Allen ISD District News

On August 17, Allen ISD sent an email to parents and staff that outlined the plans for analysis of the District’s elementary attendance zones. This followed public presentations to the Board of Trustees in May 2022 and August 2022 to discuss enrollment forecasts and the process for adjusting elementary attendance boundaries. This email to parents also contained an application to join the Attendance Boundary Adjustment committee, and nearly 200 people applied to join. A final group of more than 70 members, including parents, community members, and AISD staff, attended meetings on September 7 and September 21. The committee studied several topics, including demographic trends, enrollment forecasts, specialized programming, and financial efficiencies.

Why is Allen ISD considering a realignment of its attendance zones? Allen ISD has more than 3,000 open elementary seats across our District, and more than 75% of those lie within the eastern portion of our District. Further compounding the issue is the fact that there are 10 elementary schools to the east of Highway 75 and only 8 on the west side, yet the west side elementary enrollment is higher by 884 students. To put it in general terms, our schools in the west are reaching capacity limits, while our eastern schools are generally experiencing declining enrollments.

Allen ISD has always been financially responsible, and that focus has become even more important in recent years as the District exited the fast-growth phase. In the current school funding system, virtually all new revenue is tied to enrollment growth, and Allen ISD’s enrollment is now only increasing by approximately 1 percent each year. Discussions of campus enrollment and efficiency are important in this conversation because it costs more on a per-student basis to run a small-enrollment campus as opposed to a large-enrollment campus. In order to continue offering excellent educational programming to students and competitive benefits to employees, the District must create efficiencies.

At the end of the September 21 meeting, the committee provided feedback on potential realignments to the existing elementary attendance zones. It’s important to note that the District is still reviewing the feedback from the committee, and no final decisions have been made. Any proposed attendance zones will not be finalized until they are officially considered and approved by the Board of Trustees, and any potential vote would not occur until at least November.

Before the proposal is brought to the Board, the District will hold two public meetings to gather feedback from the community. The first meeting will occur on October 6 at Preston Elementary at 6:30 p.m., and the second will be held on November 2 at Boyd Elementary at 6:30 p.m. Allen ISD encourages all interested community members to attend one of these meetings to learn more about this process.

While decisions have not been finalized, the District and the committee considered the following details:

• Realignment of attendance zones at all elementary campuses to alleviate functional capacity issues at several campuses, with an effort to move as few families as possible
  
• Repurpose Anderson Elementary into an Early Childhood Campus to accommodate the state-required transition to Full Day Prekindergarten
  
• Repurpose Rountree Elementary for future non-instructional programming needs
  
• Relocate the One-Way Dual Language program from Boyd Elementary to Chandler Elementary
  

It is important to reiterate that these considerations are still being studied, and no decisions have been made at this point. The District understands that any discussion of attendance realignment or repurposing of campuses is a sensitive issue, and we pledge to keep our families informed of the process as we move forward.