District needs to be done with rezoning
As enrollment continues to increase in Frisco ISD, the district is looking to make some zoning changes to accommodate high school number 12, Panther Creek.
The high school siblings walk out of the house. One, a freshman. The other reigns as a senior. Hugs are shared as they turn their separate ways to go to different schools. Same family but rival zones.
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Here we go again. Another school year. Yet another high school, one more middle school, and two more elementary schools for the district to deal with. This changing in the number of schools has made going to three schools a thing of the past. The only thing left to blame for this annoyance is rezoning.
Rezoning has become a large problem within Frisco ISD and needs to be dealt with immediately.
Many may disagree since they “haven’t really seen the effects”, but let’s look at the facts. In the next three years alone, Frisco ISD’s attendance is expected to soar in every high school with Lone Star High School expected to gain over a thousand students alone. While this is the case for almost every high school, one school in particular begins to fall short of the amount of students that it currently contains: Liberty High School. Expected to lose nearly four hundred students in just three years will take the school from close to capacity to underpopulated.
Why does this happen you may ask? Schools such as Lebanon Trail and Independence High School are taking away much students from the Liberty zone. Soon, two more high schools will dig into even more into the future of this school. Still, one question that has been ignored, remains. What is the school board going to do when the number of students here reaches approximately 1500 in 2020? Another year of rezoning and possibly another high school to be built? Sadly, that may be the only thing left to do.
This all feeds into the idea of Frisco’s “small school policy” which allows the teachers to “know every student by name and need”. How is getting to know a student for one year then shipping them off to another school “knowing them”? There aren’t many options to come by, but splitting up families will not solve anything and will only destroy the very foundation that this school district lays upon. Instead of every year rezoning and splitting of schools, there should be some sort of “grandfather” system for the district to use and stop the destruction of families.
With many Frisco ISD schools approaching maximum capacity, building new schools and rezoning has been the only option for board members to overcome this challenge. The dilemma is that the short-term “solutions” only set the problems back for years to come. How can the school board claim to look at the name and needs of the students when they are ignoring the names and needs. Rezoning within Frisco has become something that has torn this city apart and needs to be fixed now.
Kirk Niekamp is a sophomore in his first year in Wingspan. He is always on some sort of social media looking for new stories and is ready to take on anything...
Jack Black • Jun 3, 2017 at 11:46 pm
I’m Jack Black, soon to be a student at Independence High School.
Frisco ISD is dealing with population problems, yes, but they really don’t seem to consider that they’re splitting up friend groups. Now usually, I wouldn’t care about such a thing, but I will be losing friends to this rezone.
I’m in no state to take this very lightly. Frisco ISD needs a better method for their motives, perhaps changing up grade distribution each. Scoggins here, Nelson there, and so on. And if that’s to complicated, maybe they could collect data to insure everyone will be happy.
I know more than anyone, that my words mean absolutely nothing at this instant, but maybe someone who’s words do will pass on mine, and everyone elses.
Julia Bohnert • May 18, 2017 at 7:06 pm
My name is Julia Bohnert, and I’m in eighth grade at Scoggins Middle School in Frisco Independent School District. I go to highschool next year, but there is a problem with where I’m going to attend high school. I am supposed to go to Independence High School because my older sister in the tenth grade goes to Independence. Everyone that goes to Scoggins is going to Independence. But this year on January 17th, the Frisco Administration changed the school zones for all Frisco high schools. My neighborhood got rezoned to where all the incoming ninth graders will go to Liberty High School. Only about 40 kids out of all 300 eighth graders are attending Liberty. This causes many problems for my family. Here are some of the problems:
– I live in a single parent home, and my mom won’t be able to take me to and from school because of work. I would have to walk 1.8 miles to and from Liberty every day, and I really don’t feel comfortable or safe doing so.
– My older sister attends Independence, and if I go to Liberty, my household will be split between two different schools, which is still hard for my mom.
– My mom and my dad are divorced, and my dad lives in Hot Springs, Arkansas, so there is no way that he could help with transportation or extracurricular activities. Because transportation is limited, it would be extremely hard for my mom to support us in both our extracurricular activities, which are extremely important for college.
– Because of how expensive Frisco ISD shuttles are, I will not be able to utilize them if I attended Liberty to get to school.
– Ever since the announcement of the rezoning, my emotional state has not been at its best as it was before and has been increasingly getting worse. I am not looking forward to being separated from my best friends that will be going to Independence. I am already separated from my dad. I don’t want to be ripped apart from my friends, too, and even my own sister.
We have tried countless ways to let me attend Independence High School, but all have failed. I hope I have influenced you to help students like me to have a voice.
Sandy O'Brien • May 19, 2016 at 2:24 pm
I just ran across this article and agree whole-heartedly with this opinion. We are a family about to be split with a Junior at Liberty and a Freshman at Lebanon Trail. Rezoning is a challenge but splitting up families is not the answer. I believe siblings should be grand-fathered in. FISD has all the data of families that fall in this criteria and they can fully plan for it. I believe they just don’t want to because (as Dr. Lyons said) it makes too many notable “exceptions” across their reports.