Fort Bend ISD staff presented the proposed attendance boundaries for Sonal Bhuchar Elementary School to the board of trustees during the Nov. 8 meeting.
Located at 5503 Thompsons Ferry Road, Missouri City, Bhuchar Elementary School is being built to alleviate overcrowding at Commonwealth Elementary School, said Scott Leopold, an executive director at educational planning firm Cooperative Strategies. The new school is expected to open ahead of the 2023-24 school year.
“The driver for this is the overutilization at Commonwealth, but if you look at the location of where we have Bhuchar—it’s really the only place we were able to find land for a school—we have to kind of go through Sullivan [Elementary School] to really give that relief to Commonwealth,” Leopold said.
Known as the original recommendation, the proposed boundaries for Bhuchar are composed almost entirely of students currently attending Sullivan, Leopold said. It also includes the part of Creekstone Village directly south of Elkins High School, which is zoned to Austin Parkway Elementary School.
The general boundaries for Bhuchar are south of University Boulevard and Oilfield Road between LJ Parkway, Hwy. 6 and a utility easement, according to district documents. The Millwood neighborhood south of LJ Parkway is also zoned for Bhuchar, Leopold said.
Bhuchar will feed into First Colony Middle School and Elkins High School, Leopold said. The new elementary school has a capacity of 963 students and is expected to serve 780 in 2023-24, according to district data.
Leopold said with these boundaries, about 648 students will be taken out of Sullivan in 2023-24, allowing that capacity to filled with with students from Commonwealth. Under the original recommendations students living in Riverstone south of University Boulevard, except for the Brazos Landing neighborhood, will be rezoned from Commonwealth to Sullivan.
Both Commonwealth and Sullivan will feed to Fort Settlement Middle School. The high school boundaries will not change, Leopold said.
When drawing new boundaries, Kwabena Mensah, assistant superintendent of elementary schools, said the district considers student safety and equitable access, assigning neighborhoods to the same school by using natural and manmade boundaries, and balancing campus utilization, among other factors.
The FBISD School Boundary Oversight Committee is set to meet Nov. 18 to review the original recommendation. Then, the recommendation will go before the community for a public hearing and feedback period in mid-January, Mensah said. The plans will be updated, and the board is slated to vote on the final school attendance boundaries Feb. 7, according to a timeline presented Nov. 8.
“We know that there are many families that love their schools,” Mensah said. “But we know that as we continue to grow, change is required. ... It is our responsibility as a district that as they move into these new places and spaces, that they still have those schools that they love.”
Members of the community can find proposed boundary maps, find out if their address will be affected by the changes and read more information at www.fortbendisd.com/Page/137934.
