MISD trustees voted unanimously to create an Educational Facilities Alignment Committee at a Sept. 15 meeting. The committee will engage in a series of meetings beginning in September where they will study both current school attendance zones and projected population growth prior to making recommendations on potential changes later this year.
The details
The Educational Facilities Alignment Committee is charged with representing the MISD community through assessing community feedback and data, such as projected student enrollment, campus student capacity and more.
The group will ultimately present a recommendation that includes identifying three elementary campuses that would be repurposed for alternative district uses, as well as new school attendance zone maps for the elementary, middle and high school levels that could be approved by the board and implemented by the 2026-27 school year, the presentation states.
The 39-person committee will include one representative from each elementary campus, two representatives from each middle school campus and three representatives from each high school campus. The committee will be composed of parents or guardians representing each campus, and that person must live within the campus’s attendance zone and have a student enrolled at the school.
It will also include campus administrators and district staff that will serve in a nonvoting role, the presentation states. Members of the committee will be nominated by the respective campus principal and verified by district staff, Assistant Superintendent for Business Operations Dennis Womack said, noting that the process will also include nominations of alternate candidates.
How we got here
A Long Range Facilities Planning Committee was formed in September 2024 to assess the district’s current and future facilities.
After assessing various factors including projected student enrollment, campus capacities and conditions, and more, the committee provided various recommendations, a presentation at the meeting stated, including:
- Avoiding costs associated with staffing and operating underutilized facilities by assessing and rebalancing attendance zones at all levels
- Repurposing three elementary campuses for alternative district uses
The context
Board members first considered the formation of the committee at an Aug. 18 board meeting when Womack presented data on projected student enrollment at the district’s campuses.
Data from demographics studies company Zonda Education shows that schools in the district’s northwest sector are expected to see significant enrollment growth, while the southern region will see stagnant enrollment with some slight declines, according to a presentation at the Aug. 18 meeting.
At the elementary level, three schools in north McKinney—Frazier, Press and Webb elementary schools—are projected to each have more than 1,000 students enrolled by the 2034-35 school year based on existing attendance zones, district documents state. In the southern portion of the city, there are 16 elementary school zones, and most are expected to see a slight decline in enrollment, according to the presentation.
The district’s functional capacity of elementary students, which reflects a facility’s capacity without classrooms that are used for a specific or lower-capacity purpose such as special education, totaled 11,844 students in the 2024-25 school year.
As of September 2025, there are 9,793 elementary students in MISD, the presentation stated, leaving 2,051 empty seats. Womack said prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the district averaged nearly 10,450 elementary students annually.
“When you look at our overall elementary enrollment, even though ... we are actually growing 1%-2% per year, we’re just not growing where we have the actual campuses that could support that growth,” Womack said.
Womack said the process of educational facilities alignment has taken a negative toll on other districts and their communities in recent years, but that he hopes it will not affect the MISD community in that way.
“There’s no easy way to discuss adjustments or making changes to our attendance boundaries at all,” Womack said. “All of our schools hold precious memories to at least one student, if not all students, that have passed through those doors.”
Liz Hurst, PTA executive board president at Eddins Elementary, an MISD campus in west McKinney, asked board members to keep the students, parents and teachers in mind as the facilities alignment process moves forward.
“Whats at stake for us is not a building, but it's a community and my child’s sense of belonging,” she said.
McKinney resident Tom Klein expressed concern for the Educational Facilities Alignment Committee’s composition during a public comment period of the meeting, noting that the composition does not include taxpaying McKinney residents that don’t have a student enrolled in the district and calling it “exclusionary.”
Quote of note
“When we survey staff and when we survey our parents and when we survey students, the majority of our folks across that spectrum give the attribute of this district feeling like a family,” Womack said. “I hope that, regardless of the outcome of this process, that at the end we’re still a family.”
Looking ahead
The committee will meet six times from September through December prior to presenting recommendations to the board of trustees at the Dec. 15 meeting.
The process will also include multiple avenues for community input, the presentation states, including two community feedback sessions that are open to community members that aren’t serving on the committee. The meetings are scheduled for Oct. 21 and Dec. 2 at the MISD Community Event Center.
To learn more about the Educational Facilities Alignment Committee, visit www.mckinneyisd.net/page/efac. For more information on the existing attendance zones for MISD, visit www.mckinneyisd.net/page/attendance-zones-maps.
