Students urged to skip class to protest closure

After losing their fight to keep Dodson Elementary open next school year, activists are calling for a new strategy - asking students to skip classes Monday morning.

Low attendance would mean the Houston Independent School District received less state funding.

"The only thing they understand is money," organizer and HISD parent Loretta Brock said of district officials. "We have to hit them in the pocket."

Brock and about 20 others protested Thursday outside Dodson Elementary, just south of downtown in the shadow of Interstate 45. They repeated calls for firing Superintendent Terry Grier and added school board members who voted last week to close Dodson to their target list.

Desiree Johnson, whose 8-year-old son attends Dodson, said she did not know where she would enroll him next year. The district has rezoned most of the Dodson students to Blackshear Elementary, about 2 miles away. Johnson's son attended Blackshear for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten. She said she won't send him back.

"I didn't feel like they supported the kids like they're supposed to," said Johnson.

At Dodson, she said, her son is in the Montessori program, which focuses on less structured, child-centered learning. She said she talks to her son's teacher almost daily.

"He has excelled at this school," she said. "It is hard trying to explain this to my son. It doesn't make sense, and it's not fair."

HISD officials said one reason for closing Dodson is that housing patterns have changed. Both Dodson and Blackshear are under-enrolled. Blackshear, however, has fewer students - about 340, compared with 445 at Dodson.

Grier also has acknowledged that district officials want to use the Dodson building to house students from other schools the district is rebuilding. In future years, he said, Dodson could be reopened, perhaps as a different specialty school.

The district plans to move the Montessori program to Blackshear. HISD has two other Montessori programs, but they are so popular that Johnson said she doesn't think her son will get a spot - especially since the first deadline to apply has passed.

Of the five schools that Grier proposed closing, Dodson is the only one the board approved. Trustees agreed to turn Jones High into a specialty career-focused school.