What's happening?
District staff are working with community members and district demographers to adjust boundaries and rebalance zoning for its campuses in anticipation of a new campus opening in 2024. During an Oct. 12 workshop, officials shared some timeline updates with the board of trustees.
District officials have coordinated with a demographics firm to geocode students in fifth through seventh grade who will be attending middle school in 2023-24, and they are working on creating zoning scenarios.
Henry Gideon, HISD's assistant superintendent of operations, said the board will tentatively be able to see and provide feedback on a draft of the new zoning on Nov. 9. Public forums on that draft will be held in December and January. Additional information is available here.
How we got here
The realignment of HISD's attendance patterns is part of the district's improvement plan to facilitate the opening of the new middle school next year.
The framework
A 22-person Attendance Rezoning and Boundary Leveling Committee is working with the district's demographer and administration to develop draft recommendations for board approval.
The takeaway
Gideon said in August that adjusting attendance boundaries will provide the following benefits to the district:
- Improve traffic distribution as well as travel time and safety for bus riders.
- Balance attendance zones with growth in those areas.
- Provide reliability and predictability to enable administration to develop budgets with equitable resource allocation.
