Expecting to serve over 11,000 students within a decade—nearly double its current population—the pinch points are at the middle and high school levels, Superintendent Courtney Carpenter said.
Argyle Middle School on US 377 once served as the district’s high school before Argyle High School opened in the 2021-22 school year. The district plans to open a second middle school on FM 407 in 2026 and turn the US 377 campus back into a high school in 2027 to provide enrollment relief.
“The facility configurations ... are providing the best educational experience for our students while being fiscally responsible to our community,” board President Sam Slaton said via email.
The context
The FM 407 campus, which broke ground this summer, was part of the 2022 bond and is the catalyst for both the high school and middle school transitions. In the 2026-27 school year, seventh and eighth graders will be zoned to both the FM 407 and US 377 campuses, Carpenter said.
The district has four elementary schools serving over 700 students, per demographic firm Zonda Education’s data. As students matriculate from the district’s four elementary schools they feed into the Sixth Grade Center and one middle school, creating a bottleneck at those grade levels, officials said.
The district has over 1,400 students in sixth through eighth grades in the 2024-25 school year. The Sixth Grade Center is serving around 500 of those students, and will surpass that in the 2025-26 school year, but even with the relief, AMS would serve over 1,100 students in the 2026-27 school year, highlighting the need for the FM 407 middle school, Carpenter said. This new campus will also serve seventh through eighth graders with a 1,200 student capacity, she added.
Without aid from the new campus, AMS will nearly hit its 1,300 student capacity in the 2027-28 school year, according to district data. Additionally, AMS cannot remain a middle school because AHS will surpass its 2,100-student capacity in 2027-28, Slaton said.
That school year, grades nine and 10 will be added to the US 377 campus, providing enrollment relief as AHS tops its capacity that year. Then in 2028-29, 11th graders will be added to the campus, Carpenter said. By the 2029-30 school year, the district aims to have built an additional middle school—the one included in the failed May 2024 bond proposition—to absorb seventh and eighth graders from the US 377 campus, which will allow it to function as a dedicated high school. Sixth graders will remain at the Sixth Grade Center.
The additional middle school would need to be funded from future bonds, Slaton said.
Zooming in
A future bond would be needed by 2025 to allocate funds to purchase land for the other middle school and open it by 2029. AISD plans to reconvene its bond planning committee this year and possibly call a bond next spring, Carpenter said.
The district’s financial transition team is looking at costs for the middle and high school split, but operating additional schools is more about allocation than increasing the budget, Chief Financial Officer Liz Stewart said. AISD’s budget is funded through a per-student basis and property taxes, and is unaffected by the number of campuses.
Since the US 377 campus originally served seventh through 12 graders, no additional projects will be required to facilitate the transition. There will also be no increase in operating costs since both of the AMS and AHS campuses are currently in use, board secretary Matt Slaton said.
AISD officials are prioritizing the zoning process this fall to determine who will attend the FM 407 middle school, Carpenter said in an email.
The takeaway
The average class size at AMS is 23.6 and 23.1 at AHS. It’s too early to determine how the transitions will impact class sizes, Carpenter said. Between now and when the transitions begin, AISD must consider the growth rate and the status of public school funding, she added.
Splitting into multiple schools at the high school- and middle school-levels provides more students the opportunity to be involved in activities that might otherwise be cut if the district remained with one high school, Carpenter said.
“Argyle ISD has always been known for the time and attention given to students by teachers ... and providing high-level co-curricular experiences,” Sam Slaton said. “All students ... should be engaged and involved in as many activities as they desire.”
