On a March morning, third-grader Talia Martinez began class in the backseat of her mother’s maroon Honda sedan.
She and her co-teacher, kindergartener Lily Dowis, instructed a class of make-believe students to write sentences. The girls traced letters in spiral notebooks, while Selina Martinez, Talia’s mother, changed lanes on busy Highway 290 en route to Becker Elementary.
“So far we have written two sentences: we just need one more after we read this book,” Talia told her imaginary class.
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In the 15-minute ride to Becker Elementary from the girls’ homes in South Austin, they read aloud and tried to quiet a couple of their rowdier “students,” who they called Michael and Jolly.
The backseat schoolhouse emerged about a year ago, but the two families have been carpooling since the children were toddlers attending daycare. This spring, Talia and Lily had to break the news to their pupils that class as they knew it was ending.
The girls’ school — Becker Elementary — closed this summer, as part of a sweeping Austin Independent School District plan to shutter 10 campuses to address declining enrollment and a $181 million budget deficit. Now, the children are heading separate ways: Lily and her brother, Finn, to Austin ISD’s Mills Elementary and Talia to the private The Girls’ School of Austin.
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The change means no more morning carpools, school concerts or classroom parties together.
“We’re going to lose that,” Selina said. “Not that relationship, but it’s going to look different.”
Selina Martinez does her daughter Talia’s hair at home before heading out to the door for carpool to Becker Elementary School, April 16, 2026. Talia attends third grade at Becker but will need to move to a new school with AISD closes the elementary school at the end of the 2025-26 school year.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
The morning commute to Becker Elementary will change for Selina Martinez and her daughter Talia when the school closes at the end of the school year. The Martinez family share pick-up and drop off duties with another family in their neighborhood, but that will soon change as Talia will be headed to a different school.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
For years, Austin advocates and families fought against the possibility of sweeping school closures. While research points to negative short-term academic outcomes for children, the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University found closing under-enrolled schools can save districts money.
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In 2019, the district closed four schools, largely in historic Hispanic areas of East Austin. Last year, Austin ISD trustees voted to shutter 10 more campuses and the International High School for students new to the country.
District officials have said the move was necessary to save money and align resources with a rapidly shrinking student body. Last school year, student enrollment dipped below 70,000 for the first time since the early 1990s.
As families at closing campuses evaluated their options for next school year, Austin ISD leadership hoped to retain as many students as possible. By late May, more than 2,270 of the nearly 3,380 students enrolled at the closing campuses had already registered for another Austin ISD school, according to district data. Many families don’t register for school until fall.
Exactly how the closures will reshape Austin ISD isn’t yet clear. Some Austin ISD families worried that the closures would drive parents, betrayed by the loss of a beloved school, out of an already shrinking district. Others who committed to stay are questioning the future of a district that is already grappling with the possibility that more schools may have to close.
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Drew and Selina Martinez shake hands with Young People’s Workshop founders Monica Moreno and Ramon Aguirre after taking a tour of their Spanish dual immersion school, Jan. 15, 2026.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Selina and Drew Martinez sit at their dining table, examining school ranking spreadsheets on Jan. 21, 2026. The Martinez family must rank which AISD schools they are most interested in sending their older daughter, Talia, to fourth grade at after her current school, Becker Elementary, closes at the end of the school year. The district will take these rankings into account, but each school has limited spots so families may not get into their first choice.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Bittersweet farewell
The board’s decision to close schools gutted the Martinezes.
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It wasn’t only the building, although they loved Becker’s art deco schoolhouse and lush garden. It also wasn’t just the dual-language instruction that taught Talia in English and Spanish, something the family felt righted a historic wrong in the Martinez family.
The community had taken their hearts. Every volunteer day at the school’s lush vegetable garden and fundraiser filled with music and food were something special — the parents and staff had poured their love into the place. Losing a space that brought people together was frightening for so many families because it put at risk what many people had worked so hard to build, said James Dowis, Lily’s father.
“The community’s still there, but it’s going to take more effort to keep it at the same level,” he said.
The closures also forced single mom Esther Flores to find a new school for both her girls.
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Her daughter, Ariel Fletcher, a rising eighth grader, attended Bedichek Middle School while her youngest, Alyssa, who will be in third grade next year, attended Dawson Elementary, a campus tucked between traditional Austin ranch houses and sleek designer new-builds on the rapidly developing South First Street.
The goodbye to Dawson, which both of her girls attended, felt untimely. For about a decade, Flores’ children played on the sunny playground or learned new steps for the annual Snowball Dance or Harvest Hop, where students performed routines for their parents.
“We were just connected to that school,” Flores said. “We don’t live in that part of town, but we were part of that community.”
Bedichek, a South Austin stalwart, also felt like home with its embrace of families’ Latino culture.
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“The assistant principal would put music on (at lunch) and start dancing cumbia,” Flores said.
In the gym in early April, sitting on rows of folding chairs with her classmates, Ariel struggled to hold back her emotion as school leaders led the students in a goodbye ceremony.
The students clapped their thighs, stomped on the metal bleachers and yelled, as staff unveiled brightly colored posters with Bedichek’s bobcat mascot, which students had helped paint.
Next year, Ariel will attend Covington Middle School, her third middle school in three years. Given the choice between three nearby middle schools, Covington immediately stood out to Flores because of its strong athletics program. She filed an appeal so her daughter could attend.
