10 June 6 - 12, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents higher. Murphy predicts North Texans are in for a warm summer, but he doubts it’ll be anything like last year’s soul-crushing 21 consecutive days above 100 degrees, which marked the summer of 2023 as the third- hottest in DFW’s history. (Ranking second- hottest is 2011, with 40 consecutive 100-degree days; first is 1980, which saw 42. “I think it’ll sort of be the ebb and flow. Some days it might bubble up and be really hot, but then some rainstorms or a weak cool front could cool us back down again,” Murphy said. “It will easily be above normal for us for summertime, but I don’t think we’ll hit the extremes we saw last summer.” Still, the statewide forecast is “grim.” Murphy said summertime temperatures usually peak around mid-July, but a Memo- rial Day heat wave may have started the sea- son off a bit earlier than usual. On May 26, Del Rio endured its third-hot- test day ever on record at 112 degrees. On Me- morial Day, the heat index, a measure of the combined effects of temperature and humid- ity, registered 115 degrees at Houston’s Hobby Airport, 4 degrees hotter than the peak sum- mer average. And the swelling temperatures could also be aiding the thunderstorms and tornadoes that have barreled through Dallas and North Texas in the last week. “We’ve still got a lot of days ahead of us before we even hit our summertime peak,” Murphy said. Already, energy demand is posing a po- tentially problematic side effect of the antic- ipated heat. On May 27, statewide energy demand peaked at 77,126 megawatts. Two years ago, 75,000 megawatts would have been a peak summer record, Murphy said. As “burgeoning” population growth and above-average temperatures plague the state, it is investments in solar and wind en- ergy that are helping power suppliers keep- ing up with demands, he said. Last August, megawatt demand hit just under 85,500, and he is “confident” we will exceed that demand in the coming months. “The question is by how much? And will ERCOT be able to handle it?” Murphy said. “Hopefully, they can.” ▼ EDUCATION WHERE DID THE KIDS GO? DECREASING ENROLLMENT RATES ACROSS NORTH TEXAS ARE DRIVING DISTRICTS TO CLOSE SCHOOL CAMPUSES. BY EMMA RUBY A cross North Texas, school districts are looking to the fall school year with a shared concern: As student enrollments drop, budgets are getting tighter. For Fort Worth, Richardson, Irving and Plano ISDs, low enrollment has led to discussions of campuses being shuttered. In Dallas ISD, a newly approved budget will result in hun- dreds of central and campus-based positions being cut in the next school year. The Dallas ISD board approved a $1.9 bil- lion budget during a May 23 meeting, which will simultaneously raise teacher salaries across the district while cutting more than 600 on-campus jobs and more than 200 central-office or administrative positions. The “much needed raise” will bring the dis- trict’s average teacher salary to $70,000, dis- trict personnel told the board. While the decision to cut jobs was an “ab- solutely hard” one to make, trustee Ben Mackey said, conservative planning by the current and previous district superinten- dents has put Dallas ISD in a better financial position than many surrounding districts. “We have to make some cuts, and we are doing it in a responsible way,” Mackey said. “We are not closing schools. I think some- thing like three-fourths of Texas districts are adopting shortfall budgets and deficit bud- gets. A ton of them are closing schools and having to do it on a fast timeline. We have the luxury of not doing that.” According to Texas Standard-KUT Austin, declining birth rates and students moving to charter schools could be factors in falling school enrollment numbers. Federal assis- tance given during the COVID-19 pandemic has also dried up, and in some areas, high housing costs could be pricing out families. Those lower enrollment numbers are causing budgets to shrink; across the state, campuses are funded based on a per-student basis, taking into account each student’s day-to-day attendance. In Dallas ISD, the new budget was drafted with the expecta- tion that the district will have 1,700 fewer students for the 2024-2025 school year than it did the year prior, The Dallas Morning News reports. In Richardson ISD, a $28 million budget deficit spurred by low enrollment numbers is resulting in four campus closures. RISD expects to lose more than 3,500 students in upcoming years after already being down 9,000 students from pre-COVID enroll- ment, Superintendent Tabitha Branum told the district’s board last week. Greenwood Hills, Spring Valley, Spring- ridge and Thurgood Marshall elementary schools were all approved for closure by the RISD board. Officials said the plan will save the district more than $10 million a year. Four schools in Plano ISD — Forman Ele- mentary, Davis Elementary, Armstrong Mid- dle and Carpenter Middle — are recommended for closure. Parents of stu- dents at those schools were notified May 21 of the potential closures, although the PISD board has not yet moved forward with a vote. Fort Worth ISD is consolidating two cam- puses, Wedgewood Sixth Grade campus and Wedgewood Middle School, starting in the fall. Additional school closures could be come in the next year, according to the district. “It is no longer feasible to operate an en- tire campus for one grade given the district’s current and projected enrollment. The con- solidation is expected to have minimal im- pact on staff, who have been notified of the change,” the district said in a statement. Irving ISD voted to close two elementary school campuses at the end of this year for the same reasons as the other districts: fall- ing enrollment and budget shortfalls. The district is closing Britain and Elliott Elemen- tary Schools, which sat at 45% and 50% classroom capacity, respectively. “Although this is not an easy decision, the reasoning behind it is simple,” trustee Lisa Lobb said in December. “With losing 4,000 students in our district over recent years, we are receiving millions of dollars less in money.” Unfair Park from p8 o
