The Grapevine-Colleyville and Carroll school districts expect to welcome some first-time students under new limited open enrollment policies intended to fill empty desks and provide extra revenue.
The newcomers will be local residents zoned into school districts that are different from the cities where they reside. This happens because school districts and cities don't share the same boundary lines.
The Carroll school district will open to residents of Southlake who are zoned into the Keller, Northwest and Grapevine-Colleyville districts. The Grapevine-Colleyville district will welcome residents of Grapevine or Colleyville zoned into the Carroll or Keller school districts. Neither is charging tuition for the transfers.
"We've had people in the community asking for this for years," said Julie Thannum, spokeswoman for the Carroll ISD. "Families who live in Southlake want to be able to send their children to Carroll schools."
GCISD spokeswoman Megan Overman said Grapevine and Colleyville residents have expressed similar sentiments, particularly residents of western Colleyville who are zoned into Keller schools.
Besides creating community goodwill, the new policies also have financial benefits for the districts. Both would gain about $5,500 per Weighted Average Daily Attendance—roughly, per child—for attendance from the state.
The financial boost helps both districts, which have struggled with cutbacks. Also, enrollment has stabilized or declined, limiting state aid for attendance.
The Grapevine-Colleyville district projects attendance of 13,232 students in 2013-14, down 62 students from the end of the last school year.
"Over the past several years, the numbers of students in our kindergarten classes have been shrinking while our larger classes are graduating out of the district," Overman said. "Based on this information, it appears that once the children graduate the families continue to live in the community."
Meanwhile, Carroll is projecting an enrollment of 7,751 students in 2013-14, an increase of 63 students over this past year, which reflects a "slow, stable" enrollment pattern, Thannum said.
Grapevine-Colleyville has about 100 applications for transfers under the new policy and has approved 91 with several others pending. Carroll has received about 50 but hasn't approved any yet.
The applications will be reviewed after registration for new students who reside in the district, Thannum said. The transfers don't guarantee a spot in a desired school. Families must reapply every year and admittance is based on availability.
Southlake real estate agent Roxann Taylor said she encountered the pitfall when a family backed out of a contract for a home in Southlake that is in the Northwest school district.
"They were relocating because of the Carroll schools," she said. "But when they found out that there were no guarantees, they decided there was too much risk involved to buy there."
Former Southlake City Council member Jeff Wang understands the problem. He lives across the street from the Dawson Middle School-Eubanks Intermediate School complex, yet he is zoned into the Grapevine-Colleyville school district. One of his children attended Grapevine High School and the other attended Carroll because his wife's job with Carroll gave them transfer privileges.
"No parent wants their child to go to school and make friends and then have to send them to another school the next year," he said.
Thannum said most of the transfer requests are from families who want their children to attend Walnut Grove Elementary School. But the most space for elementary students is at Rockenbaugh and Carroll. The district will not provide transportation for transfers, she said.
Overman said Colleyville Elementary, the desired campus for many transfer students, doesn't have space this year but Bransford, O.C. Taylor, Glenhope and Cannon elementary schools are open for transfer students, as are Colleyville Middle School and both high schools.
