Months before Ferndell Henry’s opening in August, the FBISD board of trustees unanimously approved the school’s attendance boundary for the 2025-26 school year at the April 7 work study meeting.
The plan
Bob Templeton, president of demographic firm Zonda Education, said the following areas will be zoned from Heritage Rose to Ferndell Henry:
- Portions of Sienna Point and Caldwell Ranch
- Southern Colony
- Plantation Lakes
- Huntington Place
Pre-K programming will move to Ferndell Henry, and bilingual programming will stay at Heritage Rose, said Payal Pandit, executive director of FBISD's collaborative communities department.
In accordance with the district’s policy, both incoming fifth graders and students who will be rezoned twice in the next two years can stay at their campus of preference, Pandit said.
Every student at Ferndell Henry will receive bus transportation, even if they are within the 2-mile radius, because walking paths aren’t considered safe by the district, Director of Strategic Communications Sherry Williams said to Community Impact. This decision will be evaluated within the next year as the district will oversee that safer walkways are made.
Growing challenges
The approved rezoning plan is a short-term solution at Heritage Rose that will be followed by long-term planning across three years, officials said.
In November 2023, voters elected to spend $722.99 million to build four new schools in high-growth areas, including Ferndell Henry, Community Impact reported. While enrollment districtwide is expected to stabilize, pockets of growth in the southern and northeast portions of the district have resulted in overcrowded schools, where more than 100% of the building capacity is in use.
Even with the approved rezoning, Zonda demographers predict Heritage Rose will be over capacity by the 2027-28 school year and Ferndell Henry by the 2028-29 school year.
In February, trustees asked the School Boundary Advisory Committee to consider rezoning other schools that are under capacity in the southern quadrant, particularly Scanlan Oaks and Schiff elementary schools.
However, the growth in the southern quadrant, where over 3,500 future lots are expected, necessitates for the area to be considered for long-range planning, Templeton said.
“[Growth in the southern quadrant] overwhelms the elementary zones,” Templeton said. “There's just too much cascading that would need to happen in order for me to make a significant change to this plan [short-term].”
The feedback
The district released a survey March 26-April 5 asking for feedback on the proposed plan presented at the Feb. 26 public meeting, Pandit said. The majority of respondents either fully support or somewhat support the boundary proposal.
Of the 4,515 respondents districtwide, most of which were parents, about 11% were families impacted by Ferndell Henry’s boundary, Pandit said.
She said the following five concerns were the most common among the impacted community:
- Student adjusting to the new school
- Academic offerings at the new school
- That the student will be rezoned again due to district growth
- They prefer the distance of their current school
- They don’t believe transportation options meet their needs
As a resident of the area, trustee Sonya Jones said she believes residents aren’t as concerned with the distance between Heritage Rose and Ferndell Henry elementary schools—which are three minutes apart—as they are with ensuring students are properly accommodated at the new schools with staffing and curriculum.
“[Community members’] main concern was to make sure that their student had a teacher in their classroom,” Jones said. “They just want to make sure that their kids are in a safe environment, they're learning, and there's consistency.”
Trustee Angie Hanan said she would like to see more participation from the entire SBAC moving forward, as Pandit said attendance fluctuated at SBAC meetings.
“I know that they are representing [their feeder patterns] for this [attendance boundary]," Hanan said. “For the larger comprehensive piece, ... I want them to all come out.”
Next steps
FBISD officials will present a communication plan for the impacted families to include provisions on zoning and program offerings at their assigned school, Pandit said. District officials previously said this would be revealed during the spring.
Moving forward on the long-range planning, the district will focus on Austin, Bush, Crawford, Elkins, Kempner, Hightower, Ridge Point and Travis feeder patterns during the 2025-26 school year, officials said.
