Round Rock, Pflugerville and Hutto ISDs all consider themselves to be fast-growth school districts: In the past two years they have opened a combined four elementary campuses, one middle school campus, one high school and a 10,000-seat football stadium.

The districts have each also added approximately 400 students each year. With a burgeoning student population, districts must become long-term planners, thinking decades in advance just to try to meet future pupils’ needs.

All three districts use Templeton Demographics to predict future growth. The demographer presents to the districts quarterly with forecasts going as far as 10 years ahead.

Rocky Gardiner, Templeton director of school district consulting, said that even that far out, the firm has confidence in its information. Gardiner said Templeton tries to be within 1 percent of accuracy for its one-year projection and then makes adjustments from there on a quarterly basis.

The firm considers housing yields, or how many children a neighborhood or group of homes has living in it; the impact of charter and private schools; and birth rates to make its predictions.

Gardiner said the hardest part is projecting the size of the incoming kindergarten class.

“We get historical birth rates and roll them forward five years to get an idea of what kindergarten will look like, but that is an imperfect science because people are rarely living in the same place from when their kids are born,” he said.

Funding the projects

Districts use this demographic information to determine when a new campus or district facility must be constructed. These priorities are often brought to a school board, whose trustees typically call for a citizen bond committee to aggregate requests for improvements into one key priority list.

RRISD and PfISD are working from funds granted by 2014 bonds, and HISD is finishing up projects from its 2008 bond.

RRISD called for another bond election in May 2017 but failed to gain enough voter support for additional funds to be granted.

RRISD Vice President of Operations Bob Cervi said this complicates the process when a district is looking for money for particular projects.

“We try to get buildings built prior to too much overcrowding, but that is dependent on a successful bond,” Cervi said. “It makes it a little more difficult when a bond doesn’t pass because then you get behind the curve.”

Cervi said should a bond fail, as RRISD’s did earlier this year, a district can look to its fund balance for an alternative funding source. But even that gets complicated.

Cervi said it is important to keep a three- to four-month operating budget set aside in reserve should a major emergency occur. The district also pulls from that pool of money when incidents arise throughout the system—for instance, if a heating and air conditioning unit fails or if a school floods.

Design process

Once funding is secured, districts move into the design process. This type of work can take varying amounts of time depending on the type of
campus.

HISD interim Superintendent Ed Ramos said elementary campuses are fairly simple to construct and design because most of the campuses are similar to one another.

“We like using the cookie-cutter idea because it saves us on architectural costs,” Ramos said. “Although we can still build a school building and tweak it with advice from principals and staff to make it better.”

Cervi said high schools are typically where the design complications arise and can take anywhere from a year to 18 months to fully lay out plans.

That is because high schools are massive buildings—generally sitting on land plots of at least 100 acres—that require unique designs. Each one sits on a swath of land that can vary greatly from the other campus sites.

Cervi said middle schools, like their name, lie in the middle of the scale for design difficulty. He said districts use similar floor plans with exteriors and use of the space varying from campus to campus.

After designs are completed and approved, districts start construction. PfISD Superintendent Doug Killian said elementary schools take 12-15 months to construct; middle schools take 12-18 months; and high schools take up to two years depending on the overall size.

Boundary shifts

The year before that new campus opens, the district’s board of trustees has to deal with one of the trickiest parts of the entire process: attendance boundary changes. Each school district manages the process differently, but the basic steps remain the same.

The district works with its demographer to create a few options for boundaries that balance out attendance of the new campus and surrounding ones; maintain safety by following natural boundaries, including major roads, railroad tracks and other structures; and keep in mind existing neighborhoods so children on one side of the street do not end up going to a different school than their neighbors.

Once the district has its options laid out, it presents them to the public and asks for feedback. This is the step that most residents are familiar with. It is not often that districts hear a lot of positive feedback during this period of time.

Each district has a stipulated number of hearings it must hold, and then the board votes to approve a plan. The district’s communication office sends out information about the changes, but often it is after these changes are voted on that districts will hear pleas for last-minute adjustments.

“Boundary changes are never easy because change is never easy,” PfISD Director of Communications Steve Sheffler said.

Cervi concurred, saying many parents do not realize these changes can happen when they are moving to the area.

“At times it can be heart-wrenching, but in a fast-growing district, and we do stress that, there is no way we can guarantee boundaries are going to stay the same,” Cervi said. “People that are moving right now are moving because of School X, but in three years, School Y might be opening up.”

This is a universal problem across fast-growth districts.

HISD Director of Communications Todd Robison said parents need to do their research before moving to a particular area for a specific campus.

“If you are moving to a new developing area, somewhat out from a school, there is no guarantee, depending on what age your children are, that they will stay at that school,” Robison said.

Once a campus is constructed, districts must grapple with other issues related to facilities. Robison said HISD is currently debating whether to build a central district football stadium or an individual stadium at the forecasted future high school site.

These kinds of decisions get made in the planning process and shape the future of the district.

Staffing a campus

After attendance boundaries are set and construction is complete, a physical campus may be set to open, but a district continues working to staff it and to prepare teachers for new students and methods of instruction.

RRISD Chief of Teaching and Learning Mandy Estes said the district holds a new teacher orientation for all staff that are new to campuses. The group spends several days together hearing from various members of the educational leadership team.

They train on simple tasks, such as accessing email and gradebooks, and more complex concepts, such as the curriculum they will be relaying to students.

Then all district teachers group into “like-job” categories and attend daylong seminars that focus on particular subjects.

For example, RRISD hosts a math and science expo at Stony Point High School with keynote presenters and opportunities to try out innovative classroom tools.

From there teachers begin preparing individual classrooms for their new students.

As new students continue to arrive in a district—with roughly 80,000 projected to come into Texas public schools each year—districts go through the growth process annually, seeking sources of funding, identifying projects and building new campuses.

“You try to stay on or above that curve when you are looking at a demographer’s report,” Cervi said.