McKinney ISD’s Choose McKinney—a program allowing out-of-district transfer students and facilitating other transfer types—has generated about $1 million in revenue during the 2025-26 school year, district officials said

Choose McKinney allows kindergarten through eighth grade students within the district and from surrounding areas to attend MISD schools.

The overview

The district's transfer options include:
  • Intradistrict, or resident, transfers for students that are looking to attend a campus other than the assigned campus based on their residence address
  • Programmatic transfers for students looking to attend a campus that offers a specific program not available at their assigned campus
  • Interdistrict, or nonresident, transfers for students that live outside of the district that are looking to attend MISD
When district officials launched the Choose McKinney program in early 2025, the primary focus was to attract interdistrict transfers, Assistant Superintendent of Communications Shelly Spaulding said.

“Our out-of-district families, they're wanting to come in because they've heard great things about McKinney ISD, and so they want to be a part of what we're doing here in McKinney,” MISD Administrative Services Specialist Megan Richards. “That has been a huge draw for us.”


The district currently has about 150 total interdistrict transfer students in the 2025-26 school year, Deputy Superintendent Melanie Raleeh said.
As the Choose McKinney program progressed, Spaulding said district officials saw a shift in the program’s use as the rate of programmatic transfers increased. Students transferred campuses within MISD to access programs such as aviation, health sciences, the Caldwell Dual Language Academy and other CTE courses, she said.

The program became a “retention tool” for district officials, Raleeh said, offering more options for students and families within the district.

The program now encompasses transfer applications and the transfer process for the Collegiate Academy of McKinney, which will launch its first cohort in the 2025-26 school year. In addition to K-8 student transfers, other transfers facilitated through Choose McKinney include transfers to:
  • The Caldwell Dual Language Academy
  • CTE programs
  • Employee-student transfers
Transfer applications are evaluated for various criteria, including academic performance, discipline and attendance, according to the district’s website.

Diving in deeper


The program had 1,266 applicants in the 2025-26 school year, which encompassed applications for all transfer types.

Intradistrict transfers were offered to select elementary and middle schools based on availability, Spaulding said.

“We’re not overfilling classes, we were simply trying to fill seats that we already had,” Spaudling said. “That's why there were specific schools that were open and specific grade levels that were open.”

During the application period, seats available fluctuated based on changes in enrollment. District officials will continue to offer K-8 transfers as seats are available, they said.


“When you see a certain campus that has a high number of Choose McKinney [transfers], then one would assume that everyone's wanting to go to this campus when the reality is that campus actually had the most available seats,” Raleeh said.

The impact

The increased student enrollment resulting from interdistrict transfers supports the district through funding received from the state for student attendance, which totaled about $6,200 per student in the 2025-26 school year, Spaudling said. The program’s launch followed a series of budget reductions within the district, Raleeh said.

“It allows us to keep high-quality teachers and have high-quality programs, which is what every parent wants,” Spaulding said of the funding received from interdistrict transfers.


Looking ahead

Beginning Dec. 8, the application window opens for some transfer programs, including:
  • CTE courses
  • The Collegiate Academy of McKinney
  • The Caldwell Dual Language Academy
Applications for other transfer types are expected to be made available at a later date, following the district’s ongoing rezoning process, Spaulding said. A future expansion of the transfer program to include grades 9-12 was also planned but has been delayed, she said.

“Our original goal was to try to go to the high school for [the 2026-27 school year], but we have delayed that simply because we're going through rezoning and repurposing right now, and we need to make sure that all of our current families are set and taken care of before we can open that up,” Spaulding said.

For more information on the Choose McKinney program, visit www.mckinneyisd.net/page/choose-mckinneyisd.