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District ponders options for planned high school
Alvin ISD to study scenarios for zoning to accommodate Shadow Creek High
An Alvin school district committee is exploring options for what grade levels should initially be introduced at Shadow Creek High School when it opens in fall 2016.
The committee is considering opening the planned school in Pearland with either freshman and sophomore students or with a combination of freshman, sophomore and juniors that first year of operation.
"The decision has not yet been made as there are implications for numerous different things," said Daniel Combs, Alvin ISD's director of communications.
Facilitating the transition of students is one consideration.
If the district decides to open the school with three grade levels, juniors will have already attended Manvel High School for two years.
If the campus opens with two grade levels, incoming freshman students would start their high school career at the new campus and sophomores would have only attended Manvel High School for a year.
The Shadow Creek campus will be the district's third comprehensive high school and will affect Alvin ISD's attendance zones.
"There is a trickledown effect if you pull all of those kids out of (Manvel High School to go to Shadow Creek High)," Combs said. "You change the attendance zone and then you have to pull some kids from Alvin High School over to Manvel."
The district also has to take into account a new secondary campus, Manvel Junior High School, that will open next school year.
Texas 288 is roughly the boundary between the Alvin and Pearland school districts.
All Pearland ISD campuses are east of the roadway. Other Alvin ISD schools in Pearland are Nolan Ryan Junior High School, Mary Marker, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Glenn York elementary schools.
Shadow Creek High School will be just south of Shadow Creek Ranch, a 3,500-acre master-planned community.
Also nearby is Southern Trails, a master-planned community that is one mile west of Texas 288 on FM 518.
In addition, the 1,000-acre Pomona master-planned community, which staged its groundbreaking last spring, could eventually provide additional students.
A committee of five parents from each district campus will sort out the pros and cons of each scenario for prospective attendance zones and issue a recommendation to Alvin ISD officials.
The committee had its first meeting on Oct. 7. A final recommendation and decision is expected by December.
The 520,000-square-foot Shadow Creek High is under construction at the corner of Broadway Street and Kirby Drive. Steel work on the three-story structure is visible at the site, which is across from the Dillard's department store in the Pearland Town Center. The main entrance of the campus will be off Broadway Street.
Athletic facilities will be built next to the campus.
A deadline hasn't been set on deciding a school mascot and colors, which will be factors in Shadow Creek High's interior design and sports uniforms, Combs said.
"Certainly, we will need that decided the year before that camp opens," he said.
The school's construction is being funded with a $104.5 million bond issue approved by district voters last November.
The facility design and instructional model for the school resulted from collaboration by more than 70 Alvin ISD teachers, instructional staff, architects, parents and students, Combs said.
The school will be designed to allow teachers and students to work on a variety of project based learning opportunities, said Darrell Alexander, Alvin ISD's executive director of secondary education.
"Our goal is to achieve more profound learning and the development of future-ready skills which are developed as students encounter the opportunity to apply learning to real-life problems and scenarios," Alexander said.
