Frey for TexasA lot of feelings were shared last Monday night. Our Lewisville ISD board had scheduled to vote on whether to shutdown multiple Public School buildings due to lack of funding and dropping attendance. Here is one testimony given by another local family that stuck out to me.
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My name is John Pyle, father of a first grader at Highland Village Elementary, and a four year old who I hope still has the opportunity to be a Viking. I wanted to take this last opportunity to address the board and plead with you to do the right thing and keep these schools open. It has become increasingly clear that some sort of new pressure has been put on this board to make these
drastic decisions. We have asked time and time again why now, why so soon? Why, when we are within the 1.5% target deficit that you are shooting for for the twenty four twenty five school year, our deficit is 0.8%, or as Buddy has now infamously put it, smaller than a gnat's eyelash. Make no mistake about it, these moves are drastic.
Hundreds of parents have emailed you or spoken to you about the commuting issues moving us to heritage will create. Families who chose Highland Village because it was a neighborhood school that they could walk to or they could drop off and quickly be back on the highway. Many like myself have come to you incredibly vulnerable and discussed our children, some with learning disabilities, some with social or behavioral issues, all of whom have had their lives
immeasurably improved by Highland Village and their wonderful teachers. We have expressed to you our concerns about how this change will affect or even set back our children. By closing HVE in these other schools, you are drastically altering the lives of your constituents in a negative way. You have been so quick to bring up five to seven years. We'll be bankrupt in five to seven years if we
do nothing. The proposed closure does nothing to fix the problem. We will still be in a deficit. So what is it by us? One or two more years, then we'll still be bankrupt? I urge you to buck whatever pressure has driven you to this point. I urge you to focus on providing the best education
for our kids instead of focusing on the bottom line. Highland Village Elementary is an astounding school by every metric. It should be a representation you're using to showcase to the state why we need increased funding and why public schools can work when we treat it like our duty as a society and not like a business of profits and loss or a piece of a political ecosystem. I urge you to address the real problem that is
Greg Abbott and his cronies in Austin who've been doing everything they can to cripple the public education system of Texas so they can save their CEO friends $10,000 a year on tuition. Keep our schools open, spend the time you have left getting every elementary school in LISD to perform to the same standards that Highland Village consistently has. Demand that Austin address the public education system, not just
here in Louisville, but across the state. Be the district that stands up for what is right, that stands up for your constituents. If nothing changes in Austin, the district will go bankrupt either way. So operate at a loss. Do it the right way. Listen to your teachers, listen to your families, and when
the time comes, you can proudly showcase what it looks like when a district truly cares about educating their children.