More school closures in Lubbock ISD? Not yet, but maybe next year and the plan to make it less painful

Another round of school closures? Not yet – but Lubbock ISD is already asking parents and neighborhoods for help before making tough decisions – possibly for the fall of 2026.

The most recent round of school closures was painful, emotional and controversial nearly a year ago when the Board of Trustees voted to close Hodges Elementary School along with Overton Elementary and O.L. Slaton Middle School.

“We should have known sooner. It shouldn’t have been as rushed. There should have been more transparency,” said Scott Eberhard, a P.E. teacher at Hodges, almost a year ago when the board voted.

Parents, students and neighbors were particularly distressed over the loss of the elementary at 50th and Avenue P.

Clinton Arias said, “Hodges Elementary is more than a building. It is a lifeline for the east side of Lubbock.”

But something needs to be done – which was the message in LISD town hall meetings last week.

• Enrollment dropped more than 4,000 students in 10 years – going from 27,365 to 23,250.
• Fourteen campuses are under 70 percent utilization.
• And the current budget is a $7.6 million deficit.

No more closures or consolidations will happen in the 2025–26 school year. The fall of 2026 is the earliest the district might name specific schools.

This time the district hopes community involvement earlier in the process will make it less painful – fairer and more transparent. That means town halls, a public survey and a public dashboard to let the community know where every school stands.

Then – and now

“Lubbock ISD – when we were first being established, there was an elementary school built in every square-mile neighborhood,” said Kathy Rollo, superintendent who spoke to LubbockLights.com after a town hall meeting last week at Lubbock High School.

Nearly 100 years ago, kids walked to school and walked back home, she said. And the kids attended their neighborhood school rather than transferring.

“That is really not the day and time we’re living in anymore. Our families are often choosing to transfer. Families are not letting their kids walk to school. They’re driving them to school. Or we are transporting them to school if they are over a certain distance,” Rollo said.

Ken Casarez, the district’s chief innovation officer, told town hall participants, “This is not just a phenomenon that’s unique to Lubbock.”

“A lot of it is attributed to a declining birth rate in the United States,” Casarez said.

Parts of Lubbock are growing while other parts are not, and birth rates since 2008 in Lubbock declined between zero and 50 percent according to information the district released a year ago.

“The facility usage is not equitable across our district. We have about 14 of our campuses that are under 70 percent of capacity. We have about 12 of our campuses that are above 90 percent of capacity,” Casarez said.

Some schools have 350 kids while others are up over 700, he said.

“We have 63 percent of our buildings that are 60 years or older,” Casarez said.

Rollo said, “In the last 20 years we’ve closed or consolidated 17 schools. … We only have so many resources as far as being able to support the financial side of that. And so, reducing our facility footprint has become necessary.”

She told the town hall crowd, “We also can change boundaries where students are zoned to attend and redistribute the attendance zones to better support schools.”

But that only goes so far. Roughly half of students transfer outside their attendance zones.

The district approved a budget deficit for the current school year of $7.6 million. The shortfall at the end of the previous school year was nearly $15 million.

Which schools?

In the previous round of school closures, people felt like there was not enough time for meaningful debate.

Rollo said, “A lot of the campuses didn’t realize that they were underutilized.”

Parents and neighbors did not know enrollment numbers had declined, she said. This time will be different with a public web page.

“The idea is to have a public-facing dashboard where a school community can go and see … where they fall with those metrics and where they might fall with any of the contextual considerations,” Rollo said.

That gives parents, students, neighborhood groups, principals and teachers a chance to ask themselves questions before a school officially goes on the closure list.

For example, Rollo said, “What is something we could offer to attract more students to our school? To try to increase transfer numbers?”

The idea is to give them “a runway” to make adjustments, she said.

So as of right now, which schools could face closure? No one knows yet. But the district has three factors in mind and then a proposed set of “contextual considerations.”

• Overall enrollment (specific numbers to be decided soon).
• Utilization rate (under 70 percent).
• Per pupil spending (above the district average).

A proposed set of contextual considerations include:

• Program offerings: Does the school have a unique and valuable program not available elsewhere? (FFA, dance, career technology education, etc.)
• Historical context: Have historic events taken place at the school?
• Family demand: Does transfer data demonstrate this school is attracting students?
• Student needs: Does the school offer a unique program for special needs? Can the program be moved? (For example, deaf or hard-of-hearing students.)
• Availability of high-quality options: Are there nearby options with similar programs and room for more students?

Do more, don’t overdo it

Schools are under pressure to offer more than math, reading and science.

For example, during the town hall, Rollo also mentioned the district’s Agri-STEM facility built with $10.5 million from the 2018 bond election.

“This has been extremely beneficial to students in Lubbock ISD because more students now have access to agriculture career pathway courses,” Rollo said.

In the town hall meeting, parents were asked about priorities outside of academics.

“For us, I’ll say FFA has been kind of good for our daughter,” said Eric Burrell during small group discussions.

Parents told two stories of girls who would not transfer to a particular school if they did make it on the pom squad.

“Band can be a driver for a lot of kids,” Lisa Thompson, LISD’s executive director of benefits, said in a small group.

Parents mentioned dance, both as a skill to learn but also hosting after-school dances as social events.

Then there was mental health. Parents said it was important for the schools to intervene for a student experiencing a personal crisis.

While those programs can attract transfer students, they can get pricey. That’s when a program might get cut.

Rollo told LubbockLights.com, “An example of one of those that we cut this year was International Baccalaureate Certificate Program … at Coronado High School. We had 10 students who were participating at a cost of over $150,000.”

Schools get bigger to cut the cost per student and offer more of those extra services, but that tactic has its limits.

“The data is showing us that a sweet spot for elementaries is around 700 to 750. So that’s what we have built new schools to serve. And we see great things happening in those schools and the kids still know each other well. And we have better student outcomes and we have more academic and social-emotional opportunities in that size of a school,” Rollo said.

Is it working?

The district already sees savings from the last round of consolidations, Rollo said.

“So that will definitely help. It does take time to see the deficit go away, but we’ve made great strides towards that deficit. We cut it in half this year,” Rollo said.

“We’ve made some adjustments in staffing, and we’ll continue to do so, but we’re still going to have to make some tough choices around programs,” she said.

The district is also under pressure to improve academic performance. Rollo showed a chart during the town hall which indicated LISD is a ‘B’ rated district. Over a six-year period, the percentage of students at an A or B rated campus went from 42 percent to 63 percent.

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