New School Could Serve an Added Purpose

Pat Forgione (Photo by John Anderson)

Austin Independent School District's new Southwest middle school on Slaughter Lane is intended to cut classroom overcrowding for grades six through eight. Now Superintendent Pat Forgione proposes using it to temporarily relieve overcrowding in elementary schools in the area.

Instead of opening a regular middle school this fall, Forgione suggests a radical plan to set up an intermediate center for grades five through six in the 2009-2010 academic year. This proposal would include all sixth-graders in the school's attendance zone, plus all the fifth-graders from Clayton Elementary and any fifth-graders from other schools in the attendance zone who wish to transfer to the new middle school campus early. While this is an unusual and short-term solution, Forgione explained, "We realize that the opening of the Southwest middle school offers unique opportunities to address problems created by this area's rapid growth."

Overcrowding relief for the area's elementaries is an urgent concern, since Mills Elementary is at 135% capacity while Clayton is currently at 113% and has no room for extra construction or portables. However, the intermediate plan is only intended as a stop-gap solution. In 2010, elementary overcrowding will be relieved by the new elementary in the Meridian subdivision: The new middle school would start taking sixth and seventh grades, finally becoming a full sixth through eighth grade middle school in 2011.

Whether or not the AISD board of trustees adopts this proposal, it will not affect the new middle school's proposed attendance zone, presented by the citizens' Facility Use and Boundary Task Force to the trustees on Dec. 15. After months of discussion, the task force settled on what it calls Plan 1.1A, which has been ferociously opposed by Mills parents, who fear the plan would slice their community in half (see "School Boundaries: Please All, Please None," Nov. 28) by sending 57% of Mills' graduating students to the new middle school and 43% to Small Middle School.

The trustees will take public testimony on both issues on Jan. 12 and start discussions on Jan. 20, before making final decisions on Jan. 26. That, board Chair Mark Williams explains, gives parents time to make informed decisions about school choices before the transfer process begins on Feb. 7. Whatever the board decides, he does not expect everyone will be happy with the final boundary selection. "It's a big school," he said, "but Southwest Austin is growing really fast, and there are too many kids for [it]."