To accommodate growth in the Creekside area, Tomball ISD will amend its initial plan for its 2021 bond to build a new intermediate school at the Tomball Innovation Center, replacing the elementary school that was initially planned for, according to a presentation to the school board during a special meeting April 10.

“When we think back to what’s the primary goal of the Innovation [Center] campus, [it] is to provide that enrollment relief to the [Creekside area],” Chief Operating Officer Steven Gutierrez said at the April 10 special meeting. “We did not hit that mark with this plan of creating this new elementary zone."

The new intermediate school will be for grades 5-6 and provide “significant relief to our four schools in the Creekside area,” Superintendent Martha Salazar-Zamora said in an April 13 letter sent to families and staff. The Creekside area is home to Creekside Park Junior High, Creekview Elementary, Timber Creek Elementary and Creekside Forest Elementary.

“The most appealing aspect of this is—look at how long before you need another bond,” Chief Financial Officer Jim Ross said during the April 10 meeting. “This is the best-case scenario considering the position you’re going to be in in the future with passing a bond.”

Ross also said the bond language does not prevent making this change.

“We did not phrase our proposition that way,” Ross said. “It just said the schools. It said we’d be building elementaries, intermediates and [a] high school. So we didn’t say two elementaries, one intermediate. We didn’t dictate it in that way. So we’re not straying from what we actually had in the bond proposition language.”

The district is anticipating opening the intermediate school in 2025-26, which is a year earlier than the elementary school would have opened, according to the April 13 letter. All fifth-grade students at the Creekside area elementary schools in the fall of 2025 will attend the new intermediate school, as well as sixth-grade students who were slated to attend Creekside Park Junior High.

“This is not a rezoning, for clarity as well,” Salazar-Zamora said during the April 10 meeting. “It’s not a rezoning. This is just a new school, so it is a [providing] information of, ‘Your children will now go to this new school.’ We’re not rezoning.”

Tomball ISD will hold a town hall meeting on this change April 17 at 7 p.m. at Creekside Park Junior High.

“I just think a lot of parents, once they get a glimpse of it and get a taste, they’ll say, ‘This is awesome,’” Board President Lee McLeod said during the April 10 meeting.

View the presentation to the school board below.