Construction on Georgetown’s new elementary school is slated to be completed in May.[/caption]

In August hundreds of students will fill the halls of Georgetown ISD’s newest elementary school, but where those students will come from has not been determined.

Based on the results of a demographic report the district received in November, the GISD board of trustees will determine the boundaries of the new unnamed elementary school as well as the fate of an existing elementary school at its regular scheduled board meeting Feb. 17. “We try to be sensitive to the community and as we go through our deliberations in coming up with ideas about what boundaries we need,” GISD Chief Financial Officer Steve West said as one of the leaders in the rezoning process. He and a committee made up of three district principals and staff members from various departments, such as maintenance and facilities, transportation, special education and the district’s central office, have been offering perspectives on zoning options since December. “We started looking at potential boundaries, and as we discussed that we narrowed [them] down to one particular plan,” West said. “We looked at the new boundaries from the standpoint of transportation, how it affects our demographics, how it balances out our capacity of each building to handle student loads. That’s why we had so many different people from parts of the district” District officials are also considering repurposing the Carver Elementary School building for other educational purposes as part of the discussions, which also opens a door for the district to use the Carver name for the new school. “There have been a lot of folks here who have been curious about the naming of Elementary School No. 11,” board President Scott Alarcon said. “The recommendation, it looks like, will be to maintain the Carver name. That’s an important name in the Georgetown community, and certainly that’s an important culture that we need to honor within that neighborhood and within that community.” The new elementary school is located at 4901 Scenic Lake Drive in the Teravista neighborhood. The area is currently zoned for Mitchell, Carver and Pickett elementary schools. “That area and some other areas surrounding the new elementary school are what I consider growth areas for the district in terms of new housing,” West said. “There’s geography and growth, rooftops and the number of kids coming out of those rooftops kind of dictate where we’re at from a practical standpoint where boundaries get drawn.” According to a GISD demographic report prepared by Templeton Demographics, Teravista had the second-highest number of home closings and the highest number of vacant developed lots in the district in fall 2014. David Biesheuvel, who serves on the boundary committee and as director of maintenance, construction and facilities for GISD, said the plan is to draw from Carver, Mitchell and Pickett. By doing so the district helps prevent overflow in those schools in the future. The report showed the Weir Charitable Trust and Santa Rita Ranch subdivisions in the Carver and Pickett elementary schools zone have the highest number of future lots. The Carver and Pickett school zone also has two future subdivisions planned—Wolf Ranch Georgetown and Shadow Canyon—and four multifamily housing facilities to be built. Similarly, Mitchell Elementary School’s zone will see two new subdivisions developed—the Woodhull Municipal Utility District and Vizcaya. In drawing boundaries Biesheuvel said the committee is working to maintain grouping by neighborhoods. “A neighborhood is not strictly that area that is within walking distance,” he said. “A neighborhood could be expanded, and you’ll see that in these attendance zones. We don’t want to bus kids across town, across another attendance zone just to fill up a school that may be short. We want to keep kids in the same neighborhood so they’re all together at the same schools.” Biesheuvel said based on the proposed attendance zones the committee is projecting at least 500 students will attend the school when it opens.

Repurposing buildings

The Carver Elementary School building is likely to be repurposed for something other than an elementary school once the new school is open, Biesheuvel said. Carver is a kindergarten through second-grade campus paired with Pickett Elementary School, which is a third- through fifth-grade campus. If rezoning is approved, Pickett would be converted to a pre-K through fifth-grade campus, and the former Carver building would be used for other district purposes, Biesheuvel said. “We haven’t identified what the repurposing would be for,” he said. “It could be, for instance, a career and technology center for specific courses where they would be at one campus—something where we might centralize a function for more effectiveness and more efficiency. But we haven’t identified what that purpose is yet.” The final fate of Carver will be a decided by the board of trustees Feb. 17. GISD also pairs Purl and Williams elementary schools, but West suggested those campuses could someday see change, too. “We’re trying to get away from the split-campus model,” he said. “I’m sure at some point in time depending on timing we’ll transform those into pre-K through fifth-grade campuses as well.”

Bond money

Construction of the new school is expected to be completed by May and was funded through a $137.3 million bond referendum approved by voters in 2010. About $47.2 million of the bond money was used for the new elementary as well as a middle school and land acquisition. West said the design for the new elementary campus is similar to that of McCoy Elementary School. “It won’t be the exact footprint, but it will be very near,” he said. “You’ll feel like it’s the same building when you walk in.”

Adding a middle school

A fourth middle school had a projected bond cost of $28 million, but a construction timeline has not been set. “We are in discussion amongst ourselves and the school board as to what the right time is,” Biesheuvel said. “We’re looking at our demographic report that we just recently got, and we’ll be making a decision soon as to when we need to start design of that school so we can open at a specific date.” On Aug. 18 the board of trustees approved a contract with Huckabee & Associates to develop a design for a proposed fourth middle school. To build the new middle school the board will call for a bond election to raise additional funds, West said. “There are funds for a partial middle school, but there aren’t enough funds to complete a full-scale middle school for approximately 1,000 kids,” West said. West said the committee and board members will continue to look at the demographics of GISD to make a final decision on when and where the middle school will be built.