A community college could transform the Lockhart area. Will voters approve it?

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This story about Austin Community College was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

LOCKHART — Sometime last year, Alfonso Sifuentes was on a bus tour as part of a chamber of commerce’s efforts to map out the future of the bustling Central Texas region south of Austin where he lives and works.

There was chatter about why San Marcos, a suburb along one stretch of the Interstate 35 corridor, had little interest in a proposed expansion of Austin Community College into that area. Voters previously rejected the idea because of the property tax increase it would have required. As he swayed in his seat on the moving bus, Sifuentes, a businessman in the waste management industry who has long been involved in community development, thought about his hometown of Lockhart — like San Marcos just 30-some miles from Austin — and about the opportunities the college’s growing network of campuses could bring. Somewhere along the bus route, he made a declaration for all to hear.

“Well, if San Marcos doesn’t want it,” Sifuentes said, “Lockhart will take it.”

This November, the college is coming to voters in the Lockhart Independent School District with a proposition to begin paying into the Austin Community College taxing district. In exchange, residents would qualify for in-district tuition and trigger a long-term plan to build out college facilities in this rural stretch of Texas, which is positioning itself to tap into the economic boom flowing into the smaller communities nestled between Austin and San Antonio.

Community colleges have long played a crucial role in recovering economies. But in Lockhart, ACC’s potential expansion could serve as a case study of the role colleges can play in emerging economies as local leaders and community members eye the economic growth on the horizon.

That is, if they can convince enough of their neighbors to help pay for it.

At the edge of two massive metropolitan areas — Austin to the north and San Antonio to the south — Caldwell County is dotted by quaint communities offering small-town living. While the streets in other small rural communities are lined by shuttered storefronts or sit in the shadow of industry long gone, local leaders pitch this as a place “where undeniable opportunity meets authentic Texas community.”

Lockhart, the county seat, is revered as the barbecue capital of Texas with an established status as a day trip destination. About 30 miles southeast of Austin, its picturesque town square hosts a regular rotation of community events, including a summer concert series on the courthouse lawn and a series of pop-ups on the first Friday of the month featuring some mix of live music, receptions at a local art gallery, and sip and strolls and cheesecake specials at the antique store.

The county’s population of roughly 50,000 residents is dwarfed by the big cities and the nearby suburban communities that often rank among the fastest growing in the country. But what the county lacks in population it makes up for with a relatively low cost of living, space to make room for industry, housing and, potentially, Austin Community College.

The potential annexation is an example of how colleges are becoming more nimble and more responsive to both emerging economies and the needs of students, said Maria Cormier, a senior research associate for the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. But Cormier argues such expansions must be intentionally designed with equity in mind to envision multiple pathways for students so that, for example, students from marginalized backgrounds aren’t limited only to certificate-level programming. (The Hechinger Report is an independent unit of Teachers College.)

“These sorts of questions become important when colleges are proposing these kinds of expansions: To what extent are they thinking about longer-term pathways for students?” Cormier said.

ACC already partners with Lockhart ISD on an early college high school that allows students to complete transferable college credit hours while earning a high school diploma, and proponents of annexation highlight the affordable higher education opportunities it would generally provide students in the Lockhart area. But their sales pitch emphasizes what it would mean to leverage ACC for the whole community. While the share of adults with a high school degree within Lockhart ISD’s territory is roughly aligned with the state, the share who have a bachelor’s degree — just 16.8 percent — falls to about half of the state rate.

“An effort like this can never be wrong if it always is for the right reasons,” said Nick Metzler, an information technology manager and consultant who serves as the president of the Greater Lockhart for ACC political action committee, which formed to pursue the college’s expansion.

First established in 1973, ACC has steadily grown its footprint in Central Texas through annexation. Though not commonly used, a provision of Texas education law grants a community college the ability to expand its taxing district by adding territory within its designated service area. Working within a service district roughly the size of Connecticut, ACC first expanded its reach in 1985 when voters in the territory covered by the Leander Independent School District, a northern suburb of Austin, agreed to be annexed.

In the years since, neighboring communities in the Manor, Del Valle and Round Rock school districts followed with large majority votes in favor of annexation. ACC’s expansion into Austin’s southern suburbs didn't begin until 2010, when annexation passed in the Hays Consolidated Independent School District.

The collective initiative to bring ACC to Lockhart has been the topic of discussion for many years, but the current effort was formally triggered by a community-led petition that required locals to gather signatures from at least 5 percent of registered voters. Fanning out at youth sporting events, school functions and other community gatherings, PAC members met with neighbors who indicated their children would be the first in their families to go to college, if they could afford it. Others were adults excited by the prospect of trade programs and certifications they could pursue and the transformative change it could bring to their families as new industries move into Caldwell County.

“Those things would catch a lot of the individuals who couldn't make it to four-year universities or couldn't afford to go to four-year universities,” Metzler said. “That's always been kind of where we as a community have kind of been lacking.”

