Caleb and Trevi love their new school which is Barton Hills Elementary School! We were so glad they loved the school because we had chosen to buy in this specific neighborhood near downtown in order to get the kids in this exemplary school.
On their third day of school, we received a note saying Barton Hills may be closing!
The Austin Independent School District has a task force of volunteers who have named 9 schools that should be closed to save the district money. Eight of the nine schools are exemplary and most are downtown. Two of the schools are in our new neighborhood.
We are moving into what has been described as the most politically active neighborhood in all of Austin, and these parents are not going to let this happen without a fight! Check out our facebook page here.
Here is a news story on what has been happening.
The downside is that the task force isn’t making their decision based on school performance and seems to be heading towards shutting down schools instead of AISD facilities that don’t have kids in them. They don’t seem to realize property values will go down in these areas which would mean less money for them to spend since their income comes from property taxes. There are so many more reasons that this doesn’t make sense.
One of the odd advantages has been that Debbie and I have met more parents at these meetings and rallies than we probably would have met over the next 10 years! Holding signs and jumping into the debate is a very Austin thing to do, we’ve discovered. I even ended up getting interviewed by one of the local news channels! Crazy, huh?!
If you have advice on how we can keep these schools open or how we can let the national media know about this ridiculous plan, let me know as we “fight the man”!
[…] find out Barton Hills Elementary may be closed by the Austin School District. (See my post “Save Our Schools” for details). January 6th: Escrow begins on Debbie’s favorite house. February 10th: We […]