The Feb. 23 vote will come after a design presentation at the board’s Feb. 16 work study meeting sparked several concerns from board members about the new space.
The specifics
The Opportunity Awareness Center, or OAC, is the disciplinary alternative education program for Katy ISD, which serves students across kindergarten through the 12th grade who have broken the Texas Education Code or the district’s student code of conduct, OAC Principal Janelle Coleman said.
The new $10 million center is set to be located along Katy Fort Bend Road, not far from where the current OAC is housed in the Miller Career & Technology Center.
The new Opportunity Awareness Center will be close to where the current one is at the Miller Career & Technology Center. (Courtesy Katy ISD)
By the numbers
The proposed OAC center—slated to be just under 20,000 square feet, which is less than half of the program’s current space—would decrease the number of secondary seats from 345 to 180, officials said. However, Coleman said the center typically stays under 190 students total in its current format.
Additionally, the district is looking into several options to ensure students can be successful in the program, including potentially allowing some virtual curriculum for select students placed in the OAC, although parents would have to agree to the plan for each individual student.
What they’re saying
While the intention of the presentation was to focus on the design and construction of the OAC, several board members raised concerns about the overall objectives of the center, including the smaller size of the new building and potential part-time virtual delivery of instruction to some students.
“I’m concerned with servicing them the way they need to be,” board member Mary Ellen Cuzela said. “I don’t want a population of students that is served so very well at the current OAC—it does an outstanding job—to suffer.”
However, board member Rebecca Fox said she was confident that staff, several of whom were present at the meeting, could accommodate students at the new OAC.
“I think the virtual could work for many of the children, and I know that these people are used to change because it changes constantly, and [the staff] are used to change and adapting based on [their] students,” Fox said.
The framework
Multiple school board members felt it necessary to have the OAC implementation plan presented to them before making any commitments to the project. However, officials said the plan first needed to be shared with the center’s faculty and staff.
“My reservation is that we’ve designed a building off of a plan that our teachers don’t know about yet,” board member Amy Thieme said.
Coleman said the district planned to replicate the new plan in its current space to ensure a smooth transition for both staff and students before moving to its new building in 2027.
Thieme suggested the idea of conducting the implementation plan on a trial period of six months to a year to see if any adjustments are to be made before construction begins.
Moving forward
Katy ISD is set to vote on the design at its Feb. 23 board meeting following an implementation presentation, per board request.
If design is approved, construction documents are expected to be issued by the end of May with construction slated to begin in August, officials said. The project is slated to be complete by June 2027, with classes beginning in the new building in the 2027-28 school year.
