General Information: School Attendance Zones

Specific school boundary changes are needed throughout the district as a result of new schools and additions to schools being completed under the voter-approved Dallas ISD bond program.

Implementing school attendance boundary changes fulfills three major promises made to voters during the district’s bond campaign.

• Relieve overcrowding by building 21 new schools
  Among the goals of the bond program was to address student population changes and school overcrowding and to provide improved environments for learning. In addition to building new schools, classrooms are being added to 57 existing schools.
  
  This expansion necessitated boundary changes and the conversion of two elementary schools and a learning center to middle schools.

• Implement a 6-8 grade configuration for most middle schools
  Moving sixth-graders from elementary to middle schools also is helping relieve overcrowding problems in elementary schools and accommodate future growth. Used increasingly throughout Texas and around the country, this configuration allows more time for establishing quality relationships among students, teachers, parents, and the school.
  
  With the temporary exception of four schools, the district’s middle schools, middle learning centers, and academies will serve students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades by the 2007-2008 school year. The reconfiguration began in the 2006-2007 school year. Because of current space issues, the conversion of the remaining four schools must be postponed. The schools to be phased into the new configuration at a later time are E.B. Comstock, L.V. Stockard, T.W. Browne, and Raúl Quintanilla Sr. middle schools.

• Return to neighborhood schools and align feeder patterns
  By making all school attendance boundaries contiguous, students attend schools closer to home. In most cases, school buses no longer pass schools close to where students live in order to deliver students to more distant schools. With the realignment of school feeder patterns, students from neighboring elementary schools will feed into the same middle school and then the same high school.
  

Various factors determine what changes will be made to the attendance boundaries of a given school

One or more of the following factors impact whether or not a student will attend a different school in the fall of 2006 and what school he or she will attend:

• Opening of new schools
• Closing of existing schools
• Adding classrooms to existing schools
• Changing the grade configuration of schools
• Changing school attendance boundaries
• Changing school feeder patterns

The superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District, the Dallas ISD Board of Trustees, and the attendance zone advisory committee understand that these changes require a period of transition for students, parents, school administrators, and school staff. The district is working to address the many issues involved in this undertaking, to make the transition as smooth and successful as possible, and to ensure that information is communicated to all concerned in a timely manner.

What’s next?

Due to the opening of new schools in 2007-2008, additional school boundary changes must be made for the 2007-2008 school year. The proposed changes are most likely to impact school in areas 1, 3, 4, and 6. Some students in these areas may attend classes at a different location in 2007-2008.