What's happening
District staff are currently fielding bids for construction managers to head a project to build the district facility. The bidding period will close Sept. 19 with staff planning to bring options to the board at an October meeting, said Craig Pruett, PfISD's executive director of procurement, during a Sept. 7 workshop.
Pruett said the district has also already selected a site located near Killingsworth Lane and Wells Branch Parkway in southeast Pflugerville.
What else
Officials also shared plans for the facility's course offerings, with the following career areas being considered:
- welding
- culinary arts
- construction
- vet medicine
- fire academy
- health care
- engineering and manufacturing
- automotive
With its centralized location, the students would be bused from their home campuses to the center, said Adelaida Olivarez, PfISD's chief academic and innovation officer. The idea is that teachers could teach multiple grade levels within the same field, remediating any potential difficulties in staffing those positions for advanced CTE courses across all of the district's comprehensive high schools.
What parents should know
PfISD Chief Operations Officer Victor Valdez said the center is also set to occupy a property large enough to include a future elementary school as the district grows.
"It's very well suited for the area, in that you have a number of homes to the north," Valdez said. "You have a number of homes already to the west and south of the property, and then there are 900 homes expected to be built in the Fossil Creek subdivision to the east. So it's quite possible that we would have completely walkable or highly walkable schools should we decide to build in that location."
