UPDATE: EPISD approves new attendance boundaries for first time in decade
UPDATE: The El Paso ISD Board of Trustees unanimously approved new attendance boundaries at its meeting Tuesday night, March 19.
In an effort to avoid splitting school feeder patterns, the adjustments will entail a total of 12 rezoning changes across four different regions in El Paso: five in the Northeast region, two in East Central, two in South Central, and three in the Westside.
EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — The El Paso Independent School District is set to decide on new school attendance zones for the first time in nearly a decade at a regular board meeting on Tuesday, March 19.
A School Attendance Zone Committee (SAZ), appointed by the district, found that there were 16 split campuses, where students moved to schools outside of their attendance zones as they progressed through elementary, middle school and high school.
The district also said that 39% of families chose to transfer their children to a school outside of their zoned address.
The SAZ committee, composed of community members representing EPISD campuses within four different regions in El Paso (West, East Central, South Central, and Northeast), were tasked with analyzing school attendance boundaries, enrollment, and data from a demographic study conducted by the district.
EPISD Chief Organizational Transformation and Equity Officer Marivel Macias explained that as the district considered readjusting school attendance boundaries, they also found other reasons for making the proposed changes.
“Whenever we consolidated schools or we built our amazing new K-8 campuses, there were some schools that were consolidated into a K-8, but the boundaries weren’t adjusted. So therefore there might be some unique landmarks where there is a piece of a neighborhood that is on the other side of I-10. The reason it was there was because there was another school in that premise that was consolidated in,” Macias said.
The new proposed school attendance zones would make boundary adjustments surrounding 12 out of the 16 split campuses identified by the district.
“We wanted to see how we could keep our little students that go together to elementary, if we could keep them together to go to middle school and then to high school. And then that way our feeder patterns are pure,” Macias said.
Despite the new proposed school boundary adjustments, EPISD remains an open enrollment district. That means students have the option to enroll at any of the district’s schools of their choice.
If approved, the zone attendance adjustment would go into effect for the next school year, 2024-2025, but only for students who are transitioning from elementary to middle school, and from middle school to high school.
Students who are not transitioning in grade level have the option to finish out at whichever school they’re in.
The Board of Trustees started their meeting at 5 p.m. Tuesday at the district’s Administration Building, 1014 N. Stanton.
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