History of Segregation in the Metz Community
In February of 2019, AISD announced that they will be closing 4 elementary schools, including Metz Elementary, due to underenrollment. 3 out of the 4 schools reside in East Austin. To understand why these schools are underenrolled, we must look at the history of segregation in Austin, beginning with the City of Austin's 1928 plan. Although the plan's objective was mainly to force Black families into East Austin, the racially discriminatory housing practices in the downtown area eventually led to East Austin becoming the home to the majority of the city's Black and Latino residents (Trowbridge). This pattern of residential segregation continued until the late 1990s. Now in 2021, heavy gentrification coupled with urban development planning, has led East Austin to become a attractive location for UT studens and affluent young whites (Trowbridge). These people, who usually have no children, are moving in and raising rent prices. The families that cannot keep up with increased housing costs move out - contributing to Metz Elementary's underenrollment issue.
One main factor for Austin's heavily segregated schools is their historic resistance towards anti-segregation efforts. In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that school segregation was unconstitutional. Throughout the '50s and ’60s, AISD made little effort to integrate schools and few students left their segregated communities (McInerny). In the 1970s, the federal government sued the district for not complying with Brown v. Board. In 1980, 26 years after the Supreme Court’s ruling, substantial changes finally began in AISD. The district began busing both white and minority students, facilitating the integrattion of the schools within AISD.
In 1987, the AISD decided to end crosstown busing for elementary students. This led to 16 elementary schools made up almost entirely of minority students. To fend off any more scrutiny by federal government, the district labled them as "priority schools", invested more money in them and closely observed their academics for a while (McInerny).
"Now, the schools that are currently under-enrolled and low performing tend to be those same schools. What I underestimated was that once those schools were identified as one-race schools, that meant that a lot of people were not eager to send their children there. It was sort of the beginning of the end for many of those schools.", says Roxanne Evans, who covered education for the Austin American Statesman in the 1980's during the height of desegregation efforts.
In 2016, Metz Elementary celebrated it's 100th anniversary alongside its sister school Matthews Elementary. Both were built at the same time, but the two schools could not be more different. Matthews Elementary, whose diversity has since increased, initially provided education for better-off White children in what is now Old West Austin and Clarksville. Metz Elementary, on the other hand, served working-class Latinos in lower East Austin (Michael Barnes, Austin American Statesman). The racial and economic divide between these two schools led to vastly different fates for each of them a century later, with Matthews Elementary keeping its doors open and Metz closing down.
Austin's long history of racially discriminating housing practices and pro-segregation efforts led to communities like East Austin where populations are almost entirely minority. These communities are now experiencing gentrification, which are displacing families that have been there for generations. These factors are what led to the underenrollement of Metz Elementary and the 3 other schools that AISD decided to shut down.
It is clear that systemic issues were an intergral part of what led AISD to close down these minority-majority and underfunded schools. Although the closing of Metz Elementary has undoubtedy shaken the surrounding community, it's legacy will live on forever.