Houston’s Schools Face an Enrollment Paradox. What Now?

“You certainly will save money if you can find a place to put those kids where you have under-enrollment but not as severe and be able to close those campuses. You save the light bill, you don’t have a principal salary, you don’t have a nurse salary, all those sort of overhead expenses go away … The problem is that [school closures are] very unpopular. People like neighborhood schools. They’re frequently in these neighborhoods that are challenged. They’re an economic engine for that community. You’re talking about taking away some livelihoods of some people, and so they’re generally pretty ferociously opposed.”  — Bill King

About the Episode

Like other urban districts around the country, Houston Independent School District (HISD) has seen enrollment drop significantly over the past decade. But while the district’s schools are under capacity overall, with an average campus utilization rate of 77%, some of its campuses are meanwhile facing a paradoxical challenge: overcrowding.

Bill King, coauthor of a recent Center for Tax and Budget Policy brief on disparities in HISD campus utilization, and Erin Baumgartner, director of the Houston Education Research Consortium at Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Policy, joined the “Baker Briefing” podcast to explore what’s causing the imbalance, how the state’s proposed school voucher legislation could factor in, and paths forward for HISD.

This conversation was recorded on March 18, 2025. Subscribe and listen to “Baker Briefing” on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

A full transcript of this episode is available here. This transcript was AI-generated and has not been through editorial review.

About ‘Baker Briefing’

Hosted by David M. Satterfield,  the “Baker Briefing” podcast delivers timely analysis on breaking policy developments and other critical policy issues of the day in conversations with experts at the Baker Institute. New episodes are released weekly.

Certain episodes of “Baker Briefing” are recorded in front of a live audience at Rice University in Houston, Texas. These recordings are free and open to the public. To learn about upcoming recordings and other public programming from the Baker Institute, subscribe to our “Events Digest” newsletter, delivered weekly.

This material may be quoted or reproduced without prior permission, provided appropriate credit is given to the author(s) and Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. The views expressed herein are those of the individual author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.