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Alyssa will go to Galindo because many of her friends are attending, and the school made more sense for the family’s transportation plans. Getting both kids to and from school can be a puzzle, and transportation arrangements were one of Flores’ first concerns when she heard the campuses would close.
“Y’all are really stressing me out as a single mom,” she said of AISD.
Talia Martinez speaks with a teacher from Oak Hill Elementary as she tours the school, March 6, 2026. Martinez is touring schools within and outside of AISD, looking for a new dual language program to replace the program she attends at Becker Elementary School, which will close with the school at the end of the academic year.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Selina Martinez holds her daughter Talia as they take a tour of Oak Hill Elementary, March 6, 2026. Oak Springs has a dual language program, which is important to the Martinez family as the school Talia currently attends, Becker Elementary, will close, along with its dual language program, at the end of the academic year.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Talia Martinez examines Spanish-language instruction on a whiteboard in a fourth grade classroom at Oak Hill Elementary School, March 6, 2026. Martinez and her family are searching for new options for dual language programming within and outside of AISD due to the closure of her current school, Becker Elementary.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Selina and Talia Martinez walk the halls of Oak Hill Elementary during a tour of the school, March 6, 2026. The Martinez family are exploring options within and outside of AISD for Talia to attend fourth grade, since her current school, Becker Elementary, will be closing.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Talia and Selina Martinez walk outside to the large playground area at Oak Hill Elementary during a tour of the campus, March 6, 2026.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Talia Martinez climbs on a structure at the Oak Hill Elementary School playground during a tour of the campus, March 6, 2026. Martinez and her family were interested in touring the school because of the dual language program. Talia currently attends dual language third grade at Becker Elementary, but will need to enroll elsewhere when the school closes at the end of the academic year.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Talia Martinez examines books on the shelf in the Oak Hill Elementary School library during a campus tour, March 6, 2026.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Replanting community
Diana Sanchez didn’t have a hard time choosing her daughter Tessa’s new school, but that didn’t make leaving behind Sunset Valley Elementary any easier. Rising fourth-grader Tessa has been at Sunset Valley since she was in prekindergarten. Next year, the Sanchezes, like many other campus families, will head to Odom Elementary, which will become the district’s only whole-campus dual language school.
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“We’re lucky because our campus was just uprooted, and we’re being planted somewhere else,” Sanchez said. “Other campuses are just being scattered to the wind.”
If anything, saying goodbye to the tight-knit community only got harder as the year drew to a close, Sanchez said.
Sitting in Sunset Valley’s blue carpeted library for a final PTA meeting in May, surrounded by the parents she’d spent countless evenings and weekends with, Sanchez began choking up. Their last act as a PTA, which had organized countless fiestas and raised thousands of dollars for school costs, was to formally dissolve itself.
“It was just like, ‘Oh my god,’” she said. “It really started hitting people.”
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Several weeks later, Sanchez braved the heat with a handful of other parents to weed eat the grass around the now-empty school. The lawn already bore signs of change: volunteer parents had disassembled the planter boxes that once grew cucumbers, eggplants and melons, uprooting pieces of the garden that families had so lovingly tended to over the years. Later this summer, Sanchez and other parents plan to dig out milkweed, blue mistflower and other precious plants from Sunset Valley’s garden.
Soon, those plants will come with them to Odom to be replanted and find a second life in the new space.
Long goodbyes
Selina and Drew Martinez were driving to the airport to visit family when they got the call they’d been waiting for all semester — Talia had been accepted into The Girls’ School of Austin, a private school in West Austin.
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“That was really a relief,” Drew said. “That really worked out, after all the stress and everything like that with this experience.”
The campus, which serves girls in kindergarten through eighth grade, had stood out to the Martinezes through a dozen tours of area schools. They especially liked the school’s curriculum that emphasizes social justice. The decision ended their months of evaluating Austin ISD campuses and private schools. They read up on curriculum, estimated drive times and talked with other families.
Originally insistent on a dual-language program, the family eventually set aside that wish in favor of something they felt was more important: a school where they felt Talia could thrive and grow.
Although the Martinezes filled out an Austin ISD campus preference sheet and seriously considered staying with the district, the decision to close Becker fractured their trust. How could they fall in love with another school if they feared it might shut down, too?
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Drew and Talia Martinez watch Talent Show performances during the final Becker Elementary School Pachanga, the annual end-of-year celebration for the school, May 17, 2026. Becker Elementary closed at the end of the academic year.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Becker’s closure unlodged a cascade of uncertainty and distrust about Austin ISD itself. It didn’t help that the closures came so close to a series of other near-existential challenges emerging in Austin ISD.
Budget cuts because of a $181 million deficit, looming staff reductions and a rising threat that the state might take over Austin ISD — for the Martinezes, every new piece of information felt like picking at a raw wound. None of it felt fair.
“As individual schools, they’re successful, despite the district,” Martinez said. “With all the risk of everything that’s going on with the state, that’s where it’s hard to continue to put our faith in there.”
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Sanchez has her own reservations about the district’s long-term stability.
Persistent academic failings at three North Austin middle schools have put the district at risk of a takeover. She and her husband want to be a part of public schools. She doesn’t think Austin ISD is to blame for all the challenges it is facing. But at times, she wonders how long her family will stick it out with the district.
“For now,” she said, “we’re weathering the storm with AISD.”