Coppell Chronicle Vol. 3, No. 42
Lewisville ISD Declines to Change Boundary • Kestrel Unofficially Named Coppell’s Bird • Cricket Pitch Planned in Valley Ranch • Campaign Filing Deadline is Tomorrow
One of the Coppell Chronicle’s newest subscribers made me laugh when he explained why he signed up: “My wife shows me your news articles every week. I can’t let her be more knowledgeable than me!”
Lewisville ISD Declines to Change Boundary
When Brandon and Megan Kleiman bought their brand-new Frisco house in 2016, they weren’t entirely sure where their kids would go to school.
“Our builder actually said there’s a lot of ambiguity in the lines,” Brandon said.
A map on the Texas Education Agency’s website indicates the Kleimans’ home on Amberly Place is just inside the Frisco ISD border. But a map on the Frisco ISD site and Google Maps both show their house is in Lewisville ISD.
The Kleimans got a definitive answer when they tried to enroll the oldest of their three children as a kindergartner at Hosp Elementary, the Frisco ISD school at the other end of their subdivision. They were turned away.
Megan said they bought their house after losing out on four others. When the school district question came up during that purchase process, they were told, “There’s a path to pursue a change when you’re ready to do it.”
The Kleimans said all of this on Monday night during a public hearing conducted by the Lewisville ISD Board of Trustees. The couple were indirectly responding to the only question posed by any of the trustees: “When you signed your documents to close on your home,” Board President Jenny Proznik asked, “were you aware you were in Lewisville ISD?”
The public hearing was the result of a petition filed last summer by the Kleimans and the owners of four neighboring homes. The group wanted their five properties to be detached from Lewisville ISD and annexed by Frisco ISD. Those are the only homes out of about 75 in their neighborhood that are at least partially within the Lewisville school district.
I tuned into this hearing for two reasons:
Curiosity: Until I read a legal notice publicizing the hearing, I wasn’t aware that such petitions were possible. In fact, the process is laid out in Section 13.051 of the Texas Education Code, “Detachment and Annexation of Territory.”
Possible precedent: Lewisville ISD includes portions of Coppell, including the Coppell Greens neighborhood. If these Frisco folks were successful, might those Coppell residents pursue annexation into Coppell ISD? And what about the residents of Coppell’s Riverchase subdivision, which is within Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD? Coppell ISD’s open enrollment policy allows kids in both neighborhoods to attend the district’s schools, but what if their parents wanted that access guaranteed?
“We are asking you to approve something that you might fear will set a precedent and create more petitions and more hearings,” Megan Kleiman told the trustees. “I’m sensitive to that, and I know that is a concern for you, but I can’t not fight for this if it’s what in the best interest of our families.”
Jeffrey Kajs, Lewisville ISD’s Chief Student Services Officer, began Monday’s hearing by presenting the facts of the case. He showed a slide that said the combined tax impact of the homes in question is $34,633. (That’s about half of the midrange salary for one Lewisville ISD teacher.) That same slide said only one of the properties housed Lewisville ISD students.
That would be the Kleimans’ property, which is numbered 62 on this map that Kajs displayed.
Kajs said a sliver of property 59 is on the Frisco ISD side of the boundary, so the kids who live there get to attend Frisco ISD schools. Nonetheless, its owners participated in the petition as a show of solidarity with their neighbors. However, during the research for this detachment effort, the Kleimans’ next-door neighbors to the west found out a portion of their property is also within Frisco ISD. Once they learned that, they withdrew from the petition.
The owners of property 61 don’t have school-age children. And the owners of property 60 include Pearson Middle School teacher Jennifer Kalinec, so her kids are allowed to attend Frisco ISD schools as an employment benefit.
Kalinec stood behind Megan Kleiman and nodded as Kleiman said, “No one wants to be in a neighborhood where they are the only ones who are pushed to another district. It’s undesirable.”
Kajs showed statistics demonstrating that the Kleimans’ children are zoned to a Lewisville ISD elementary school (Hicks) that is more than twice as far from their home as the nearest Frisco ISD campus (Hosp). The distance disparity is similar for the nearest middle schools in each district.
Megan Kleiman said her daughters would spend an hour riding the bus before and after school, getting picked up before 6:30 a.m. and arriving home at 4 p.m. She said her kids have experienced more absences than other students due to stress. But her biggest concern was their isolation from the other children in their neighborhood.
“Friendships are forged in the classroom and in playgrounds, creating a childhood network of relationships within the homes that exist in their physical neighborhood,” she said. “The closest neighborhood that feeds into Hicks Elementary School is 3 miles away from us, eliminating the ability to knock on friends’ doors and set up lemonade stands or feed the ducks in the pond.”
The Kleimans received support from Leslie Knutson, who also resides in both the City of Frisco and Lewisville ISD. However, Knutson’s entire subdivision is within the Lewisville school district.
“My son and Megan’s son have gone to the same schools, and they don’t have exactly the same experience,” Knutson said. “The difference is, when my son goes home, his friends are there.”
By now, you might be thinking, “Why don’t the Kleimans just move?” Well, their house is on the market, and the listing is with Frisco-based Monument Realty Group. One of the firm’s owners, Tiffany Burns, also addressed the trustees on Monday.
“It’s not about the particular ISD. It’s about interest from the buyers. They love the home,” Burns said, “but when they start finding out that they would be excluded from the entire neighborhood, they don’t put an offer in. It’s been a major problem.”
After Proznik asked her one question, the trustees went into a closed session to consult with their attorney. That lasted about 45 minutes. When they returned to the dais, they unanimously adopted a resolution disapproving the petition, without a public debate.
Kestrel Unofficially Named Coppell’s Bird
Aamir Tinwala addressed the Coppell Parks and Recreation Board on Monday for the second time in as many meetings, and he got a lot of laughs with his opening line: “You know why I’m here.”
As you might recall from an article published last month, Tinwala has proposed designating the American kestrel as Coppell’s official bird. Doing so, the St. Mark’s sophomore said, could help the local ecosystem, promote awareness of conservation, and boost civic pride.