Superintendent Paul Cruz announced at an Austin ISD board of trustees meeting Dec. 19 which schools will be frozen to both in-district and out-of-district transfers for the 2017-18 school year. Among the schools listed, those located in Central Austin include McCallum High School; Lamar, Burnet and Murchison middle schools; and Casis, Doss, Gullett, Maplewood, Ridgetop, Wooten and Zilker elementary schools. Cruz explained that schools are frozen to transfers when they have or are expected to have enrollment that exceeds capacity. For secondary schools, this enrollment is set at 100 percent of school capacity, and for elementary schools it is set at 115 percent. He said the bar for what is considered maximum capacity is set high because school enrollment projections take transfers into consideration. "If we did not continue transfers for [elementary] schools at 100 percent, we would actually be underenrolling the campus, so that is why we go a little above [100 percent] to land at our projected number," he said. For those schools still open to transfers, requests for in-district transfers will be accepted Jan. 3-31, 2017. For students who live outside of the district but would like to attend an AISD school, requests will be accepted beginning Feb. 1. "All requests submitted during that time frame will be considered," Cruz said. Cruz explained that out-of-district transfers help improve enrollment at campuses and offset the impact of recapture, a state law that requires districts considered property-rich, such as AISD, to send money each year to the state for distribution to property-poor school districts. For more information on AISD transfers, visit www.austinisd.org/transfer.