McKinney | December 2022

EDUCATION Attendance zone changes signal growth in Frisco ISD

To accommodate district growth and schools at capacity in Frisco ISD, two new schools are opening in the 2023- 24 school year, including the district’s rst intermediate school that will open in McKinney. Take a look at the FISD neighborhoods aected by zone changes for the two new schools. No high school changes are being made. A LOOK AT THE YEAR AHEAD

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL REZONING

Current school zones

2023-24 school zones

Frisco ISD

McSpedden

Shawnee Trail

Comstock

BY MIRANDA JAIMES

Spears

Next school year, in response to about 1,000 new students from this school year, Frisco ISD atten- dance zones will look dierent as two new schools open: Wortham Intermediate School in McKinney city limits and Wilkinson Middle School in north Frisco. FISD has seven campuses at capacity. These include four elementary schools and three mid- dle schools. All new students who move to one of these at-capacity school attendance zones are being enrolled at neighboring schools. During an Oct. 17 board meeting, FISD trustees received an update from the district’s longtime demographer Population and Survey Analysts about expected growth in the district. PASA Director of Planning Kris Pool said the district is continuing to grow, though not at the high rate the district experi- enced in the mid-2000s, she said. Using a moderate-growth scenario, Pool’s projec- tions show the district would sit at 70,434 students in ve years and 72,872 students in 10 years. Even though the new campuses that will relieve the over- crowding at certain schools will not open until next year, district ocials said nalizing rezoning plans now helps put processes in place to help “seam- lessly” open two new campuses. These include cam- pus transfer requests, which will open in January, and sta hiring, which will also start in early 2023. FISD Deputy Superintendent Todd Fouche said at a Nov. 7 meeting that attendance zone changes are “the hardest thing our sta does every year.” “We have been the fastest-growing school district in the United States, and ... it’s hard to have stabil- ity for students when 3,500 students a year [his- torically] are moving in our district,” Fouche said. “I think over the next ve years we see our growth starting to stabilize. And I think we can have lon- ger-term projections as we go forward. But as we’re still building schools because people are moving in, we have to have somewhere to put them, and that puts us in a tough situation.” FISD trustees adopted the new attendance zones for the 2023-24 school year during a Nov. 14 board meeting. It marks the 19th time in 22 years FISD has rezoned part of its school district. Rezoning this year aects 2,787 students. Of those, 1,354 students will go to one of the new campuses. The district implements enrollment changes to keep high schools under 2,100 students, mid- dle schools under 1,000 students and elementary schools under 760 students. This model helps give students access to more opportunities in what is called the student opportunity model, ocials said. Wortham will be the rst intermediate school

Allen

DNT TOLL

Bledsoe

Isbell

Talley

SRT TOLL

Smith

Spears

Smith

Riddle

New Zone: Wortham

Riddle

Wortham will be FISD’s rst intermediate school, serving fth and sixth grades. Students zoned to Wortham will attend classes together starting in fth grade and as a group ow into Scoggins Middle School and then Emerson High School.

Zones changed:

Zone added:

• Allen • Bledsoe • Comstock • Isbell

• McSpedden • Riddle • Shawnee Trail • Smith

• Spears • Talley

• Wortham

Intermediate School

MIDDLE SCHOOL REZONING

Current school zones

2023-24 school zones

Frisco ISD

New Zone: Wilkinson

Trent

Scoggins

DNT TOLL

Lawler

Vandeventer

SRT TOLL

Lawler

Vandeventer

Zones changed: • Lawler • Scoggins

Zone added: • Wilkinson

• Trent • Vandeventer

SOURCE: FRISCO ISDCOMMUNITY IMPACT

“The beauty of this is once you hit Wortham, that fth grade class is your graduating class, and every kid that is in that fth grade class; minus move-ins and those kinds of things, that’ll be your graduat- ing class,” Warstler said. “Nowhere else in our dis- trict can we look at any fth grade class and say, ‘That is your graduating class.’” Wortham’s design features collaborative spaces and opportunities for outdoor learning. The goal is to “bridge an elementary mindset” between fth and sixth grade students, incoming Wortham Prin- cipal Michael Thomas said. “We think that those two age groups together pair really nicely as far as the level of maturity and how we can connect curriculum between the two grade levels,” Thomas said. “We feel like it would be a great mesh, and it’s going to relieve a lot of the pressure of attendance and enrollment on that side of the district.”

in FISD, serving fth and sixth grade students on the east side of the district. It will open with 935 students. While Wilkinson is the district’s 18th middle school, it will be the rst new middle school for FISD in ve years. Functioning as a traditional mid- dle school, it will serve students in sixth through eighth grades and will open with 573 students. Having an intermediate school in the district was discussed for years and planned before the pan- demic, said Christy Fiori, the executive director of teaching and learning at FISD. “The way that that feeder pattern is stacked, it really works very nicely within that side of town, whereas it may not t that structure in other places,” she said. While several elementary schools will feed into Wortham, the goal is to have peers at the interme- diate school graduate together, Warstler said.

MCKINNEY EDITION • DECEMBER 2022