The last piece of a revamping of school boundaries and campus reconfigurations was approved by the Ector County ISD Board of Trustees Monday during a special meeting.
Boundary changes for Zavala and the potential repurposing of Travis Elementary were approved by trustees Tuesday.
During its February meeting, trustees unanimously approved a series of changes involving four elementary schools.
The board approved repurposing Burleson Elementary School as a prekindergarten center starting in 2025-26.
Approved a kindergarten through fifth grade boundary for Noel Elementary. The new attendance zone will go into effect in August 2024.
Approved an expanded attendance boundary for San Jacinto Elementary that will go into effect in August 2024.
Students in the current Burleson attendance zone will be rezoned to attend either Noel or San Jacinto Elementary.
Approved an attendance zone for Pease Elementary taking effect in August 2024. Pease will be the location of a new International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program, a new choice offering for students.
The changes were made to bring families back together in kindergarten through fifth grade neighborhood schools.
It also is meant to right-size schools to maximize facility use and efficiency; give more children access to high quality seats in A and B rated schools; expand prekindergarten; and expand Choice School options.
In 2018, for accountability purposes, the board combined the attendance zones and reconfigured the grade-levels for Pease/Noel and Zavala/Travis elementary schools. This change meant Pease served the students in prekindergarten through second and Noel served the same students in third through fifth grades, with the same arrangement for Zavala (prekindergarten–second) and Travis (3rd – 5th grades).
Today, all four campuses are in good academic standing and the opportunity exists to bring these elementary families back together into one building, according to district information.
Parent and staff meetings were held and Chief of Schools Keeley Boyer said the feedback was positive.
The repurposing of Travis would bring some cost savings to the school district, as eliminating utility and staff would save approximately $566,000 next year.
Repurposing Burleson will save $690,000.
It is important to note, while positions would not exist at Travis, the people who work there now will have other spots in the district available to them if they choose, the information said.
Boyer said there were mainly questions from people at the meetings and several parents said it was more convenient for them to be in one school and not have kids at two different schools.
Board member Delma Abalos said she was glad a second meeting was held, but she’s sorry the district didn’t do a better job of making the choice program at Travis better.
It was science and technology, she said.
“… But at the end of the day, we do what we have to do that benefits our kids. I just wish we’d done a better job of making this a better choice school,” Abalos said.
Trustee Dawn Miller, appearing virtually, said she also appreciated the second meeting.
“I would ask in the future that we always do all modes of communication for parent — text, robocall, email and paper in homework folder when it’s something of this gravity. But in addition to that, I wish we had started this conversation earlier so that the community could have been involved in even the thought pattern. Having gone to Winter Governance and hearing how a district did exactly what we’re doing repurposing and restructuring. They included the community even at the onset when they were just thinking about it, versus it being completely board led based on recommendations from the administrative cabinet. Not that we don’t trust your word, but it just builds in a great deal more of support when the community feels that they’re a part of it versus us just saying this is what’s going to happen and it’s already done,” Miller said.
“I just hope we front load a great deal more in the future on things of this nature …,” she added.
Superintendent Scott Muri said the district notified the Travis elementary students families that they’ll have first priority in the magnet lottery.
“I think tomorrow (March 5) all of those families will be notified and they’ll actually have first dibs on those seats,” Muri said.
As for repurposing Travis, Muri said they have heard the idea of using it for childcare.
“… We live in a childcare desert right now. There just aren’t enough options for families and we’ve heard from our own Chamber of Commerce (and) the Workforce Commission that there’s a significant need in our community for that. Certainly, that’s one of the opportunities we’ve looked at, but we have a variety of other things and certainly community input and some conversations will be important in the coming months,” Muri said.
Information will be going out to parents of Travis students from the district and the principal outlining opportunities to those students.
“They can certainly attend to all that elementary, again, pre-k through five or we’re going to put those because we’ll have an opportunity to participate in the magnet lottery as which is occurring right now for those students and so they’ll have that chance if they’re interested in attending one of the magnet schools in ECISD,” Muri said.
Muri said the district is reopening the magnet lottery.
“… Only those students will have first priority, so they’ll have a few days to enter the lottery before we open it up to the rest of the district,” Muri said.
