Coppell Chronicle Vol. 4, No. 43
Enrollment Projected to Drop ‘Drastically’ • Coppell ISD to Adjust Attendance Zones • Coppell Has Recovered From Cyberattack • Council Rejects Condos Near DART Bridge
At the conclusion of his report to the Coppell ISD Board of Trustees on Monday, the district’s demographer said “Merry Christmas,” which led to a round of laughter. You’re about to find out why that sounded so funny in context.
Enrollment Projected to Drop ‘Drastically’
Coppell ISD’s student body is on track to drop by more than 1,000 kids in the next five years and nearly 1,000 more in the ensuing five years. That’s according to projections from the district’s demographer, Zonda Education.
“We make a lot of decisions based on your reports, and these are some drastically lower numbers,” Trustee Manish Sethi said during Monday’s school board meeting. Without consulting a thesaurus, Sethi also referred to the numbers presented by Zonda’s Rocky Gardiner as “vastly lower” and “substantially lower” than the statistics in previous reports.
In June of 2023, Zonda presented a 10-year forecast that said Coppell ISD would have 12,770 students in the 2032-33 school year. But the report presented on Monday said Coppell ISD would have 11,535 kids enrolled by 2032-33; two years later, the student body could drop to 11,239, according to Zonda’s modeling.
Sethi wanted to know what had changed, and Gardiner pointed to the dwindling sizes of the kindergarten cohorts. In the fall of 2020, Coppell ISD had 785 kindergartners. That number is down to 711 this semester. The forecast from June of 2023 predicted Coppell ISD would have 770 kindergartners this fall.
“When your enrollment came in about 100 students under our forecast, that impact begins to flow through,” Gardiner said.
Assistant Superintendent Kristen Eichel offered another reason. She said Zonda’s previous reports included a “cushion” predicting a bounce-back from the pandemic. “We had a little bit of COVID bounce-back, but we have never achieved the COVID bounce-back that was projected from year to year,” Eichel said.
As for why there are fewer and fewer kindergartners each year, Gardiner said people are not leaving Coppell, so there’s less regeneration or turnover.
“The housing product in Coppell is a pretty high-end product overall, so those homes oftentimes are the final destination for a lot of families,” he said. “So when the kids move up and they leave, the parents don’t leave too. So we’re seeing lower yields just simply because folks just aren’t moving.”
The trustees asked to see more visualizations in future reports. Leigh Walker requested maps that show where the district’s oldest residents live and where the district’s oldest homes are. “It does seem to be chunks of neighborhoods that were all built at the same time, and then it’s time to move on,” she said. Walker also asked for a map that shows where students who leave the district reside.
Trustee Nichole Bentley seconded those requests, and she wondered how the City of Coppell’s “community for a lifetime” campaign has impacted the regeneration rate.
“Because we’re making really big decisions right now,” Bentley said, “I want to make sure that I have a really good understanding of all the trends that are going into these numbers, and that it is not just a multiplier of what our kindergarten number is.”
Coppell ISD to Adjust Attendance Zones
Fewer students enrolled in Coppell ISD schools leads to less funding from the state. Less funding from the state led the district to close Pinkerton Elementary and consolidate the Dual Language Immersion program. And those decisions will lead to altered attendance zones.
Attendance zones will be discussed at every board meeting and workshop in January and February. This draft of a new map was attached to Zonda’s presentation on Monday:
When finalizing the new attendance zones, the trustees and administration will use the updated forecast from Zonda, as well as data gleaned from forms filled out by parents and employees at Pinkerton, Wilson, and Denton Creek elementary schools. Those forms are due on Dec. 20.
The district is also expecting plenty of input from the community.
“We need people to be plugged in and give us their feedback,” Superintendent Brad Hunt said. “Everybody is not gonna be able to go exactly where they want to go right away, but we also want to try to be as flexible as we can.”
Attendance zones will be discussed during the board’s monthly meetings on Jan. 13 and Feb. 24. In between, the zone’s boundaries will be refined during board workshops scheduled for Jan. 15 and Feb. 3. All of these meetings and workshops will be open to the public.
“We don’t anticipate coming back in January and having any new surprises for the community,” Eichel said. “It’s just drilling down a little bit further into what has been part of the proposal that we brought forward with the school consolidations and the program consolidations.”
Eichel stressed that a decision needs to be made by the end of February. She said the administration would like to finalize the displacements of students and staff affected by the closure and consolidation decisions before the normal transfer windows open in the spring.
Nichole Bentley said the trustees may be able to take a final vote on Feb. 3 and not wait until Feb. 24: “I’d love for us to at least have on the agenda to take action if we’re so moved, and not have us limited to having to wait three more weeks, if we are at that place in the process.”
The draft plans call for 75 percent of Pinkerton’s attendance zone to be moved to Wilson, with the remaining 25 percent rezoned to Austin Elementary. Trustee Leigh Walker gave everybody a heads-up that she may propose moving that 25 percent to Mockingbird Elementary instead.
