Leander ISD weighs closing 3 campuses From the cover
Current situation
Student resident projection, 2034-35 Several southern LISD attendance zones are projected to contain fewer than 500 resident students within the next decade.*
Under-enrolled elementary schools, 2025-31 Several LISD campuses are projected to be below 60% operating capacity through 2031.
Cypress, Faubion and Steiner Ranch are among several LISD campuses that the district demographer reports will be under 60% utilization—or a campus’ capacity compared to its enrollment—over the next ve years. LISD used to be a fast-growth district and could assume 100-200 students would be added each year, Pape said. “That was revenue, and that’s no longer happening,” Pape said. The latest 2024 demographic report projects some southern LISD schools will experience continued enrollment declines as the “demographic cycle adjusts,” Chief Operations O cer Jeremy Trimble said. Some northern LISD schools could continue to grow with new housing construction, and projects such as the Early Childhood Center are underway in this area. “[Southern] schools were packed full of kids at one time,” Trimble said. “We didn’t overbuild; it’s just now, the conditions have changed, and so we need to make some decisions strategically for the district.”
2025-26**
2026-27 † 2029-30 †
2027-28 † 2030-31 †
2028-29 † Projected enrollment
1 Faubion ES
2 Naumann ES
356
459
427 418 415 420 412
416
399 391
376 369
1
3 Cypress ES
4 Steiner Ranch ES 382 405 391 372 6 River Ridge ES 328 288 269 261 253 272 355 350
492
<500
2
439
3
411
381
500-750
357 347
751-1,000
5 Laura W. Bush ES
4
494
1,001-1,250
421 408
5
397 389 385
1,251-1,500
6
>1,500
**BASED ON 2025-26 POPULATION AND SURVEY ANALYSTS GRADE-LEVEL ENROLLMENT PROJECTIONS †BASED ON PASA RESIDENT REDUCED ENROLLMENT PROJECTIONS
*BASED ON OCTOBER 2024 DEMOGRAPHIC REPORT
SOURCES: LEANDER ISD, POPULATION AND SURVEY ANALYSTS COMMUNITY IMPACT
Leander ISD potential optimization actions
Sorting out details
Assessing the need
Potential optimization actions Cost savings
Last August, LISD’s Long-Range Planning Committee was charged with looking into open enrollment, facility optimization and specialized programs in the face of declining enrollment, Trimble said. The committee was then phased out earlier this year as administration used its framework to develop the three optimization actions presented during the May 29 board meeting. Path 1 would close Faubion, Cypress and Steiner Ranch elementary schools and repurpose the campuses. According to district documents, Faubion was identified for alternative high school program New Hope High School; Cypress for the district police department, administrative services and professional development; and Steiner Ranch for a tuition-based pre-K. Path 2 would update staffing guidelines, or the number of staff needed to serve a campus, across the district. This could reduce roles including assistant principals, counselors, instructional coaches and librarians as well as dyslexia, English as a second language and special
LISD parent Heather Tankersley was part of the LRPC subcommittee charged with devel- oping the matrix used to determine campus utilization, which considered a campus’s enrollment, age, most recent renovations and other factors. Trimble said administration utilized the tool with updated enrollment numbers to form the actions, but Tankersley said this is “not reflected” in the original LRPC sugges- tions from 2024, such as converting Laura Bush Elementary into a fifth and sixth grade center, and keeping nearby schools as K-4. Administration also developed a more con- sistent way to generate a campus’s functional capacity in early 2024, Trimble said, but some community members have questioned how the district has used this data and demo- graphic projections for long-term planning. “I feel like there’s a lot more at play there than just saying that our neighborhood is not regenerating,” Faubion Elementary parent Anne Bloodgood said.
Path 1: consolidate Faubion to Westside, Cypress to Naumann, and Steiner Ranch between Laura W. Bush and River Ridge Path 2: update staffing guidelines to reduce various campus roles to one or to part-time Path 3: consolidate Faubion to Westside and Steiner Ranch to Laura W. Bush and River Ridge, and update staffing guidelines at Naumann and Cypress
$4.1 million
$1.7 million
$3.5 million
SOURCE: LEANDER ISD/COMMUNITY IMPACT
education coordinators to one or part-time. Path 3 proposes implementing parts of paths 1 and 2. Parents have been critical about some of the plans laid out by the district. “I think there’s some things everybody can universally say are [low-hanging] fruit that have not been looked at,” Krauss said.
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