The district’s board of trustees discussed some of the strategies that the Education Master Planning Committee considered at its Sept. 29 meeting, but no action was taken.
What’s happening?
The committee is considering a variety of school consolidation ideas due to decreasing enrollment in GCISD, Barbaroux said. The decreased enrollment has resulted in inefficient use of facilities, she said.
Enrollment has declined by 1,500 students since fall 2019, according to district documents.
The district receives state funding based on daily attendance, and as a result of the 1,500-student enrollment decline, the district saw a loss of over $10 million in revenue, Barbaroux said.
Two elementary schools fell below 60% of utilization, and four fell below 75% of utilization, Barbaroux said, meaning the schools are well below their functional capacity, which is the number of students a school can functionally accommodate.
“From an operational standpoint, without an increase in revenue, [that] is really not efficient or sustainable over the long run,” Barbaroux said.
Though the state Legislature did increase funding for schools this past legislative session, the district’s financial position is not sustainable due to rising inflation costs, according to district documents.
“We’ve got resources that are spread unbelievably thin,” Trustee A.J. Pontillo said. “We can’t sustain that and provide that top quality education that all of us are expecting. Consolidating resources and pouring everything into certain areas is not a bad thing.”
Diving deeper
The committee will consider the financial impact, the functional capacity for campuses, the location of the school, property value, the age of the facility and student balance when considering options and bringing a recommendation to the board, Barbaroux said.
The committee has looked at eight different scenarios for consolidating the elementary schools at its Sept. 17 meeting. The scenarios included:
- Consolidating Dove elementary school with Cannon and Silverlake elementary schools
- Consolidating Colleyville elementary school with Glenhope and Bransford elementary schools
- Consolidating Bear Creek elementary school with Grapevine, Heritage and OC Taylor elementary schools
- Consolidating Bransford elementary school with Glenhope and Colleyville elementary schools
- Consolidating Glenhope elementary school with Colleyville and Bransford elementary schools
- Rezoning eight elementary schools into six
- Consolidating Timberline elementary school and repurposing the building for a variety of programs that GCISD offers, including the ASPIRE academy, a school for highly gifted students
“There’s a lot for the committee to consider,” she said. “The community can expect that their work is in earnest. It’s careful and it's methodical as much as possible. They’re trying to find a way to make a recommendation that helps the district both in the immediate [future and] in the long run.”
What’s next?
The Education Master Planning Committee will continue to explore options for reducing operational costs and bring a recommendation to the board later this fall, GCISD Director of Communications Rosemary Gladden said.
Once recommendations are made, the district will hold in-person sessions with impacted campuses to inform staff and parents about the transition, said Nicole Lyons, the district’s executive director of communications. Additionally, district staff is planning to form a transition committee composed of parents and staff at impacted campuses to guide campus communities through the process.
“Taking care of our people is a top priority through all of this,” Lyons said. “We're working really closely with human resources [and] academics teams to develop the details around that plan so that our staff who may be impacted by campus consolidation will fully understand how they're impacted and what those next steps for them are.”
