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Rural District Is Struggling to Make Improvements
Superintendent Ernest Singleton, left, and Enrique Ruiz, the principal, at Premont High School, where athletics were suspended.
By MORGAN SMITH
Published: April 7, 2012
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PREMONT — The hallways at this rural town's only high school were deserted on a Tuesday afternoon in January, much to Enrique Ruiz's delight. It meant everyone who had shown up for school that day was in class — a sight that Mr. Ruiz, the school's principal, has learned not to take for granted.
Expanded coverage of Texas is produced by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit news organization. To join the conversation about this article, go to texastribune.org.
Failing Grades
This article is one of a five-part series on failing Texas school districts and their fight to survive.
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Eddie Seal for The Texas Tribune
Ricky Sanchez, 17, played on the basketball team, a victim of suffering finances.
Getting students to school and keeping them there has become a matter of survival for the 570-student Premont Independent School District, where lagging attendance rates are hurting the district financially and academically. The district received notice in July that it would face closing because of its years of poor academic performance and shoddy finances.
The South Texas district has made drastic moves to improve its finances — including cutting high school sports — and in December the Texas Education Agency granted it another year to reach certain benchmarks and avoid closing. But as Premont I.S.D. struggles to make improvements, critics blame the state's academic accountability and school finance systems, saying they unjustly punish districts that serve largely low-income populations and get meager per-student financing.
"This is a fight that's going to replay itself until school finance is done," said State Representative J. M. Lozano, Republican of Kingsville, who graduated from Premont High in 1998. "More rural communities are going to go through the same thing because they just can't pass those exams."
Premont I.S.D. is one of just two Texas districts facing possible closing this year — the other is North Forest I.S.D in northeast Houston. Located in Jim Wells County, which has struggled with high teen birth and poverty rates, Premont is a primarily Hispanic town of 2,600 sandwiched between the relative hubs of Alice and Falfurrias on Highway 281. Only 32 percent of its ninth-graders passed state standardized tests in math in 2010. Since a mold infestation about two years ago, it has operated without high school science labs.
Premont's troubles are typical of many rural school districts, where enrollment is dwindling and academic performance and finances are suffering.
By failing to trim costs and staff in the wake of declining enrollment — the district has lost about 25 percent of its student population since 2006 — it accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.
After the town passed a tax increase in November to help fill the district's coffers, the T.E.A. granted the district another year to meet a set of 11 conditions to avoid closing, including retiring a $400,000 line of credit, restoring the science labs and improving performance on state standardized tests and attendance rates, which had been below 90 percent.
New hope for survival prompted Superintendent Ernest Singleton in January to do something drastic to trim costs: suspend athletics.
The move captured national media attention. In January, in front of 4,000 other school leaders at an educators' conference in Austin, Robert Scott, the state's education commissioner, commended Mr. Singleton's efforts to turn around the district.
But the local response was even more valuable. In March, neighboring school districts announced they would help raise the $100,000 that Premont I.S.D. needs for the labs. At least two corporations that do business in the area — Exxon Mobil and Jetta Operating Company — have contributed $20,000 each to the district, and Mr. Singleton said discussions with other potential donors are in the works. The bank that holds the $400,000 line of credit has agreed to give the district more time to repay the loan.
Premont I.S.D.'s future looks brighter now than it did in December. But Mr. Singleton said there is still much work to do to change the culture of poor academics and truancy. Through his home visits to students on days they missed school, he said, the district has been able to increase its average attendance rate to 92 percent. That is still below its goal of 96 percent, but it is a marked improvement over last year.
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msmith@texastribune.org
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