Wise County Messenger

Popular Categories

No categories found.

Steady growth projected for district

Enrollment to top 4,000 in 4 years



With student growth forecasted to be between 2 and 3.5 percent in the next 10 years, Decatur ISD could see enrollment top 4,000 students in four years and nearly 4,800 students in a decade.

Current enrollment is around 3,650.

The school board Monday heard a demographic report from Bob Templeton with Zonda Education that included a look at enrollment projections for each campus and an overview of housing developments in the district.

Templeton explained the district had been seeing consistent growth over the past few years before a slight pandemic caused dip of 31 students last year.

“That’s consistent with what we saw across the state,” Templeton said.

This year enrollment grew at 6.3 percent in what he called “a very good bounce back.”

Looking at housing developments in the district, Templeton said around 140 lots are “on the ground” and ready for home builders to begin construction with another 1,400 future lots in various levels of planning.

“Some of these are going to be several years down the road before they come into play, but we are starting to see a pickup in future development because the DFW market is expanding so much, and it is pushing farther out in the rural area around the region,” he said.

Using what he called “conservative” estimates, DISD is projected to grow around 70 to 85 students per year in the next couple of years based on 100 to 150 new homes per year coming online, and in years three through 10, the enrollment projections increase to around 130 students per year as more homes are expected to be built.

That would mean the district would need to plan on seeing enrollment increase to around 4,200 to 4,600 students in five to eight years.

“One thing I know is that you are going to hit these numbers. It’s just a matter of when you are going to hit them,” he said.

At the campus level, Templeton said he projects Rann Elementary would grow to around 600 students in five years and Carson Elementary in about eight to nine years.

“All of your elementaries would likely be approaching capacity within that five-year horizon,” he said.

McCarroll Middle School is projected to approach 900 students by 2024 and 1,000 students by 2027.

At the high school, the number of students would increase to around 1,200 in four years and around 1,300 students in six to 10 years.

“You definitely need to start thinking about 1,000 students at your middle school and about 1,300 students at your high school — what it will take to handle that number of kids and what does the elementary plan need to be once you get past 2,000 elementary students in your elementary campuses,” Templeton said.

Robb Sidebottom with Gallagher Construction Services also spoke to the board about providing a facilities assessment for the district to look at capacity.

“We are going through the process of gathering all the data you need to make your decisions for the district. We are going to start bringing that back to you, probably in February with capacity numbers and then the assessment report itself in March. There’s going to be a lot of information when we come back into this room and start dissecting that information,” he said.

He then provided the board with a preview of how that information will be gathered and presented in the coming months.

Neither item required board action at this time.

In other business, the board approved the hiring of the following teachers: n Caleb Hessert, band teacher at McCarroll n Justin Boren, English teacher at McCarroll n Jessica Roberts, math teacher at the high school n Kacee Goggins, math teacher at the high school n Conner Dunn, math teacher at the high school

The board also accepted the resignation of Young Elementary School Kindergarten teacher Carlee Stapp.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.