PISD boundaries ... Again? (Dallas, Plano, Richardson: apartments, how much, house)

[fndmom]

Noticed that DMN says there is going to be another fight over PISD boundaries. How much of this is a true fight vs them trying to sell papers.

I do live in one of the areas that will be impacted by the change, but since my kids are not yet in school don't know the scoop per se.

I personally feel like they are rushing a decision without having much input like they seemed to have for last years issue. Yes, something has to be done but why rush it and have it blow up again because they didn't think everything through.

[Big G]

OK, I'll bite, as I always do with PISD issues.

I think the board made the right call here, as evidenced by the 7-0 vote.

Was it rushed through? Not really. Minor elementary shifts like this are done on an ad hoc basis every few years for one or two schools. If the last spat showed anything, it was that extended public input didn't give any useful additional info, just confused the issue. I think this was thought through. It wasn't rushed any more than other such minor boundary changes.

An interesting aspect of this re-zoning was that those being moved away from Huffman, in general, had no problem with being assigned a different school. That's the opposite of most re-zonings, where everyone begs and pleads to remain where they were. That doesn't speak well of the current Huffman situation, and is indicative of a problem there in need of a solution.

[Rgamom]

I am going to chime in here because I am a Haggar parent and I did attend the meetings over the past few days, although declined to give public input.

There are several issues with the rezoning that are problematic, too many to go into detail on this forum. Suffice it to say that PISD did their zoning based on 10-yr. projections, showing that Huffman will continue to grow and the 3 schools receiving these students will have rather flat enrollments. Huffman does need relief, that issue was not in question. But Jackson just had an addition and has plenty of room. They used their 10 yr projections to say that apartments will eventually be built in that zone and they will have growth. In the meantime, they are just pushing the problem down the road, as Haggar will now be at 99% of functional capacity, while the remaining schools will be in the low 90% capacity. Wouldn't it make a tad bit more sense to have these kids go to Jackson where there is plenty of room (they predict 79% capacity next year) vs. crowding Haggar? I personally feel that the trustees were protecting their schools and not only letting us deal with it, but leaving it as virtually impossible to raise our state rating, while almost guaranteeing saving their exemplary status. You'll no doubt hear about our overcrowding in two years thanks to the board setting us up for it.

The children coming to our school are more high risk children. All the data has shown that. More high risk children means that teachers spend more time disciplining, stopping instruction, and overall giving more attention to those kids, while the others are seemingly left behind. That is my concern. Haggar will be at 33% economically disadvantaged kids, while the others in our zone remain below 10%. That is a lot more kids that need a lot more of everything. Mr. Matkin came and spoke to us on Monday evening, guaranteeing the resources for these kids. That means about 2 teachers for the projected 69 extra students. Not impressive to me.

The comments by the board last night that were directed at the Haggar parents certainly not only led us to believe they had long ago made up their minds, but were incredibly rude and disrespectful. Come take one look in any classroom on our campus and you will see that we embrace our diverse children. We simply were asking to share the challenges. There is a problem here, and they made no attempt at a real solution.

[fndmom]

Yea, i guess it was hyped up a little by the paper which is what i was wondering. I do hope they fixed the problem though and not just moved it to another locale. Lowering Huffman to 93% capacity and raising the other schools to 95-99% seems a little hard to swallow but we shall wait and see.

[ReppingDFW]

What happened? I must have missed something

[Big G]

Re: What happened?

The school board voted to chisel off 3 parts of the Huffman El. attendance area to relieve overcrowding.

1) A 100% SFR area north of Park was re-assigned to Centennial. No controversy there - the residents there have been clamoring for exactly that ever since they were removed from Centennial. (IMO, there was some catfight among PTA moms at Gleneagles that prompted that bizarre zoning to begin with. )

2) An area of apartments on the far west side of Huffman are being re-zoned to Brinker. This is a bit controversial because that "leapfrogs" Barksdale to send them to a school further away. Brinker currently has the lowest economically disadvantaged %age in the area, at 5.5%. But the board is NOT doing that for socio-economic reasons. Honest.

3) A second area of apartments on the south side of the Huffman area are being re-zoned to Rose Haggar. Fireworks ensued. (See post above.)

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And, a rebuttal to the Rose Haggar parent:

First, I'm not sure where you're getting your %ages for the schools around Rose Haggar. Per last year's AEIS reports, Rose Haggar has the LOWEST economically disadvantaged percentage among those schools bordering it.

Jackson 51%
Huffman 48%
Mitchell 33%
Haggar 27%

Second, Jackson is a non-starter for two reasons. It's much further from the apartments in question than Rose Haggar is (heck, Jackson isn't even located in the attendance area for Frankford/Shepton/PWSH). It also has a sky-high poor percentage. Now, as we all know, the board does NOT engage in socio-economic balancing . But there's a reason the other kids were sent to Brinker and not Barksdale. The same thing is playing out here.

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Long-term, PISD is going to have to bite the bullet and build one or both "missing" elementary schools south of PGBT - one in Dallas, one in Richardson. They'll probably have to kick Hightower out of Frankford/Shepton/PWSH as well, and flip-flop Andrews/Mathews. Tune in for that in, oh, 2018 or so.

[Rgamom]

Big G,

I got the numbers from the information that has been passed around the past few weeks. I can look into the sources, but not really interested in doing so at this point. Regardless of the numbers, it means that we are going to have more challenged kids to add to the challenging environment that we already have. That being said, as things always do, it will work itself out. We have a huge parent involvement at the school and the teachers are amazing.

I always read your postings. It is especially nice to hear a more seasoned voice regarding the happenings at our ever evolving PISD.

[Big G]

Thanks for the kind words.

I don't think putting these kids in Haggar is great, but I don't think there are any better options that don't involve significant busing. And then you open the can of worms - why do the poor kids have to ride the bus, rather than putting the rich kids on the bus? (With the caveat that PISD has done just that with the Brinker chunk.)

I think you're absolutely right that Haggar is also going to be overcrowded in a few years. That 10-year forecast they've been using has already been shown to have several flaws. The biggest thing they're missing is that the area apartments, most of which are (or were originally) targeted at young professionals, have become attractive to people with school-aged kids. In short, take a look at the PISD map and figure any school with a sizable number of apartments will have a growth rate way above what's projected.

They also need to figure out what impact that will have on Frankford, although Renner is more jammed than Frankford right now.

I have to say I was floored by just how high the economically disadvantaged rate was for Huffman. It's crazy to think that you could spend $150K or $200K for a house in central Plano, and have schools with economically disadvantaged %ages far lower than someone who spends $500K-$750K to live in Old Shepard Place. Of course, one could make the same observation for the high-end properties in Rose Haggar.