Attendance Boundary Committees Address Rezoning in Lamar CISD
To manage hypergrowth throughout the district, Lamar CISD will open three new elementary schools (ES) in August 2024 and two more in August 2025. Throughout February, the District held several Attendance Boundary Committee (ABC) meetings to address rezoning and create new student populations for Willie Melton Jr. Elementary, Viola Randle Elementary, and Bernard Clifton Terrell Jr. Elementary. The committees also addressed developing attendance zones for ES 35 and 36, which open in August 2025.
In general, the District uses three strategies to manage growth:
- Cap & Overflow: When a school reaches its capacity, Lamar CISD stops enrollment at that campus and sends new students to enroll at a neighboring campus.
- Leveling: Lamar CISD monitors how many students are at each school. If some schools have a lot of students and others do not have as many, the District may move some students around to balance enrollment across campuses.
- New Campuses: Lamar CISD builds brand-new schools using bond money. When these new schools open, the District needs to rezone some current campuses to create the population of students who will attend these schools.
When new campuses are built, ABCs are formed to help review, rank, and possibly create potential attendance zone maps to best serve the District’s expanding student population. In addition to the formation of these committees, the District gathers feedback from a survey emailed directly to parents of potentially impacted campuses.
February’s ABC groups were comprised of parent representatives from different elementary schools throughout the District as well as campus administrators, however, only parent representatives were permitted to vote.
“The District did a great job narrowing our choices down to three choices to choose from,” Tiffani Moyer, Tamarron Elementary parent and Melton, Randle & ES 36 ABC spokesperson said. “They provided the information that we needed to make a fair and educated decision.”
Moyer was not the only one who appreciated the district’s approach.
“The entire process was very well structured,” Julie Gomez, McNeill Elementary parent and Terrell & ES 35 ABC spokesperson, added. “With our committee representatives, and the results of the community survey, we had the great advantage of being able to take everyone’s opinions on the changes into consideration.”
The Melton, Randle & ES 36 ABC met on February 5 and 7. Out of the 17 people invited to be a part of the committee, 11 were present at the last meeting to vote. The group decided not to create an additional attendance zone map option.
“We wanted to make sure we took into account what the families in our track wanted,” Moyer said. “We wanted to keep enrollment numbers at our campuses as even as possible, so it affects the least amount of students with rezoning.”
The Terrell & ES 35 ABC met on February 8 and 12. Out of the 17 people invited to be a part of the committee, 12 were present on February 12 to vote. The group decided not to create an additional attendance zone map option.
“The committee collectively felt it was vital to keep communities together, as well as keep our students with their in-school families to support the emotional well-being of our students,” Gomez said. “We want to make sure that Lamar CISD students will see improvements in logistics to and from their campus and decreased student overflow in their schools.”
As the spokespersons, Moyer and Gomez will present the findings of their respective committees and recommend an attendance zone at the Lamar CISD monthly Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday, March 19. The Board will use this information to vote on the final attendance zone.
For more information on the Rezoning Process including the attendance zone map options and additional meeting information, please click HERE.
Source: Lamar CISD
