On Monday night, the Coppell ISD Board of Trustees met to discuss the potential issuance of 2023 voter-authorized bonds, new school boundaries after Pinkerton Elementary School’s consolidation, a new budget plan and the rebranding of New Tech High @ Coppell.
George Wiliford from Hilltop Securities discussed the potential issuance of 2023 voter-authorized bonds, or the Series 2025 Bond Issuance. The decision on this bond will be made at the next board meeting on Feb. 24. The bond issuance would take the authorization left over from the 2023 election (roughly $250 million) and be divided evenly among three propositions: Proposition A, buildings and buses, Proposition B, technology and Proposition D, athletic improvements. The proceeds for the bond issuance is $72 million leaving $175,490,000 from the 2023 authorization.
Assistant superintendent for administrative services Kristen Eichel and chief communications officer Angela Brown discussed refining the school zoning boundaries for the 2025-26 school year. They presented two possible scenarios to rezone students, referred to as Scenario 1 and Scenario 2.
Pinkerton Elementary’s consolidation at the end of this school year impacts seven elementary schools: Cottonwood Creek, Denton Creek, Lakeside, Wilson, Austin and Lee Elementaries.
In the first scenario, 779 elementary school students would be moved. A total of 302 students from kindergarten to fourth grade would be impacted from Pinkerton, and 181 of those families are part of the International Baccalaureate program by choice. Those 181 families from Pinkterton were surveyed on if they would continue to follow the IB Program. One hundred forty-four would choose to continue the IB program and 31 would return to their home campus. The six who weren’t counted were defaulted as following the IB program. Families in the Dual Language Immersion Program were also surveyed. Out of 195 surveys, 152 families would continue in the DLI program and 26 families chose to return to their home campus. Out of the 16 families who did not respond, four families knew they were moving out of the district.
The first moves a large number of monolingual students out of Denton Creek Elementary, meaning there would be one section of a monolingual class throughout grade levels.
“It was creating a dual language campus, not a campus with a dual language program,” Eichel said.
With Scenario 2, 497 students affected by Pinkerton Elementary’s closing and the consolidation of the DLI program from Wilson to Denton Creek would be moved.
Eichel requested to zone Pinkerton to Wilson, changing the middle school boundaries to Coppell Middle School North. Twenty-five percent of students zoned at Pinkerton would be zoned to Austin, and they would be continued to be zoned to Coppell Middle School East.
There will be effects on transportation pertaining to both scenarios.
In Scenario 1, there was a noticeable reduction in transportation routes. With Scenario 2, there will be minimal changes, but there will still be reductions. The two Pinkerton routes will be removed.
All teachers would have a job before any internal transfers are opened. Scenario 2 allows for 95% of teachers to be put in one of their top two choices for placements.
The board passed Scenario 2 for the new school boundaries for the 2025-26 school year.
“It makes a lot of sense. It’s simpler than Scenario 1 and solves problems we didn’t know we had initially,” trustee Nichole Bentley said.
Chief financial officer Diana Sircar also discussed budget plans for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 school year.
CISD does not have enough economically disadvantaged students needed for federal funding, but has about $2.8 million in federal grant funds yearly. Current funding comes from reimbursements from the Texas Education Agency. For now, the district will spend as it normally does. However, if funding is not distributed, the current school year’s budget could be affected, and if funding and grants are gone or lessened, the 2025-26 school year’s budget will also be affected.
Brown also discussed New Tech’s reimagining project where CISD is looking to rebrand the school. This project is in the early research process.
The meeting ended with the trustees approving a Public Purpose for the Expenditure of Public Funds to pay employees for the bad weather days on Jan. 9-10. They also decided that those school days would not have to be made up.
Follow @CHSCampusNews on X.
