Lindsey Yann sat on the front row in the Midway Independent School District board room Tuesday with her 6-year-old son waiting to hear the fate of her son’s small, tight-knit elementary school.
When the board unanimously approved the closure of Speegleville Elementary School, Yann was not surprised. Board members agreed that the district’s oldest and smallest school had become a drain on Midway ISD finances at a time of budget deficits.
The decision is effective at the end of the school year. It means Yann’s son, Theo, will be attending a new elementary school next fall where it’s unlikely every staff member will know his name.
Yann is disappointed that Speegleville families were not given more opportunities for input into the decision.
“We feel like we’re not given a choice,” Yann said. “When we moved here, we picked Speegleville because it was small in a good school district, and now we’re being told where we’re going and what we’re doing.”
Weighing costs
Speegleville Elementary was built in 1954 and has been part of Midway since a consolidation with Speegleville ISD in 1979.
The school’s rural location west of Lake Waco means it is not connected to any city sewer or water system. The school relies on a septic system, which limits how many students the school can accommodate.
“This decision was not taken lightly,” Superintendent Chris Allen told The Waco Bridge after Tuesday’s board meeting. “It’s been almost a year in the making, and closing the school is the most difficult thing a school district does, in that it is heartbreaking but necessary.”
The district has been discussing the needs of Speegleville since February 2025. After the facility study committee evaluated Midway ISD’s campuses and their needs, the committee found Speegleville Elementary would need some $4.3 million to bring the school to basic modern standards.
The district started the school year with a $3.5 million budget deficit.The district’s $83.5 bond election last year will help make physical improvements at campuses, but under state law those funds cannot be used for maintenance and operations. District officials project a $2.8 million budget deficit in the coming 2026-27 school year.
“If it were just one problem, it might be something we could come up with a strategy to overcome,” Allen said. “But it’s layers of issues that has brought this board to a decision vote.”
Enrollment enigma
Equally troubling is stagnating enrollment in a suburban school district long known for its growth. Allen presented data showing that McLennan County has a 0.58% birth rate, the lowest since 2010.
“We need at least 14 new (additional) students entering the first grade each year,” Allen told the board Tuesday. “Considering that these births are spread over the entire county, and we only have about 20% of students in the county coming to our schools, it’s unlikely to believe that we’re going to see a birth rate spike that overcomes this challenge anytime soon.”
In August 2025, Midway ISD board members began planning for a fall bond election, Trustee Rick Tullis hoped to vote for a new Speegleville Elementary as a study committee had recommended. But data showed that Midway had stopped growing around 2023.
“It was a gut punch to come in and hear that we had actually gone down,” Tullis said at Tuesday’s meeting.
Allen said he expects the district’s enrollment to continue to decline. In 2011, the district had more kindergarten students coming in than students graduating. However, in recent years that trend has reversed and the district has stopped growing.
At the high school, enrollment has hovered between 2,600 and 2,700. But once this year’s class of seventh-graders – the district’s largest class – Allen expects enrollment to plunge to 2,566.
“There’s no point in talking about a second high school anytime soon, based on these numbers at all,” Allen said.
Transportation puzzle
Midway ISD will divide students from Speegleville between two elementary schools: Woodway and South Bosque. Of the Speegleville students, 108 will attend South Bosque and 110 will attend Woodway.
At the February board meeting, the district presented proposed bus times that included routes as long as an hour. Since then, the district has worked to reduce those times.
Midway ISD Director of Operations Ken Wolf showed trustees maps of how the district decided attendance boundaries. The longest bus route is 38 minutes.
After attending the Speegleville Elementary meeting for parents on Feb. 25 and the board meeting on Tuesday night, Yann still had concerns regarding the bus routes.
“How are any of these kiddos expected to be their best selves for formal learning when they get on such early buses?” Yann said.
“We’ll figure out what works best, and move forward,” Yann said.
South Bosque space
South Bosque Elementary and Woodway Elementary both have capacity for Speegleville students, according to Midway officials.
However, the additional Speegleville students will put South Bosque close to capacity. The current capacity is 600 students. South Bosque currently has 484 students enrolled. Next year, South Bosque could see projected enrollment of 592 students.
The district stated it plans to make changes to the school as part of the bond package approved in November 2025. The changes include a reconfiguration that could expand the school’s capacity to the range of 620 to 640 range, Allen told the board.
That same project could move three of the four South Bosque’s portable classrooms back inside the main school building.
The district would consider building a new Speegleville Elementary “when the growth reaches a point that we can open a campus and it maintains sustainability,” Allen told the Bridge on Tuesday.
As the district solidifies plans for Speegleville, it is planning an end-of-year celebration in May and a welcome event for Speegleville teachers at their new elementary schools.
“Speegleville is our school and we’re going to do things that are very unique and specific to Speegleville,” said board Vice President Pam Watts. “And Midway is its own district, and we will honor our district priorities as well.
“That said, it’s fair to say there are other districts, other trustees, other administrators that we work with who have been through this before, and we can draw on their wisdom and experienced guidance.”
