The Board approved an attendance zoning charter that prioritizes relieving overcrowding and keeping students zoned to schools close to their homes for the 2021-2022 school year. The approval came after community feedback from more than 1,600 people.
Families and students preferred school size and proximity to be the driving factors for new elementary school attendance boundaries in 2021–2022, according to community feedback offered through a Thoughtexchange forum.
With nine elementary schools projected to exceed 120 percent enrollment capacity in the next five years and 1,300 new students enrolling in Leander ISD every year, the district needs to open new schools and relieve overcrowding.
But, there are lots of other factors, which often conflict, to be considered in redrawing school boundaries, including:
- proximity to the school (zone students to the closest school possible),
- minimizing change for students (i.e., the number of times a neighborhood is rezoned),
- aligning feeder patterns (keeping students together in the elementary to middle school transition), and
- maintaining balanced demographics in the school (maintaining a balance of various demographic groups in the school).
Leander ISD will open Elementary School No. 28, Nancy Tarvin Elementary School, in August 2021. This will be the second of three elementary schools approved by voters in the November 2017 bond election. The district will build the school in the Palmera Ridge subdivision in Leander, west of Ronald Reagan Boulevard and north of Hero Way.
The district will now create and publish a scenario map and send it to potentially impacted schools in March. The plan is to have a new map approved in May 2020.
