The Aldine (Texas) school board has voted to close six campuses, citing declining enrollment, low birth rates and a lack of housing growth in the area.
The Houston Chronicle reports that De Santiago and Stovall primary campuses, and Oleson, Smith, Raymond and Eckert elementaries will shut down at the end of the academic year.
De Santiago and Stovall are two of 12 primary campuses in Aldine that serve only early childhood, pre-k and kindergarten students.
The closings will affect 2,800 students that attend one of the six schools.
Hoffman Middle School had been on the list of the proposed closures, but board members decided to keep that campus open after parents expressed concern about losing the magnet program, Hoffman College Prep, that is housed there.
The campus closings comes as the district has experienced a 20% decline in enrollment over the past 10 years; from a peak of 70,000 students in 2014, Aldien's student numbers have dropped to 56,419.
Demographers project that Aldine will lose another 9,000 students by 2034.
The district has closed nine campuses in the last two years.
All but one of the campuses that will be closed next year are over 30 years old. Oleson, Raymond and Smith opened in the 1960s and De Santiago, Stovall and Eckert were built in the 1990s.
