AISD: New South High School(s)?

D7 Trustee Robert Schneider (photo by John Anderson)

The Austin Independent School District has been contemplating a new high school in South Travis County since 2002. Yet with divisions on the board about its location, and the increasing complexity and cost of finding enough land for thousands of teenagers, the district is mulling splitting the school into several separate campuses.

The board has announced that it will meet in executive session in February to discuss the purchase of "multiple parcels of land" for the school. It's already effectively paid for: Voters approved the funding as part of a $344 million bond package in 2008, designed primarily to tackle overcrowding and update existing facilities (see "AISD Gets New Trustee, PAC, Working Bathrooms," May 11, 2008). The inclusion of $32 million to buy the land for a high school (and that's just the land, not planning or construction of the actual facility) was an attempt to get ahead of Austin's growth curve.

What followed the 2008 vote were six years of arguments over where to spend the money. The loudest calls have come from the southwest end of AISD in District 7, but there have also been proposals to buy something more central, so it can service the more easterly Districts 2 and 6. Last week, D6 Trustee Paul Saldaña and At-Large Position 9 Trustee Kendall Pace met with representatives of the Dove Springs Proud organization, and "this dominated the discussion," said Saldaña.

The February executive session will be the first real opportunity for the new board, elected last November, to examine the options. So far, the details are hazy even to them, but Saldaña said that ideas that have been proposed include splitting one school across two campuses, or even a collaboration with Austin Community College, centered on the Pinnacle Campus off U.S. 290. However, he added, any land purchase will have to take into account "the dire financial situation of the district."

High schools are big: The usual calculation is a base of 30 acres, plus an extra acre for every 100 students. So Bowie High, with capacity for 3,000 students, is a 60-acre campus. Problem is, Austin is running short of plots that large in the right areas that also fit the multiple criteria required for a campus. D7 Trustee Robert Schneider contends the decision should have been made years ago, and in part blames former Super­in­tendent Meria Carstarphen for the delay. "I can count on one hand, with fingers left over, the number of times the previous superintendent thought about the South high school." He suggests that buying multiple plots will send a serious message to residents in his and other districts that AISD is serious about dealing with long-term growth. "There's a belief that eventually – and eventually is 10 or 20 or 30 years – you may have to build one or two or even three new high schools in South Austin."