“We’re in competition”: An East Texas school district faces hard choices as education options grow

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LUFKIN — The elementary schools’ staff passed tissues to one another as they sat in the school board’s chamber waiting for the vote that would close their schools.

It was a foregone conclusion. Enrollment had dropped to the point that this East Texas school district could no longer justify keeping the two schools open.

Thursday’s vote made months of deliberation official.

“This is not something to celebrate, it is something hard and difficult that we need to do so that we can move forward for a better future for the district,” Kristi Gay, the Lufkin ISD school board chair, told the crowd.

Thirteen years ago, nearly 8,500 students were enrolled at Lufkin public schools. This year, just 6,846 students were enrolled among the 17 schools.

Among the reasons for the steep decline, school leaders said, is an increase in competition traditional school districts face in Texas. And the school board’s vote last week is an example of the difficult choices school communities must make amid increasing competition from charter schools, home schooling and potentially from private schools.

“Whether it’s home school, private school, charter school, public school … we’re in competition for the attention of the families and the students,” Lufkin Superintendent James Hockenberry said.

Republican leaders in Texas have for years sought to expand the options families have for their children. And they are poised to give families another option as both chambers of the state Legislature are run by supporters of private school vouchers.

The proposal to allow families to use tax dollars to send their students to private schools has long been blocked in the state House by a coalition of Democrats and rural Republicans, who have warned allowing more competition would harm their district-run schools.

Lufkin is one of those rural communities. It sits deep within the Pineywoods, and with 34,181 residents, it is the largest city between Tyler and Houston.

School districts big and small across the state have been losing students. And like Lufkin, school boards in San Antonio, Austin, Lewisville, Edgewood and San Angelo among others have all closed or made plans to close campuses.

There are multiple reasons for enrollment declines in traditional public schools, said Campbell Scribner, an associate professor of education at the University of Maryland.

Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic renewed a political debate about the role of schools and the people who run them.

“We’re in this moment where, for political polarization and a bunch of other reasons, education has come into the crosshairs,” Scribner said. “I wouldn’t prescribe it all to vouchers, but I do think vouchers are part of a much larger vibe shift in how Americans view their schools.”

Hockenberry and other Lufkin school leaders said the challenge is to win families back.

Where’d all the kids go?

An estimated 9,043 school-age children live in the Lufkin school district — a slight increase compared to 10 years ago, according to American Community Survey data.

There are five other independent school districts in Angelina County and a tuition-free charter school and three religious-based private schools.

Gay, the school board chair in an interview with The Texas Tribune, highlighted Pineywoods Community Academy — the tuition-free charter school — as a possible place where students migrated.

Pineywoods enrollment grew during the same period Lufkin ISD shrank. During the 2012-13 school year, about 635 students were enrolled at the charter school. This year, there are 1,022 students between kindergarten and 12th grade, according to state records.

Pineywoods officials did not return request for comment.

It’s unclear how many students may have left the district for home schooling, which has grown in popularity. The state does not track home schooling data. However, the Texas Home School Coalition, a home school advocacy group, reported 1,868 withdrawals from public schools in Angelina County between 2012-13 and 2022-23. This data does not account for where those students wound up.

Gay said she did not believe the local private schools had seen a boon in enrollment. However, one of those schools isn’t ruling out an expansion if state lawmakers approve education savings accounts, or vouchers.

St. Patrick Catholic Classical School leadership sees an opportunity to reach students who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford their tuition.

“The recent discussions around school vouchers in Texas could create exciting opportunities,” said Candice Halls, the school’s finance and operations executive. “We are hopeful that if the voucher system is passed more families will be attracted to our school.”

Learning to compete

Lufkin could do more to highlight the value of its education programs and history, district leaders said.

Lufkin high school students have attended world championships for robotics. There is also a wide range of technical education programs and connections to local industries that could set students up with employment opportunities. And of course, more than one Lufkin alumni has had a successful professional football career.

Gay hopes the closure of these campuses will allow the district to invest more in the students they have. But the district may face a host of new challenges if the Legislature establishes a voucher program.

More small schools put school districts with large operating costs, like maintaining a football field, at a disadvantage, Scribner, the Maryland professor, said. These resources become even more difficult to maintain without reliable funding.

There are also new marketing costs.

In Milwaukee, which has had a limited voucher program for low-income families, districts have to prove to parents why their district should be the one to educate local children.

“Some schools were spending tens of thousands of dollars on these materials, which was then tens of thousands of dollars not going to students,” Scribner said. “Is that an improvement? Is that more efficient?”

Gay recognizes that regardless of what happens with vouchers, Lufkin must do a better job of showcasing its assets.

St. Patrick has already been doing this for years and recently partnered with the city of Lufkin on a professional video project to highlight what makes Lufkin “a great place to live, work, and raise a family,” Hall said.

“If the voucher system is approved, we will review our marketing strategies again to attract prospective families who are interested in using vouchers,” Hall said. “We will focus on emphasizing our unique academic programs, smaller class sizes, and the personal attention students receive coupled with the affordability and accessibility of private education that access to vouchers would bring.”

The next step

The process to close the two schools is underway.

Kurth Primary, is a long stretch of building in the southeast corner of town. It has served students in kindergarten through second grade.

Coston Elementary is a small cluster of buildings with large windows. It resides in a quiet neighborhood on the northeast side of Lufkin and has educated third-, fourth- and fifth-graders.

Both schools served the smallest number of students compared to other schools serving the same ages in the district. It will be a rough transition at first for the 500 children and dozens of teachers and staff who will have to relocate, school trustees said. The district was vague about how many jobs would be lost in the process, but there were a number of openings left available at other campuses for staff and educators to take, they said.

“These first few months to a year are going to be some of the most difficult that the district is going to have to deal with,” Gay said.

Families this week will have an opportunity to visit the district’s other schools, then they must decide where to send their children by March 3.

They’ll just have two fewer options.

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