The Texas Education Agency has started to release preliminary TAKS test scores across the state. For two AISD schools, the results are especially important.

Both Reagan High School and Pearce Middle School have histories of poor performance and could be closed by the Texas Education Agency.

AISD is working on a contingency plan for Reagan in case the state does shut down that campus.

Students at Reagan High School have been studying all year in hopes to improve their state and federal test scores to put their school back in the safe zone.

Reagan High School Parent Teacher Association President Jacqueline Chatham said closing the school is not the proper action.

“Closing the schools is not the answer,” she said. “Getting the proper funding and appropriate teachers, well-trained teachers, and getting the children into the school – because if you don’t get kids in the classroom, they can’t learn. We can’t teach them. Doing the things we need to do to better educate them is the answer.”

Chatham said she feels positive the school’s test score results because of the efforts of students and teachers alike.

“Now’s not the time to be worried,” she said. “The time to have been worried was before they took the test.”

Chatham said it’s not about the test, but the skills these students will use for the rest of their lives.

“The deserve for people to be involved in the fight for the education that they deserve,” she said.

Parents say the one way to do that is to be aware and informed.

“These kids are our future,” parent Deborah Warren said. “Not just the kids at Reagan, but the kids at any school in the district or anywhere in the world, they are our future and we as adults have a responsibility to make sure that they have what they need.”

The TAKS test data released at this point shows that Pearce Middle School has made gains in every subject, though improvements in science may not have been good enough to keep it open.

News 8’s Jennifer Borget will continue to update viewers on the situation with these schools.