Pflugerville - Hutto Edition | March 2023

HEATHERWILDE BLVD.

New

35 What's changing?

973 Pugerville and Connally high schools. Hendrickson High School’s attendance boundaries will not change. Chief of Sta Brandy Baker said the plan includes a grandfathering clause for students entering 11th and 12th grades during the 2023- 24 school year at Weiss High. The district will also close transfers to Weiss and Hen- drickson high schools. The new attendance boundaries will go into eect in the 2023-24 school year. Killian said the high school changes will have little direct impact on the district’s budget but will prevent the need for building a new high school. GREG MANOR RD. “Weiss is pretty much [at capacity] right now,” Killian said. “We really can’t aord to sta a new high school at the current rate.” Finding savings elsewhere Without the savings from closing Dessau Elementary, the district will have to con- sider other options for cut- ting costs. These include reducing stang ratios for campuses with smaller stu- dent populations. “We’ve got a lot of cam- puses that are sitting at [600, 700] or 800 students, and they have the same stang,” Killian said. “So we could sta them fractionally—like have a system principal share two campuses and [have the principal] go back and forth.” Killian said the district will likely cut smaller expenses, such as computer programs and districtwide surveys.

Starting in the 2023-24 school year, some areas in southeast Pugerville zoned for Weiss High School will change to Pugerville or Connally high schools. attendance zones MOPAC

Current high school zoning

New high school zoning

MOPAC

130 TOLL

Pugerville ISD boundary

High school

Area of change

IMMANUELRD .

IMMANUEL RD.

HIGH SCHOOL ZONE AREAS

GREGG MANOR RD.

Pugerville High

Connally High

E. HOWARD LN.

Weiss High

Hendrickson High

E. HOWARD LN.

Current zones

PARMER LN.

GREG MANOR RD.

1660

GREENLAWN BLVD.

45 TOLL

close and another that would realign attendance boundar- ies for some high schools. Since December, a coali- tion of parents and teachers from Dessau Elementary has been attending district board meetings to voice opposition to the plan. “If you take this elemen- tary away, you take away the history, the culture [and] the belonging we all have and our children have to be proud to be from Dessau,” said Emily Miranda, a fth- grade teacher at Dessau Elementary. The latest action At a Feb. 23 board meet- ing, trustees voted to move forward with only the high school portion of the plan, leaving Dessau Elementary open and its attendance boundaries unchanged.

PfISD Financial Ocer Jennifer Land said closing Dessau Elementary would have saved the dis- trict around $2.5 million. Chief The district previously delayed the opening of Hidden Lake Elementary School—a new campus in east Pugerville—as a cost-saving measure, but the district plans to open the school in 2023-24 to address growth in the surrounding area. Land said even if trustees voted to close Dessau Ele- mentary, the 2023-24 budget shortfall would not diminish as district estimates show Hidden Lake Elementary will cost about $3 million to open and sta. The changes to high school attendance boundaries will result in approximately 560 Weiss High School stu- dents being relocated to

129

MOPAC

HEATHERWILDE BLVD.

FLUCHES GROVE RD.

973

WELLS BRANCH PKWY.

130 TOLL

HARRIS BRANCH PKWY.

GREGG MANOR RD.

MAP NOT TO SCALE N

SOURCE: PFLUGERVILLE ISDCOMMUNITY IMPACT

process, several proposals recommended closing two elementary schools—among the schools suggested as options were Pugerville, River Oaks and Dessau ele- mentary schools. In the months following the committee’s nal recom- mendation, PfISD narrowed down the proposals to two options: one that would see Dessau Elementary School

CONTINUED FROM 1

Hard decisions In December, the district’s attendance boundary com- mittee presented proposals for boundary changes, sev- eral of which involved clos- ing one or more schools. The proposals were borne of a projected $7 million shortfall in the district’s 2023- 24 budget, and early on in the

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