Rezoning is focus of Carroll public meetings

Carroll school district officials will hold two public meetings in the next few weeks to discuss options for dealing with growth challenges at several elementary schools.

Administrators and trustees are considering attendance rezoning to alleviate crowding and best utilize facilities but have not made any concrete plans. The meetings set for Nov. 9 at Rockenbaugh Elementary and Nov. 18 at Carroll High School are intended to keep community members informed of the process and gather feedback, officials said.

Rocky Gardiner, vice president of Templeton Demographics, gave a demographics report to trustees at an Oct. 19 board meeting. Carroll still has about 1,200 future residential lots, about 180 under construction and the rest slated for future development. Some 85 percent of that development is in the current attendance zones for Johnson and Walnut Grove elementary schools.

Officials said that Johnson is nearing its functional capacity while Walnut Grove is just a few years away from hitting that mark. Of the five CISD elementary schools, Old Union is the only one which would stay below its functional capacity over the next several years.

“We looked at the option of a sixth elementary,” said Superintendent David Faltys. “There are a lot of costs for overhead, and you need about 16 acres to build one.”

Some of the options under consideration include short-term solutions like reconfiguring spaces to longer term pulling students north of FM 1709 Southlake Boulevard to attend schools to the south, having a prekindergarten center that would free up elementary classroom space and adding on to some campuses.

Faltys said that the old Durham Elementary building next to Durham Intermediate could, with some minor adjustments, house pre-kindergarten students. The district currently has about 160 students who go to pre-k programs at Carroll and Rockenbaugh elementary schools.

While officials are considering boundary changes, they are looking at the prospect of tweaking the Carroll Elementary feeder pattern. Right now, intermediate students in that zone are split between Durham and Eubanks. Administrators are evaluating whether they can send all fifth and sixth graders in that attendance zone to one intermediate school.

If trustees decide to make any changes for the 2016-17 school year, officials would like to have the parameters in place by January.

The upcoming meetings will be at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 9 at Rockenbaugh Elementary, 301 Byron Nelson Pkwy., and 6:30 p.m. Nov. 18 at Carroll High School, 800 White Chapel Blvd. For more information, go to southlakecarroll.edu and click on the “attendance rezoning” link at the top of the page.

This story was originally published November 5, 2015 at 2:14 PM with the headline "Rezoning is focus of Carroll public meetings."