The “Long Range Efficiency Committee”, tasked with addressing NEISD’s debt, conducted studies and visits to all district schools. Because of declining enrollment at Driscoll Middle School since 2013, the committee recommended campus consolidation. Given Driscoll’s low enrollment and other factors, the NEISD school board is considering closing the school for the 2025-2026 school year. A consolidation meeting was held at the middle school on Jan. 29 to explain where students of Driscoll will go after this school year. The school board will vote on Feb. 10 if Driscoll Middle School will officially consolidate with Harris and Garner Middle School.
The school board needs to vote to keep Driscoll open.
Students won’t get the emotional support for the transition into high school. During the Jan. 29 meeting, Superintendent Dr. Sean Maika explained that Driscoll students have counseling staff to help with this transition. Dr. Maika emphasized that parents must help with the transitions at home while the counselors can help at the new schools. Counselors won’t have time to build trust with the new students and help them with their emotional stress. Most Driscoll students take all three years to build trust with a counselor, not including any other events that might happen in students’ lives that cause distrust.
Since Driscoll students are being split between two different schools, students going to Harris Middle School can opt out of going to MacArthur. Although the students sent to Harris Middle School should go to Mac because of the boundary lines students can still use the school of choice option and head to Madison High School instead where most Harris students would go.
Finally, more money will be spent on creating these changes instead of saving the money to get out of debt for the NEISD Budget. Students are sent farther from their homes, causing more money to be spent on bus fuel. Bus drivers already have to pick up other routes, and have their own bus routes. Causing students at most campuses to be stuck at their school for close to an hour. Including fuel for the bus, other effects of inflation start a bigger negative impact with the campus consolidation instead of keeping Driscoll open.
The long-range efficiency committee assessed that low enrollment numbers are a factor for closing Driscoll however, decreasing enrollment is happening to all schools in the district. Using the enrollment rate as a major cause for this proposal is not a logical reason for the campus consolidation. Besides this, information provided at the consolidation meeting the administration hasn’t elaborated on any other reason to close down the school.
Instead of closing Driscoll to “save money” on the district’s budgets, the administration should alter boundaries that connect elementary schools to their feeder middle and high schools. It will bring a balance to the financial decline. The money counted for the student attendance and enrollment numbers can be better distributed between the schools and programs of the district.
