Midway ISD is considering closing its oldest school by the end of the school year, citing enrollment declines and budget pressures across the district.
At a board meeting Tuesday, Superintendent Chris Allen proposed closing Speegleville Elementary near Highway 6, citing the high cost of staffing and maintaining an aging school with only 221 students. The school was built in 1954.
Allen said the district is looking for ways to cut due to a budget deficit driven by rising operational costs and state funding that has not kept up the district’s needs. The district estimates the closure could save $1.2 million a year in staffing, utilities and transportation.
“I don’t see a solution to the problem,” Allen told the board. “I don’t see us getting more funding from the state. I don’t see that this is going to be an issue that solves itself anytime soon. I do believe we will have another campus in Speegleville one day.”
Several school board members voiced urgency to vote on the closure, perhaps in a special meeting in the next two weeks.
Allen proposed splitting most of the school population between Woodway and South Bosque elementary schools, which have adequate capacity for them.
A facility study committee for the 2025 Midway bond election rated Speegleville Elementary’s condition as poor. Bringing the campus up to minimal current standards would cost the district $4.3 million, and the campus has an outdated leach field septic system that limits its growth capacity.
The facility study committee recommended replacing the school in the November 2025 bond election at a cost, but trustees stripped it from the final bond issue of $83.5 million, which passed.
Midway officials say the Speegleville campus serves an area that is not growing.
Enrollment has decreased by 25% at the elementary school in the last six years. In 2026, the school’s enrollment is projected at 218 students. In 2020, the district added fifth grade to its elementary schools. The enrollment at Speegleville was 293 in 2020.
The school’s per-student operating cost is $9,221 – 30% higher than the second most expensive campus in the district, Chapel Park Elementary.
“I’m to blame, to some degree, for this disproportionate cost – the $9,000 per student,” Allen said. “We’ve done everything we can to try and provide the campus what it needs to be an attractive campus. The challenge is we continue to lose enrollment.”
The small enrollment and age of the facility mean Speegleville needs more staff to ensure its operation. And enrollment is shrinking.
“Every time we lose a student out there, that operational inefficiency, that gap widens,” Allen said.
Midway ISD started the school year with a $3.5 million deficit in its maintenance and operations budget.
The state gives districts a yearly “basic allotment” of $6,215 per student, up only $55 since 2020. In the same period, Midway’s basic costs have skyrocketed, Allen said.
“From 2020-2026, we’ve seen a 219% increase in security services, 129% in fuel and 213% in property and casualty insurance,” Allen said. “We’ve been underfunded in special education over ten and a half million dollars.”
Separate from the per-pupil allotment, the Texas Legislature last year passed House Bill 2 to boost certain categories of school funding, which brought Midway an additional $4.28 million. Nearly half of the funding went to raises for experienced teachers. To keep up with those raises, the district used its own money to fund an additional $1.3 million to cover raises for staff and early career teachers left out of the bill.
“I was hopeful, probably naive, but I was hopeful the Legislature would give us the resources we needed to keep Speegleville open,” said Trustee Jonathan Green. “That was my hope, that was my wish… I really, really wanted to keep Speegleville open.
“But based on the numbers that Dr. Allen shared, just kind of the circumstances and the state of public education and the fact our legislators think private school kids are worth $10,000 and public school kids are worth $6,000 and change,” Green added. “It’s just making it really tough and I hate that. We are put in a tough spot.”
Midway has frozen hiring districtwide as it awaits a decision on the future of Speegleville Elementary and its staff. If the board decides to close the campus, staff would be reassigned to other campuses.
Speegleville Elementary Principal Mandi Bronstad spoke Tuesday at the invitation of Trustee Pam Watts.
“My biggest thing is really, honestly – and please don’t throw anything at me at work tomorrow – is not what decision you make,” Bronstad said. “It’s not whether you decide to close Speegleville … The biggest thing on my heart is that the decision is made sooner rather than later. I have watched the morale and feelings of staff go up and down all year long. There’s not anything anybody could’ve done about that … It’s been hard to watch for families that know. It’s been hard to watch the longer this lingers on that just continues.”
The school’s small size means a handful of students can affect STAAR results and accountability ratings, which puts a burden on teachers, school officials said.
Several on the Midway ISD board expressed an urgency to decide Speegleville’s future.
“Every day that we move that decision up makes it easier on the staff, easier on the families, makes it easier on everyone to know what’s coming,” Trustee Colin Witt said.
Board president Susan Vick cited concerns with long bus times for students if the campus were to close.
Watts expressed sympathy for the school’s community. She apologized for the delay in the decision.
“This community is in a state of uncertainty and the degree to which that has been agonizing, I feel it and I am sorry,” she said. “This may be common across the state. It’s never happened in the history of Midway. We’ve closed a campus to build a new one. But we have never had to shut down a school.”
