A trustee of the Austin Independent School District (AISD) has divulged his plans for the redevelopment of a former elementary school in East Austin – a deal that could be worth $30 million.

Trustee Jayme Mathias raised the idea in an email to constituents just hours after voting to close four elementary schools in East and Central Austin.

His idea is to sell the Anita Ferrales Coy Facility, which serves alternative education students, and move those students to Pease Elementary, which Mathias and five other trustees voted Monday to close.

Meanwhile, the Pease students would be transferred to Zavala Elementary, or to other campuses of their parents’ choosing. Pease is an all-transfer school in central Austin popular with downtown commuters.

Mathias admitted that his proposal has not yet been vetted by AISD staff.

However, AISD already put the 19.81-acre Anita Ferrales Coy Facility up for bid in 2016 and received a $13 million bid from Presidium Group and a $14 million bid from Colina West Limited.

At the time the facility was known as Allan Elementary.

In the three years since 2016, property values in East Austin have risen significantly, which means the sale price today could be far higher than $13 or $14 million. The 2019 appraised value is $30 million, according to the Travis County Appraisal District.

Located at 4900 Gonzales St., the property is now home to AISD’s Alternative Learning Center, is a program for students removed from other campuses after a disciplinary process, as well as students removed because of “social challenges” or “community-based incidents.”

On its website, the Alternative Learning Center calls itself “a school community built on second chances.”

In his email to constituents, Mathias explained why he was proposing reshuffling students from Anita Ferrales Coy to Pease to Zavala: “Because the Pease site in downtown Austin must, according to the original land deed, be used for public education, there is the exciting possibility—admittedly not yet vetted by our district—that we could create a more central location for the students of our Alternative Learning Center (ALC) and our Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program (JJAEP), thus placing them closer to justice resources and allowing us to redevelop our Anita Ferrales Coy campus in East Austin for affordable housing for families!”

Terry Woodroffe, a Pease parent and one of Mathias’ constituents, said she was shocked to receive this email on the morning after the school board meeting at which Mathias voted to close her child’s school.

“It’s just so gross and insulting and salt in the wound the morning after. The big flag for us at Pease, is how this was a bait-and-switch land grab. They can’t sell Pease. It was never about any of the moving target reasons they offered up, every one of which we refuted with data. (Under enrollment! Equity! Too expensive to stay a school! We’ll save money by making it an archive!),” she said in an email to Honest Austin.

“It was salt in the wound the morning after.” Pease Parent

Woodroffe says that she regrets having voted for Mathias. She also says she’s not buying the lip service that Mathias is paying to promoting affordable housing. “We all know how developers change up affordable housing units — it’s always a percentage of the units available and they never stay affordable for long.”

Mathias defended the proposal, saying in his email, “Affordable housing for families is top-of-mind for me and for so many others in East Austin. Some East Austinites have been advocating for the redevelopment of Austin ISD properties as affordable housing for families since the closure of Allan Elementary in 2013…”

He added, “The Austin ISD’s precipitous decline in enrollment is largely due to the increasing lack of affordability in Austin, and I look forward to seeing how affordable housing will be prioritized at our Metz, Brooke and Allan sites. Let’s bring families back to our city and back to our public schools!”

If the current Pease building does end up hosting AISD’s Alternative Learning Center and Juvenile Justice Alternative Program, it would end up having about 134 students, according to Texas Education Agency data on last year’s enrollment of these two programs.

That’s about 60% of the number of students currently at Pease, or just under half of Pease’s permanent capacity, which would still leave room for AISD to use parts of Pease for a media center, archive, or social justice center, as the district proposed during the recent ‘school changes’ discussions.

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Photo Credit, top: A ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Anita Ferrales Coy Facility, Aug. 30 (AISD / Facebook)

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