With several Frisco ISD schools reaching maximum capacity across the city, the district will meet Thursday at 5:30 pm at the FISD Administrative Building to hear public feedback on recent zoning propositions as the district continues mapping out attendance zones for the 2023-2024 school year. 

These proposals seek to prepare the district for the opening of Richard A. Wilkinson Middle School and Shana K. Wortham Intermediate School, a school for 5th and 6th graders, the first of its kind in FISD.

Wilkinson Middle School will be constructed in northwest FISD, while Wortham Intermediate School will be in east FISD. Their construction is done in hopes that they can alleviate the pressure of central FISD, which currently has several schools at full capacity.

“Our growth happens in different areas of the district year to year, and we have to make adjustments based on that,” Chief Operations Officer Scott Warstler said in an interview with Community Impact. “This isn’t something we take lightly. We understand it impacts families and impacts kids. But it is a necessary evil of being a district that is growing and continues to grow like Frisco ISD.”

Despite the constant effort to efficiently organize the students of Frisco, the growing size of the student population is welcomed as an opportunity to gain more advantages.

“We’ve always been a fast-growth district, and it has slowed a little bit, but we’re still adding,” Superintendent Dr. Mike Waldrip said. “We’ve added about 1500 students since the first day of school. There’s still land, so we’ll still see student growth. The size of our school district always comes with challenges, but it does offer a lot of opportunities that smaller districts don’t have.”

Going into the 2023-2024 school year, Dr. Waldrip believes that these efforts will help effectively educate the growing student population, helping students learn skills that they can use after high school.

“Some of the more permanent challenges we have right now are just trying to offer the kinds of educational opportunities to our students that will prepare them for whatever it is they’re doing next,” Dr. Waldrip said. “We want to give them the skills that they can take forward and do whatever it is they want to do when they leave us.”

As rezoning discussions begin, as well as the addition of new schools, Dr. Waldrip believes the possibility of additional facilities like the Career and Technical Education Center might increase.

“I think anything’s possible in the future and a lot of it will turn on on demand,” Dr. Waldrip said. “You know, if we expand this thing and then we run into the same problem again, I’m sure that we would look at exploring additional options to expand those programs to more. It’s all good.”