January 11, 2017
Board Workshop on Long-Range Planning

The Belton ISD Board of Trustees held a workshop on Jan. 11 to discuss options for the district's long-range facilities plan.

A fast-growth school district, Belton ISD is expected to grow from 11,119 students this school year to more than 14,000 students by 2025. Along the way, Belton ISD's elementary and middle schools are projected to be at or near capacity in 2019, and its high schools will be at or near capacity in 2021.

To address this fast-growth, the school board has adopted the Roadmap to BISD 2025. This plan calls for a new elementary school to open in 2019, a new high school to open in 2020 or 2021, and repurposing Bhs9 (the former middle school adjacent to Belton High School currently used for high school classes) as a middle school.

At the workshop, school board members discussed five possible locations for the new elementary school and the potential size of the new high school. The workshop also included two presentations, which can be fond at the links below:



Elementary School Planning

School board members discussed five possible locations for the new elementary school. They considered sites on North Pea Ridge Road and Poison Oak Road in the city of Temple and sites on Second Avenue, Shanklin Road and FM 436 in the city of Belton.

According to the district's demographer, the fastest growing neighborhoods are currently in the north of the district around Pirtle Elementary and in the south near Chisholm Trail Elementary. As a result, several school board members commented that ideally the district would build two elementary schools (one in the north and one in the south) in the near future. However, state law places a cap on the district's bond issuing authority, and with a new high school planned, the district will not have the debt capacity to build two elementary schools by 2019.

Focusing in on the five sites, the district's demographer suggested that the Poison Oak and Shanklin Road locations offered the greatest opportunity to address fast-growing neighborhoods while minimizing overall changes to the district's elementary school boundaries. The district's architects indicated that the Poison Oak property would likely be the least expensive to build on given current site conditions. As a result, school board members asked for a more detailed look at the Poison Oak site at their next meeting.

High School Planning

The new high school will be built near the intersection of FM 2483 and FM 317 in the city of Temple, and school board members carefully reviewed projections for high school enrollment alongside different options for the campus' size.

Between Belton High School and Belton New Tech High School @ Waskow, the district currently has 3,222 high school students. For UIL purposes, both schools are counted together putting Belton High School in class 6A. Belton ISD's total high school enrollment is projected to exceed 4,400 students in 2025 and 5,000 students by about 2030.

As part of the workshop, school board members reviewed high school options ranging in size from 1,600 to 2,500 students. Most of the discussion focused on two options. The first was a new high school with core facilities (cafeteria, library, etc.) for 2,500 students and classroom space for 2,000 students meaning that the campus would likely be expanded at some point after it opened. The second was a high school with both core facilities and classrooms for 2,500 students.

Trustees plan to take a deeper dive into those two options at their next meeting, which is scheduled for Jan. 23. They also have tentatively planned a meeting for Feb. 6 and may call for a bond election at that time. If so, the bond election would be held on May 6, 2017. The deadline to call for a May bond election is Feb. 17.