On Monday night, the Coppell ISD Board of Trustees held a meeting to discuss student enrollment rates in the past years.
During the open forum, students and parents voiced their concerns about the proposed suspension of the Gifted and Talented (G/T) program due to budget cuts in the 2025-26 school year.
Coppell High School Ninth Grade Campus math teacher Michael Wang shared his concern regarding the proposed plan to cut G/T programs and change how G/T students are being taught.
“The plan presented only seems to address a fraction of those struggles, mainly the social ones by clustering them together in the same classroom,” Wang said. “The plan does not address how a plan so effectively teaches organization study habits or emotional resilience to handle challenges and mentions nothing on meeting the academic needs of this population.”
Coppell High School sophomore Ishani Tamma said the unique teaching style of G/T classes allows for teachers such as Wang to accommodate individual students.
“Not only do traditional honors classes not allow for the flexibility that led Mr. Wang to include this project in this curriculum, but they do not allow for teachers to accommodate for each student’s unique needs,” Tamma said. “I noticed an improvement not only in my grades but the effort I put into the class. The presence of this unique G/T curriculum has allowed Mr. Wang to push me past my boundaries and his extensive experience allows him to sympathize with the students and guide them through the difficult coursework.”
Following the open forum, Zonda Education demographer Rocky Gardiner shared the fall report with data taken over the past years to show trends in student enrollment.
(Neev Chickermane)
Gardiner presented the ten-year forecast by grade level projecting that kindergarten enrollment rates were projected to drop, along with various other grade levels. The decline in student enrollment could be due to less housing being built in Coppell, which leads to less yield of about four students for every 10 apartment units.
Multi-family housing occupancy is down to 87 percent from 90 percent three years ago.
“In Coppell, you can see that there are not too many pockets left that they can infill with single family housing, so we don’t have a lot of growth going right now from a residential perspective,” Gardiner said.
Gardiner said Zonda uses zip codes to project how many K-11th graders will be enrolled in CISD schools. Data shows kindergarten enrollment rates dropped by around 100 students, but Gardiner said secondary class will remain high due to sixth and seventh grade students coming back from other forms of education, such as homeschooling and charter schools.
With the consolidation of Pinkerton Elementary School at the conclusion of this school year, this affects where families are zoned. The board plans to approve 2025-26 boundaries in February.
“We’ve got the Valley Ranch expansion which will allow for more pre-K opportunities in the southern part of the district,” Gardiner said. “Some of these numbers are going to be a little bit different depending upon where people actually land.”
Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Dr. Angie Brooks discussed quality instruction and professional learning communities and how that has affected the district.
“It has been proven within research that if individuals have a sense of belonging, that they truly feel that they are part and have that inclusive practice as a part of what they’re doing, that they also will be more successful, not only in their academics, but also their social emotional needs within,” Brooks said. “One of the ways that we’re able to find some of this data specifically is with our panorama survey.”
The trustees approved making April 3 a Flex Professional Day/Student Holiday and April 6 (replacing April 17 and April 20 as a Bad Weather Day) in the 2025-26 school calendar. This change was made due to the lack of attendance last year during the break in April.
“Ninety-six percent attendance is the standard when we are in school. On March 29 or Good Friday of last year, our overall district attendance rate was 93.49% and the financial impact to the district was pretty significant,” Brooks said.
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