Arlington ISD parent Caitlin Hogan’s daughters frequently came home excited about the STEM lab manager at Hill Elementary.
He greeted the girls every day in the hallway, she said, and they enjoyed his “crazy inventions,” like a 3D robot he brought once. He’d fill in at the front office and at school events when needed.
In the new school year, the lab manager won’t greet Hogan’s daughters. He won’t show off his latest invention. He won’t chaperone the school’s dance.
He won’t be in that role.
Hill Elementary’s STEM lab manager was one of 307 positions Arlington ISD cut as the roughly 50,000-student district deals with tighter finances and declining enrollment, according to data obtained through records requests.
“It was someone who was always there and always knew the parents and kids,” Hogan said. “I feel anyone who knows and treats my kids so respectfully every day, I hate to lose them. That means a lot to me when someone respects and loves my kids like that.”
Superintendent Matt Smith said the cuts were necessary as the district fights a nearly $60 million budget shortfall and shrinks its staffing to serve a smaller enrollment.
In 2015, the district enrolled roughly 63,000 students. Near the end of the 2025-26 school year, that number was about 51,000.
Third-party demographers commissioned by the district predict AISD will fall to less than 50,000 students next year and about 43,000 by 2033.
“The bar isn’t just to say we’re going to just cut to make things right as a school district and live within our budget,” Smith said. “Our job is actually to evolve, live within our budget but also make things exceptional.”
The cuts included positions across all levels of schooling, as well as some in the district office.
Cafeteria monitors and STEM lab managers were the positions with the most cuts. Both served at the elementary level.
As a former teacher, Smith said he understands parents’ concerns about the extra workload for classroom instructors. The district will need to split the responsibilities among staff members, he said.
“There’s no intention of just placing 100% of the burden of a position that’s no longer there on another person,” he said.
He added that while STEM lab managers were great to have in Arlington ISD, but that the position was a support role most other districts don’t have. The cuts won’t disrupt AISD’s STEM teaching, he said.
Smith first announced the cuts in a May 7 email to district staff. In the email, he detailed the reductions that led to a 3% decrease in campus budgets and a 6% reduction in administrative budget expenses. The cuts resulted in $14,485,220 in cost savings, according to data obtained through records requests.
District leaders also cut assistant principals at five high schools and three elementaries, according to records.
The cuts left each of the three affected elementary schools with one assistant principal each, according to the district’s website. Venture High School, an alternative education campus, will also have one assistant principal. The other impacted high schools have either five or six.
Staffing ratios and enrollments at each campus, as well as a comparison of staffing between Arlington ISD and other school districts, determined the cuts, Smith said.
“We’ve realized over the course of 14-plus years now in Arlington ISD that our enrollment has been declining by over 1,000 students a year, and we’ve talked about it at many board meetings,” Smith said. “We had to start taking a look at: Does our staffing actually match the number of students that we have in the system, and is it sustainable in the long term?”
In the May 7 email, Smith said affected employees could apply for open positions within the district. He added that employees who had contracts would be reassigned to a role aligned with their current job.
Smith said he didn’t know the exact number of impacted employees who secured a different AISD job. He emphasized that the district wanted to keep as many employees as possible.
“We meant it when we said it: We actually want our people here,” Smith said. “We have vacancies in our system; they just didn’t align with the positions. They weren’t in that same position, so we had to ask people to think about what other positions they might be interested in.”
Staff cuts aren’t the only place where Arlington ISD leaders are having to slash costs due to the major budget shortfall.
Trustees voted not to give employees raises in the upcoming school year, after at least five years of pay increases that thrust Arlington ISD’s base teacher salary to the top in North Texas.
Hogan, the mom with daughters at Hill Elementary, attended Arlington ISD from kindergarten through graduation.
Four years ago, as she looked at schools for her children, she thought about sending them to a charter school but ultimately decided she’d rather support AISD.
Hogan’s interest in public education pushed her to speak out about the cuts during a school board meeting. She wasn’t alone in that endeavor.
In the meetings following the May reorganization, other parents, students and employees asked the district to reverse course.
Michelle Sellers, who was the STEM lab manager at Burgin Elementary, told trustees May 20 that she and others in that job contributed much more to the campuses than some think.
Losing the positions could have wide-ranging consequences, she said.
“Without a STEM lab manager, there will be a significant gap between the district’s STEM identity and the reality in practice,” Sellers told trustees.
At the June 4 school board meeting, Bowie High School teacher Carl Howell brought notes from students praising a counselor at the south Arlington school whose position was cut.
“You have the chance to leave people here who inspire and make other kids want to come to the district,” Howell said.
Hogan said the future of Arlington ISD is difficult to think about as a parent.
“Not knowing if our school is going to close or where we will end up is very, very stressful,” Hogan said. “I don’t want my kids to have to change schools in the middle of elementary school. It’s a big enough deal now that we’re moving the sixth grade to junior high. I don’t want to also have to worry about which of these schools might be closing or reducing staff.”
Arlington ISD isn’t the only district dealing with enrollment and budgetary issues, but the district needs to change and face its new reality, Smith said.
“We have this appropriations deficit in our state that we know is real, we have this inflation that we know is real and we have a changing situation with the number of kids entering school,” he said. “It’s our job to start to evolve and figure out how to do things differently.”
Smith said he understands that cuts are personal for people, but additional reorganization and cuts are on the table as the district looks to adjust to the right size for the students it serves.
“We’re looking at everything from positions to pay to buildings to how we all work together and do business differently, and it’s going to be messy. It just is. I wish it wasn’t,” Smith said. “I can’t control some of those things. I want to focus on the things we can control and try and treat people as well as we can.”
Chris Moss is a reporter for the Arlington Report. Contact him at chris.moss@arlingtonreport.org.
At the Arlington Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
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