Faced with declining enrollments and schools needing renovation, the Brownsville Independent School District Budget Committee considered strategies Thursday to stop losing students and start bringing them back.

BISD has been losing students to the charter schools since 2013, mainly because district boundaries haven’t changed since 1915 while the city has grown, but also due to declining birth rates, and recently, the pandemic, information presented at the meeting confirmed.

With the exception of adding the El Jardin school district in 1953, BISD’s boundaries haven’t changed in more than 100 years, district demographer Lee Garcia said.

While Brownsville can move the city limits outward on its own, BISD cannot do the same except by legislative action, Garcia and Finance Director Mary Garz

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