Dallas ISD's Walker Middle School Will Be Expanded After City Council Approves Zoning Changes

A $30.6 million expansion and renovation of Dallas ISD’s E.D. Walker Middle School can proceed after the Dallas City Council this week approved zoning changes to the school’s property.Despite push-back from adjacent homeowners, council member Jennifer Staubach Gates — whose North Dallas district includes Walker — called for approval of the changes.“We’re very supportive of DISD doing the work that they’re charged to do,” she said.Walker, built in 1970, is set to be expanded into a K-8 campus, adding an additional 350 to 400 students.In 2017, DISD's construction services department recommended that the district reallocate millions of dollars from the district's 2015 bond, opting to renovate Walker and W.T. White High School instead of constructing two new campuses in East and North Dallas. But the district needed a zoning change to make it work. Before the zoning changes went to the City Plan Commission in November, the city sent out 214 notices to homeowners living within 500 feet of the school. Only 36 replied: nine in favor of the changes, and 27 in opposition.Margaret Manser, a realtor who lives in the adjacent Preston Meadows neighborhood, argued to the council that the 500-feet radius for notifying homeowners just wasn’t sufficient. Only two of the 93 homeowners in Preston Meadows received notification of the proposed changes.“What are the rest of us? Chopped liver?” Manser said.Manser and Teddy Chu, the president of Preston Meadows’ Homeowners Association, both worried that the increased traffic from adding an elementary school would harm their neighborhood, as parents would attempt to cut across from Preston Road.Gates said that the traffic management plan for the school assured that cars would queue up on school property, keeping the school’s main thoroughfare, Nuestra Drive, free for incoming and outgoing traffic.  Continue reading...