Lockhart also has an incentive for partnering with ACC: A recent assessment commissioned by the city identified the need to partner with a postsecondary institution for job training if it wanted to meet its economic goals and compete in its target business sectors, namely large-scale auto and electronic manufacturing, food processing and tourism. It also identified the lack of skilled administrative workers along with computer and math specialists as a challenge to reaching those goals.

In the end, PAC members easily surpassed the threshold of the 744 signatures they were required to submit — they turned in 1,013.

On the ballot now is a proposal for homeowners to trade $232.54 a year on average — a rate of $.1013 per $100 in property value — for in-district services. That includes a steep discount for in-district tuition that comes out to $85 per credit hour compared with $286 for out-of-district residents, though high school graduates from Lockhart ISD would also qualify for free tuition under a recently adopted five-year pilot program going into effect this fall.

“We are very interested in providing access to high-quality, affordable education in our region because we think it’s a game changer for families,” Chris Cervini, ACC’s vice chancellor for community and public affairs, said in an interview. “We think it promotes affordability by providing folks a lifeline to a family-sustaining wage, so we are very bullish on our value proposition.”

The vote would also allow ACC to grow its tax base as it works to keep pace with its growing enrollment. When classes kicked off this fall, ACC was serving about 70,000 students across 11 campuses in the Central Texas region — an enrollment increase of 10 percent compared with a year earlier. The potential expansion comes as community colleges are adapting to a new state financing model based on student outcomes, including financial incentives for schools if students obtain workforce credentials in certain fields.

The college proposed a three-phase service plan that would begin with expanded offerings in the area, such as evening classes, and eventually work up to a permanent facility tailored to match workforce needs, including demand for certificate programs to “reskill and upskill” for various high-demand careers. Cervini, who has been a main liaison with the Lockhart community, previously said the college was considering whether it could quickly deploy its resources into the community through mobile training rigs for HVAC and welding.

Its timeline could be sped up now that the college has identified a historic building in the heart of downtown — the old Ford Lockhart Motor Company building — as its potential home. During a recent presentation to the Lockhart City Council, ACC Chancellor Russell Lowery-Hart told city leaders he appreciated that the site would represent the community’s history juxtaposed to “what we think the future looks like.”

But ACC leaders said the issue ultimately has to play out in the community. There’s been no apparent organized opposition to the vote in Lockhart, and ACC officials say they’ve been engaged with local leaders who have been supportive in helping inform voters about the annexation process. The proposal recently picked up the endorsement of Lockhart’s mayor, Lew White, who commended ACC leaders for their outreach to the community about their offerings.

“I think that’s what a lot of people have been asking for, and I think you're really shaping your proposal for this fall election very nicely,” White said. “And I think it's something that our community needs to get together and get behind and support.”

Even Lockhart ISD leaders frame the college's pitch as an initiative with potential benefits extending well beyond the increased access it would offer students in the region.

Overseeing a record 6,850 students in a district covering about 300 square miles, Superintendent Mark Estrada said education is essential to cultivating communities where residents can not only actively participate in the sort of growth Caldwell County is experiencing but benefit from it as well.

“I think the real conversation and consideration is how would this benefit the educational attainment of the entire community, which currently is one of the lowest in Central Texas,” Estrada said. “The mid-career switches, people’s opportunity to have access to education to pursue a passion or career they've always been interested in — that’s a major consideration for the community. It’s a narrow look if we’re only looking at high school graduates.”

Still, Caldwell County remains a conservative area in a conservative state where fighting property tax increases has become a favorite political calling card. Much of that debate has centered on funding for public schools, with the fight over school finance often falling to the question of whether older Texans, who are mostly white and less likely to have children enrolled in public schools, are willing to pay for the future of younger Texans, who are mostly Latino. Roughly 4 out of every 5 students enrolled in Lockhart ISD are Latinos.

Voters in the area have shown at least some unwillingness to foot the bill for education-related expansions. In 2019, they rejected a $92.4 million bond proposed to address the significant growth in student enrollment Lockhart ISD had seen in the prior decade. The bond package would have gone toward making more room for more students through the addition of a two-story wing to the local high school, two new school buildings and renovations throughout the district. It also would have backed improvements to the district’s workforce preparation efforts, including a new agricultural science facility and additions to the district’s career technology center to allow more students to participate in auto repair classes and hospitality training. Opponents of the measure, 1,632 voters, won with 55 percent of the vote compared with 1,340 who voted in favor.

This time around, proponents of annexation are hoping the eagerness they’ve felt in the community from those who signed onto the original petition — and those who come to see the broader benefits it could bring to the community — will translate to votes.

In recounting the interest they fielded in the early days of their efforts collecting signatures, PAC members described one canvas of a local gym in a portion of the county that’s seeing some of the biggest growth but trails in terms of income. Some of the gym-goers were enthusiastic about the possibility of pursuing technical certifications but realized they weren’t registered to vote, a requirement of the signature collection process.

They went out and got on the voter rolls. Then, they came back to put their names on the petition.

Contact the editor of this story, Nirvi Shah, at 212-678-3445 or shah@hechingerreport.org.