was to vote on the consolidation plan, AISD planners made sweeping changes to the consolidation plan after community protest. Since they claimed the integrity of the consolidation plan was compromised by employees working on it, AISD removed three schools that were slated to close—Palm, Bryker Woods, and Maplewood—from the list despite their previous insistence that all schools must close for the consolidation plan to work. They also postponed the originally proposed boundary changes for all AISD schools, meaning that the only students who will have to go to a different school are those whose school will close in the consolidation process. Foster voted for the new plan even though he previously told the Ridgetop Group he would vote against such a plan.
“We were repeatedly told that simply saying ‘save our school’ wasn’t going to get your school off the list,” Libal said. “And then none of that was true.”
Libal feels like the district’s last minute choice to exclude three schools from the list reflects the chaos of the consolidation process and the district’s unwillingness to work with the Ridgetop Group.
“I think we were really disappointed with how they handled communication and with the community because we were so willing to work with the district to try and find a solution that works for everyone,” Libal said. “I think the closure process left a lot of people feeling heartbroken.”
Libal fears that the way the district handled the consolidation process at Ridgetop and other schools will incentivize parents to move to school districts with more dual-language programs or attend charter or private schools. He believes that this could harm AISD’s budget in the long run because school budget allotments are based on enrollment in Texas. AISD’s already lost 10,000 students in the past 10 years, which contributed significantly to their budget deficit and created a need for a consolidation plan.
“I wish that they would have had some kind of analysis about what the impact of these closures is going to be on how many kids are going to be enrolled in AISD,” Libal said. “If we lose a thousand students due to this process, we’ll have a major budget deficit again next year.”
Another negative consequence of the consolidation plan is the loss of the community at Ridgetop. Ridgetop currently has 354 students, making it a relatively small school compared to other elementary schools in AISD. Elsie Smith, a McCallum senior who graduated from Ridgetop, loved Ridgetop because of its small community.
“Everybody was super close knit since it was a small school,” Smith said.
Now that Ridgetop students will have to move to Reilly or Pickle, they likely won’t experience such a small community. Reilly and Pickle will each have to absorb around 100 or so students from Ridgetop, breaking up Ridgetop’s community. While a key component of AISD’s consolidation plan is closing smaller schools like Ridgetop and selling their property in order to close their budget deficit, Libal worries that it will come at the cost of students’ elementary school experiences.
“There is something special about having such a small community school,” Libal said. “I don’t think that they can financially maintain those schools because obviously AISD is under a lot of [fiscal] pressure but it does feel like a real loss.”
Smith also feels sad that Ridgetop is closing because of the friendships she made there. Ridgetop is where she met her best friend, Clara Williams.
“Clara’s my best friend and it’s the sort of place that fosters those kind of relationships and so it’s sad that it’s closing because I have a lot of friends and connections that I made there,” Smith said.
Having met Smith at Ridgetop, Williams believes that Ridgetop’s small community allows students to form long-term relationships, something that she feels is unique to the school.
“Ridgetop does a very good job of creating life-long friendships,” Williams said. “I don’t feel like I’ve seen that as much at other elementary schools.”
Aside from Williams, Smith met many of her other friends at Ridgetop. Additionally, she still feels close with people she doesn’t see often simply because they went to Ridgetop. She worries that students won’t make the same relationships if they go to a bigger elementary school.
“I know a lot of Ridgetop kids,” Smith said. “It’s like this instant connection. Coming from a bigger school will make it harder to have that connection and [school] won’t have that same homey feel.”