Katy ISD's Elementary School No. 40, to be built on Kingsland Boulevard west of Pederson Road, will have room for 1,030 students. It is the last school to be built with funding from the 2014 bond package.[/caption]

Updated March 31 at 10:12 a.m.

Katy ISD will soon begin construction on the district’s 40th elementary—the last new school funded by the 2014 bond package.

The KISD board of trustees unanimously approved a construction contract for the school at a March 28 meeting.

KISD Architect and Planner Peter McElwain presented the construction contract to the board at the March 21 work session meeting.

The school—Elementary School No. 40—is scheduled to open in August 2017, a year ahead of original plans to open in fall 2018, McElwain said.

The change to the opening date was made in November after an update on enrollment projections from the district’s demographers, McElwain said.

“By building it a year early, it will help respond to the high enrollment growth in that portion of the district,” McElwain said.

The school will be located in Waller County, south of I-10, in the Young Ranch subdivision on Kingsland Boulevard and west of Pederson Road. It will be designed to hold a capacity of 1,030 students.

The school will provide crowding relief for Wolman Elementary School and WoodCreek Elementary School.

Elementary No. 40 is estimated to cost about $31.7 million and is a “refined repeat design” of two new elementary schools currently under construction and opening in August—MayDell Jenks Elementary School on Westridge Creek Lane and Catherine Bethke Elementary School on East Ventana Parkway.

A “refined repeat design” is when similar architectural plans are used as a base design but individual changes may be made on a school-by-school basis.

The cost of the school will be $1.2 million less than what was originally projected in the original bond allocation, McElwain said.

The district has not yet identified a date for a groundbreaking ceremony for the elementary school, KISD Communications Director Denisse Cantu Coffman said.

Along with Jenks and Bethke elementary schools, the district will open its 14th junior high, named after James and Sharon Tays, on Hawks Prairie Boulevard, in August.

Other schools opening in the fall 2017 along with Elementary School No. 40 are Junior High No. 15 and High School No. 8.

KISD officials are also seeking to buy land for a future elementary school in the Cane Island subdivision.

“That particular campus would be subject to a future bond election,” McElwain said.