Sorry, the school is full...

[JVL1018]

Usually taxes go to the county and the county will apportion to schools as necessary. Doens't necessarily go to the school in your neighborhood.

(here anyway!)

Wow, the majority of our taxes(65, 70%) go to our schools..and that's OUR local schools. The 5 grammar schools, the one middle and one high school.

 

[RadioNate]

That's been happening a lot here in San Antonio. We were actually going to rent a house in the NEISD area, and I spent all morning trying to figure out where my kids would be going, only to find out the middle school was capped out. We were literally in the parking lot of USAA, fixing to get a check to pay for the house when I found this out. I called my dh on the cell phone, made him get out of line, and the deal was off. This was in December, and today an article just came out in the paper about more schools in that district being capped out. They said the problem is that they are doing things bass ackwards. Instead of building schools and then building homes around them, they are building homes on top of homes and cramming already full schools with new kids.

I'm an NEISD parent. Talk about frustration! My DS almost didn't get into our 'neighborhood' school. If he didn't get in he would have been bussed to a school about 5-7 miles away from our house. As it stands he is already about 3 miles away from his school. San Antonio NEISD built 2, 1000 student schools which opened for the 05/06 school year. BOTH those schools will be capped for the 06/07 school year.

The biggest future problem I see here is there is no where to build new schools. Like AmazingGrace mentioned all the Jr High's and HS's are capped. There is little room to expand existing schools and no land/locations to put new schools.

People have huge issues buying and selling houses unless you can stay in the same school zone. If you aren't in by the 4/30 deadline, you don't get it so no one dares move in the summer.

The upside is that the schools are pretty good. Small class sizes since the cap is at 22 per class. I know my mom frequently had 35 students in her class when she taught in the Chicago Public Schools.

 

[SC Minnie]

We are getting like that too. There is a use Celebration style neighborhood (Baxter) across from my office that has a school in it. The school is part of the district so its not just for that neighborhood. The school was built 5 years ago before people started moving into the neighborhood so it was zoned for several other surrounding neighborhoods. Now that Baxter has over 1000 homes the school is full. They announced in the spring that they are not accepting anymore new students except for K. They will redraw the lines next year.

Our area is growing so fast with housing that our schools can't keep up. We built 3 new elem schools 5 years ago, a new middle school will open in the fall and new HS opens next year. The elem are almost all maxed out. There are no more rooms to add teachers unless they bring in mobile classrooms. I blame our county council for continuing to approve new housing developments without the proper infrastructure to deal with them.

OK-- off my soap box now.

 

[brerrabbit]

We have a very similar situation here. There is a very rapidly developing area in Pearland known as Silverlake. As it was growing they built an elementary school in the neighborhood. The day they first opened the doors for the school it was full based on how homes were zoned to certain schools. At that point they told all new residences that their children would have to go to another school about 4 miles away. The parents were pissed. Their realators and home salesmen had pointed to the new school and told them this is where you child will go to school when they bought without knowing the situation. Our school district had to pay for others misspeaking. There was such an outrage that they immediatly started construction on another school literally next door to the one they just built. Now its also full and they are starting to think about sending new kids back to the school four miles away. Our county has been one of the fastest growing (based on new homes built) in the nation for a number of the past years. We literally cannot keep up with the increase. Add to that that we have aquired about 200 additional kids in the district from Louisiana due to Katrina that do not plan to go back and we have to many kids for to few schools. Our high school 9-12 had over 4,600 students enrolled this past year and we have not even started construction of a new one as we continue to grow.

As far as building schools before houses, you can't do it. The houses generate the taxes to build the schools and you don't collect the taxes till the houses are occupied. PISD estimates that we will double enrollment in our district between now and 2012. Thats six years and the amount of time it takes to pass bonds and build schools we will never catch up.

 

[tar heel]

Capped schools are pretty common in my area, too. We have three new elementaries opening next year, so they decided not to cap the two bursting at the seams even though one of them (the one in my district) will have 1,300+ students next school year. You can't just make a new class when the only space left for new trailers is the playground.

 

[arminnie]

Wow - I had no idea that schools were so crowded these days.

I am part of the postwar baby boom. I had to go to school half days for 3 years. There was an overflow and there were three grades in one room with one teacher. It had previously been the teacher's lounge. My mother always used to say that I had to go to class in the broom closet.

 

[calypso*a*go-go]

You can't just make a new class when the only space left for new trailers is the playground.

This is exactly the situation at our school...it already has twice the amount of students the building was planned for and has six portables in use (two classes in each). The kids have to eat lunch in their classroom as the cafeteria isn't big enough to hold everyone in the same grade level at once. I do have to give our school district credit though as they have certainly made the best use out of the space available.

 

[Cindy B]

Very similiar situation here.

Our district is huge-almost 12,000 students in 19 different schools. The district goes from a Prek-12.

We have enrollment limits as well in each school. My childrens elementary school has been at capacity for three years now at approximately 500 for five grades. In fact when we registered they tried that school is full situation with me. They had an opening for one of my chidren at one school our home school and my daughter who is a kindergartener did not have room.

They wanted me to transport her to another school on my own time without a bus. Mind you at that time, I had no car. I politely told the administration office that both of them would be going to the same school since I could not transport them. And suprise, they found a spot the next day for my daughter in the morning kindergarten class... School was full, my foot.

Middle school is interesting here. The home school is well pretty stinky. The IB magnet school has open enrollment. If you name is selected in the lottery, you get to go to the magnet school and bussing is provided. We put my sons name in on the first Monday of the open enrollment period and was the third family there. My son was #6 on the waiting list. (there are less than 300 spots for all 1500 eligible incoming 6th graders). All names were put in the hat, so you didn't need to camp out at the registration building. My sons name was called up so he is going to the magnet school instead of the stinky home school.

 

[AmazingGrace]

I'm an NEISD parent. Talk about frustration! My DS almost didn't get into our 'neighborhood' school. If he didn't get in he would have been bussed to a school about 5-7 miles away from our house. As it stands he is already about 3 miles away from his school. San Antonio NEISD built 2, 1000 student schools which opened for the 05/06 school year. BOTH those schools will be capped for the 06/07 school year.

The biggest future problem I see here is there is no where to build new schools. Like AmazingGrace mentioned all the Jr High's and HS's are capped. There is little room to expand existing schools and no land/locations to put new schools.

People have huge issues buying and selling houses unless you can stay in the same school zone. If you aren't in by the 4/30 deadline, you don't get it so no one dares move in the summer.

The upside is that the schools are pretty good. Small class sizes since the cap is at 22 per class. I know my mom frequently had 35 students in her class when she taught in the Chicago Public Schools.

I'm thanking God big time that we were able to buy in our neighborhood. We're in the Judson district and i haven't heard anything about them being capped here, but still my kids are safely in.