The Greater Tomball area has become an education destination with its several opportunities for public school, private school and higher education learning, according to Tomball ISD Superintendent Huey Kinchen.
Kinchen was one of three local education leaders to address the Sept. 4 Greater Tomball Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon. Kinchen along with Joel Bode, head of school and CEO at Concordia Lutheran High School, and Dean Unsicker, head of schools at Rosehill Christian School, discussed enrollment growth and expansions that are planned or underway at their respective campuses.
“Great things are happening in Tomball regardless of which school you go to,” Kinchen said. “I think it’s a tribute to our community and the value we place on education.”
Tomball ISD
Over the past three years, TISD has averaged a 6.6 percent enrollment growth, which has ranked the district as one of the fastest growing in Region 4, Kinchen said. State public education group Region 4 spans seven counties and 50 public school districts, including Houston, Cy-Fair, Klein, Spring and Katy ISDs.
This summer, TISD implemented a 21st Century Learning Academy to train more than 150 secondary teachers in a weeklong workshop to infuse technology into instruction, Kinchen said. TISD plans to expand the academy to include every teacher in the district over the next two or three years, he said.
“Great things are happening in Tomball regardless of which school you go to. I think it’s a tribute to our community and the value we place on education.”
—Huey Kinchen, Tomball ISD superintendent
In Region 4, TISD ranked first in 19 standardized tests and placed second in the other three categories for the 2014-15 school year, Kinchen said.
“This is the best our district has ever done, and we’ve had some pretty strong competition with some of those schools,” he said. “It’s really a tribute to our students, our community and most of all our teachers who work with us.”
In addition, the district is encouraging 18 to 20 community members to become involved in a new group called Leadership Tomball ISD to shape the future of the district.
TISD is also hosting its second annual Principal Partners event Oct. 13, which is open to parents, business owners and community leaders. The program allows participants to spend time with a principal, faculty and students at an elementary, intermediate, junior high or high school to learn about the school’s daily operations.
The application is available on the Tomball ISD website at
www.tomballisd.net and can be submitted to the TISD Curriculum & Instruction Division at 310 S. Cherry Street or emailed to
[email protected]. The deadline to apply for the program is Sept. 25.
Concordia Lutheran
At
Concordia Lutheran High School in Tomball, expansions are underway to accommodate continued population growth, Bode said.
“We started our school year with 588 students,” Bode said. “That is significantly more than any year at Concordia. We saw a 13.5 percent growth just over last year—that’s 70 students for us and significant growth over the last four years.”
This spring, construction began on a first floor expansion of a new art room and seven traditional classrooms as well as a second floor expansion of four new science laboratories, a video production room and a 3,000-square-foot multiuse area, Bode said.
“We are anticipating a March 1 completion date at this point in time, which is great because we were hoping that we would be able to get our seniors in the new part of the building,” Bode said.
Future expansion plans include adding parking spaces as well as building a new baseball diamond, a second gymnasium, a fine arts center and additional athletic facilities, he said.
Rosehill Christian
With more than 80 churches represented in the student body, Rosehill Christian School is also benefiting from a surge in enrollment, Unsicker said.
The school is expected to break ground on a new multiplex building Sept. 15 and will begin construction on a yet-to-be-unveiled project Oct. 10, he said.
“Over a third of our graduates earn dual credit and many enter college as sophomores,” Unsicker said. “Each of our ninth through 12th grade students log 25 hours of service in the community per year to graduate and 30 hours per year for honors students.”
