Lamar CISD will open six campuses in the coming years to prepare for a projected enrollment of nearly 50,000 students by 2025. This marks a 61 percent increase in students from the 2016-17 enrollment of nearly 31,000. The district’s demographer, Population and Survey Analysts, has projected approximately 17,000 new housing units will be constructed in LCISD between 2016 and 2020.

The district is in the early stages of making preparations to call for a November 2017 bond election to fund construction of new schools as more residents move to the area.

“All the new subdivisions coming in have been hitting us hard [with overcrowding] on the George Ranch side,” said Kevin McKeever, LCISD director of operations. “We’re watching each new subdivision with our demographics and talking to developers. It’s probably been five or six years that we’ve been steadily growing at an exponential rate.”

Realtor Nathan McMartin said he represents buyers in LCISD and Katy ISD. He said there has been an uptick in interest in LCISD as developments are expanding.

"KISD is kind of the juggernaut bringing people west of Houston. In those neighborhoods, there's a premium on those houses, where there's not in LCISD," he said. "A lot of people are going [to LCISD] to achieve more value."

McMartin said newly built schools have become a selling point with homebuyers in the Richmond area.

District growth

The district opens schools based on the capacity levels at existing schools. The newest school to open in the district will be Bentley Elementary, which will relieve overcrowding at Hubenak Elementary in January, followed by Lindsey Elementary in the Firethorne subdivision next August.

The subdivisions expected to experience the most growth through 2020 in LCISD are Tamarron Lakes, Cross Creek Ranch, Firethorne and Bonbrook Plantation, according to PASA.     

Only roughly 25 percent of the land within the boundaries of the district, which spans 385 square miles, has been built out with homes. The remaining land is still available for development, LCISD communications coordinator Phillip Sulak said.

“The Houston area has been growing in just about every direction, and our area does still contain affordable open spaces [to build developments],” he said.

In addition to Bentley and Lindsey elementary schools, there were three elementary schools and one middle school funded by the district's most recent bond election in 2014. However, district officials said they will wait until a February 2017 demographic report to determine the location of the four schools.

Funding the growth

There is approximately $100 million remaining from the district’s 2014 bond election. Those funds will be used to construct the three elementary  schools that have yet to be named, plus three practice swimming pools, which will start construction in 2017, Sulak said.

Before the district calls for another bond election in 2017, a citizen’s committee will be formed with about 50 residents to make a recommendation to the board of trustees regarding what will be needed, McKeever said.

The district’s demographic study also took into account a slow-growth scenario that predicts LCISD will reach a student enrollment of roughly 45,000 by 2025.

“For the most part, LCISD has been operating at a moderate growth rate for the past decade, and we remain one of the fastest-growing school districts in the state,” Sulak said. “Currently, LCISD and Katy ISD are tied with the second-highest growth rate—4.6 percent—among all Texas school districts with more than 20,000 students.”

Financially, the district has been able to maintain a tax rate of $1.39 per $100 valuation for the last six years due to increasing home values and the completion of new houses and businesses, McKeever said.

“We haven’t had to increase [the tax rate], and part of that is because of the growth,” he said. “In the future, we may have to raise taxes a little based on the size of a bond, but the past two [bond elections] didn’t require it.”

School overcrowding

To justify opening a new campus in LCISD, a school must be at 120 percent of capacity, McKeever said.

Over the summer, district officials communicated a January opening date to parents for the new Bentley Elementary in Richmond because Hubenak Elementary needed relief as soon as possible, Sulak said.

“The students and teachers and staff who will be moving to the new building are already selected and are operating as a separate school [in portable classrooms on the Hubenak campus],” Sulak said. “All that needs to be done is physically move the teacher’s belongings [when Bentley Elementary opens].”

Nine of the district’s campuses are currently overcapacity, and portable classrooms are used at those schools to alleviate overcrowding. LCISD’s master plan calls for elementary schools to have capacity for 750 students and high schools to have space for 2,000 students.

Keeping up with growth is a daily task for LCISD officials, McKeever said.

“There’s a lot of new subdivisions popping up, and we’re trying to stay ahead of them,” he said.