Continued decline in Plano ISD student enrollment could result in future school closures

The Plano Independent School District, long-considered a ‘destination district’ for quality education, is planning for its future while contending with declining student enrollment and under-utilized school buildings.

A board of trustees meeting on Tuesday evening will consider approving the formation of a 'long-range facility planning advisory committee.’

If approved, the committee will be tasked with providing the board feedback and recommendations regarding ‘retiring’ campuses, campus instructional programming, feeder pattern options and attendance boundaries using enrollment trends, facility assessments, and programmatic and demographic data.

A spokesperson for the PISD stresses the board is not voting to close any campuses at this time, but it could happen down the road if an advisory board is formed and recommends closures.

Rocky Gardiner, director of education for consulting firm Zonda Education, has been tracking 10 years of student enrollment declines in PISD, including during the COVID-19 pandemic.

PISD declined by 2,400 students during the pandemic.

The district did not see the “bounce back” they were expecting, according to Gardiner and PISD leaders.

Projections for the next five years show a continued decline in PISD students, according to PISD.

It’s not clear where students who left the district went, said Gardiner.

His research did not include the number of homeschooled students, as they were unable to gather that information.

During a Sept. 5 meeting before the Board of Trustees, PISD’s Deputy Superintendent of Business and Employee Services Johnny Hill shared that enrollment projections for the current school year were actually higher than what ended up happening, about 600 fewer students.

It’s not just Plano facing these challenges, he said.

“Frisco, they have an enrollment of about 67,000 students and are 1,300 under their projections this year,” said Hill during the Sept. 5 meeting. “Allen ISD, they’re about 300 kids under their projections.”

Gardiner said his research found similar situations facing school districts in Richardson, Round Rock and Spring.

If formed, the advisory committee would look at enrollment trends, capacity and building maintenance costs.

“If they have to look at campus, repurposing campuses you start thinking about the money they could save,” said Gardiner. “They could save millions if they repurpose a campus and I think the district is being pretty fiscally responsible.”

So what’s behind the drop?

There are many factors at hand, said Gardiner. There’s the housing market, housing shortage and rising costs. The average home in the PISD costs $584,000, according to the district.

“Folks that live there and maybe want to move and retire somewhere else, they’re probably sitting on a 3% loan and to leave and go somewhere else,” said Gardiner. “They’ll get less house for their money, so they’re staying put which means that house can’t regenerate with a student.”

“It’s all driven by kindergarten,” testified Gardiner in February 2022. “We can look at the numbers over and over again but if we don’t get the kindergarten students, that’s kind of driving it.”

In 2022, Gardiner’s research forecasted that PISD would have 47,126 students in the 2026/27 school year and 46,665 in the 2031/32 school year.

While there are many multi-family homes being built across Plano, Gardiner said they typically ‘yield’ only a small number of student-aged children.

There’s an increasing availability of one-bedroom apartments and apartment dwellers tend to be transient, he added.

The district reports larger graduating classes than incoming kindergarten students, a decrease in birth rates and growth in northern school districts.“If you go through Melissa, Anna, all the way up through there you get these housing developments, they’re selling houses for half that price for a new house,” said Hill. “I want to point out to put it into context, these are what I call growth inhibitors.”