SAN ANTONIO — Community members have a chance to provide feedback to San Antonio ISD on how it can repurpose its recently closed campuses across the city.
A group showed up Monday evening to Douglass Elementary School to give feedback on what the district is calling its "rightsizing plan." The biggest question was who is going to use the vacant buildings and how they will be used?
On Tuesday, city crews were out in force removing all the school zones signs at Dorie Miller Academy.
The east side campus is one of more than a dozen schools that are being closed in the San Antonio ISD Rightsizing campaign.
It’s a cost cutting effort to deal with declining enrollment.
SAISD the campuses will be repurposed.
"We're trying to make the best decisions for the entire community and they're not easy. There's not something that's going to happen overnight, so we will continue to update," said Alicia Sebastian, vice president of the SAISD Board of Trustees.
A talking point at Monday's meeting was how the district can open the buildings to nonprofits in the area.
Some, like Patricio Calvo with the nonprofit TRL Productions, said they're eager to pursue that option.
"If, say, we do have a proposal ready now, should we be presenting it to someone here on the panel, or are we still just in that waiting mode?" offered Calvo.
SAISD hasn't made an official decision at the moment, but says it would still own the buildings so they're still benefitting children.
"A lot of the proposals and ideas that we're hearing are from collective organizations. They're not submitting one-offs because there's a lot of responsibility with access and properties because of the maintenance and the upkeep," said Sebeastian.
The district's goal is to break even on the cost of maintaining buildings while keeping prices low for potential users.
SAISD officials also said they're working to hire a consultant to manage the properties and will soon accept requests from interested organizations.
For more information on this plan and future meetings, click here.