Pflugerville ISD redraws middle school maps for upcoming year

Pflugerville ISD is faced with the same dilemma as many growing families: Too many children and not enough room.

Regardless of whether the district is prepared or not, new children keep pouring into its schools. During the past decade, district enrollment expanded by 7,767 students—more than 51 percent, according to PISD data. The results are predictable: As more students arrive, the district is forced to add staff, build new schools, and regularly shift its school boundaries—a process known as redistricting.

With the pending opening of Cele Middle School in August, PISD has again been forced to redistrict its middle school boundaries. In the wake of several months of demographic studies, public forums and appeals from parents, the PISD board of trustees voted Nov. 15 to redraw the boundaries prior to the 2013–14 school year—a move that will shift approximately 800 students into new schools.

"All of our middle schools were either at capacity or over capacity," PISD spokeswoman Amanda Brim said. "When we built Cele [Middle School], it was primarily to relieve that. But that also gave us a little bit of room to adjust some of the other campuses as well ... so that they weren't over capacity, either."

Park Crest, Dessau and Kelly Lane middle schools are all currently exceeding capacity. With the opening of Cele Middle School, those schools, along with Westview Middle School, will see their enrollment numbers drop for the 2013–14 school year.

Redistricting, however, is not as simple as shifting lines on a map to even out enrollment numbers. For district officials, it's a matter of balancing school capacities with population demands and growth projections. For parents and students, it can be an emotional process that often ends with children changing schools and neighborhoods divided.

"There's always a bit of trepidation when you're telling 800 students they're going to be in a different school," said PISD Deputy Superintendent Troy Gallow. "Any time you make boundary adjustments, you're not going to make everyone happy."

Dividing the district

PISD officials began unveiling redistricting plans to the public in September. Parents of impacted students received letters inviting them to community forums where the redrawn maps would be discussed and questions would be answered by district officials.

"We view ourselves as partners in the education of the students," Brim said. "We want to hear from parents and have everyone's best thinking whenever we are making decisions that impact students."

Predictably, many of the parents affected by the redistricting changes were unhappy with the plan. Parents of Rowe Lane Elementary School students, for example, discovered that many of the students previously on track to attend Kelly Lane Middle School would be diverted to the new Cele Middle School.

"Middle school is hard enough," said Jennifer Rees, a mother of a fifth-grade Rowe Lane student. "We want our kids to be able to maintain the friendships with their neighbors and classmates we've worked so hard to build over the years."

The new Cele Middle School boundary is being carved out of areas formerly served by Kelly Lane and Dessau middle schools. PISD is also altering the boundaries of Westview and Park Crest middle schools.

"All along, we had thought we would go to Kelly Lane," said Tamara Freeman, whose fifth-grade son attends Rowe Lane. "But now all of a sudden we're split up and moved over to Cele. It's like we have to start all over again. We're being separated."

After gathering community feedback, the district agreed to alter changes affecting the Blackhawk Park and Lakeside at Blackhawk neighborhoods and keep them within the Kelly Lane boundaries. Future developments of those neighborhoods, however, will be incorporated within Cele's boundaries.

PISD board of trustees member Cynthia Graves offered the lone dissenting vote against the final redistricting plan.

"I did it just as a matter of principle," Graves said. "My position is I didn't agree with the change, because of what it does socially to children. When a kid has a friend and they split, and then they have to form new friendships ... I want to minimize the transitions."

Population shift

The new redistricting plan is designed to alleviate current capacity strains as well as future growth, Brim said. As Pflugerville's population expands farther east, district officials say they want to be proactive in dealing with rising student populations.

"We foresee continued, sustained growth throughout the [eastern] region," Brim said. "Cele was built to plan for that growth, and to meet those expectations and demands across the district."

Cele will join Kelly Lane next year as the second PISD middle school located east of Toll 130. All six of the district's schools built during the past 12 years were designed to serve areas east of Toll 130. PISD officials have also been aggressively searching for land in the area to add a fourth district high school and another elementary school on land east of the toll road.

"We're looking at going from about 23,000 students right now to about 40,000 by the time [Pflugerville] is built out in the next 25 years," Gallow said. "That's going to create some growing pains for us."