After seeing surging student enrollment figures in the past few years, Frisco ISD logged a surprising drop of 154 students between academic years 2022-2023 and 2023-2024.
Projections for this fall had student enrollment numbers going up, making Frisco ISD’s estimation of 66,670 students by early October approximately 900 students short.
Claiming that no one saw the decline coming, Scott Warstler, Frisco ISD’s chief operations officer, assured district officials and community members that there would be no rezoning.
“Every zone is safe and stable for another year,” Warstler said, according to Community Impact. However, officials will review the situation again in April 2024 to see whether they can open some campuses to new students.
Frisco ISD schools have been in hot demand, forcing the district to close enrollments at Nelson Middle School, Lebanon Trail High School, Reedy High School, and Wakeland High School in June due to them reaching capacity, as covered by The Dallas Express.
Moreover, to meet demand, the district previously built Richard Wilkinson Middle School and Shana K. Wortham Intermediate School, both of which opened their doors in August.
With 2,332 new students added between school years 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 and a further 1,609 between 2021-2022 and 2022-2023, a report from Frisco ISD officials suggested enrollment could continue to swell by between 6,000 and 10,000 students over the next decade.
Frisco ISD has been a relatively high-performing school system, boasting an on-time graduation rate of 99%, with roughly 74% of its students scoring at grade level on their STAAR exams during the 2021-2022 school year, according to the latest Texas Education Agency accountability reports.
Meanwhile, Dallas ISD — one of several North Texas school systems seeing declines in student enrollment over the past few years — only managed to graduate 81.1% of its Class of 2022 in four years. Only 41% of district students scored at grade level that school year.
With Frisco ISD’s decline in enrollment, it remains to be seen how the district will handle its second consecutive deficit budget, as previously covered by The Dallas Express.
According to the district, a shortfall of $24.4 million was logged in its 2023-2024 fiscal year budget due to a lack of legislative funding, higher operational costs, and plans to open new schools and positions. Usually, enrolling additional students would increase the district’s state funding based on daily attendance rates.