“I know we’re not talking about school closures at this point,” Walker said. However, anybody who’s seen Zonda’s predictions knows that Pinkerton probably won’t be the only school to close. “What do we do with that group that might be impacted multiple times?”
Coppell Has Recovered From Cyberattack
The City of Coppell has restored all systems and data affected by a cyberattack in late October. That’s according to Josh Littrell, interim director of the city’s Enterprise Solutions Department, which is responsible for information technology.
During Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Littrell said the city identified a single server whose contents could be considered at risk. He said the city and its consultants are “continuing to triage and index the server to understand the scope of the data contained therein, in order to provide adequate notification to those whose data could be impacted.” Littrell said the city will be in touch with residents and vendors whose data may have been compromised.
Anyone who has concerns about the security of their personal information may want to review this reference guide on the city’s website that provides instructions on obtaining a free credit report, requesting a credit freeze, and placing a fraud alert on your credit file.
After Littrell’s report, Mayor Wes Mays shared some words of wisdom about cybersecurity that the mayor said his employer stresses: “A bad actor only has to be lucky one time, and we have to be diligent 100 percent of every millisecond of every day.”
Littrell’s report did not mention the bad guys, but an obscure media outlet called Recorded Future News reported that Ransom Hub took credit for the attack on Coppell. That Nov. 26 report says the same gang of ne’er-do-wells has also claimed responsibility for cyberattacks on the telecom giant Frontier, the Rite Aid pharmacy chain, and the British auction house Christie’s.
Council Member Ramesh Premkumar thanked Littrell and his colleagues for their work before and after the Oct. 23 incident.
“I can’t imagine what you and your team had to go through when you found out the city was under attack,” Premkumar said. “I think it speaks volumes to the processes that you have in place that we are now where we are — like you said, fully recovered.”
Mayor Pro Tem Kevin Nevels echoed those sentiments, and he also thanked Coppell residents for their gracious reaction to the attack: “It seems that our citizens understand that this is a ‘not if but when’ type of scenario.”
To that point: City Manager Mike Land attended a Metroplex Mayors Association meeting on Tuesday morning, when two of the first people he encountered were his counterparts from McKinney and Richardson. He said the three managers got to compare notes because all three of their cities were recovering from cyberattacks.
“There is a campaign out there against local governments,” Land told the council. However, he said knowing that other cities are dealing with similar situations “doesn’t make it any easier to take.”
Council Rejects Condos Near DART Bridge
For the second December in a row, the Coppell City Council has given Vijay Borra a lump of coal for Christmas.
Borra owns an L-shaped lot along South Belt Line Road that is both south and east of Armando’s Tacos and Bimmer Motor Specialists. One year ago, the council rejected his plans to build a four-story complex there that would have featured 120 apartments leased exclusively to people ages 55 or older.
(See “Senior Living Rejected Near DART Bridge” in Vol. 3, No. 43.)
Last Tuesday, the council rejected a zoning change that would have allowed Borra to build a four-story complex there featuring 71 condominiums with no age restrictions. Ramesh Premkumar voted in favor of Borra’s latest proposal, and Biju Mathew was absent. The rest of the council voted against it.
The city’s 2030 Comprehensive Master Plan has Borra’s property categorized as “Mixed Use Community Center (or Single Family Residential).” His rejected request would have switched the land to the “Urban Residential Neighborhood” category.
The city’s staff recommended approval of Borra’s request, as did the four Planning and Zoning commissioners who considered it last month. The only council member who expressed an opinion before Tuesday’s 5-1 vote was Mark Hill, who said Borra’s property isn’t appropriate for single-family or multifamily residences; he believes its zoning should remain commercial.
Borra was represented at Thursday’s hearing by a fellow Coppell resident, architect Greg Frnka. Council Member Don Carroll asked Frnka for data indicating that people would want to live along South Belt Line, directly south of DART’s elevated Silver Line tracks. After discussing how many DART stations are surrounded by multifamily developments, Frnka pointed out that the Billingsley Company plans to put similar mid-rise residential buildings even closer to DART’s Cypress Waters Station.
“Billingsley wouldn’t be planning that if she didn’t have the information to support all that,” Frnka said.
After Tuesday’s hearing, I contacted Borra for a reaction to his lack of support from the council. He declined to comment for now.
Last year, when Borra was represented by zoning consultant Maxwell Fischer, Fischer offered this prediction to the council: “I think this site sits here vacant for several more years if this isn’t approved.”
Are You Ready For Some Football?
• The North Crowley Panthers, the team that knocked Coppell High School out of the playoffs, advanced to the Class 6A Division I championship game by beating Duncanville, the two-time defending champs, by a score of 36-34 on Saturday. This titanic matchup drew a standing-room-only crowd to Allen’s Eagle Stadium, which seats 18,000. North Crowley will meet Austin Westlake at 7 p.m. Saturday at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.
• Coppell resident Ted Emrich will handle play-by-play duties for that Class 6A Division I title game on FanDuel Sports Network Southwest (formerly known as Bally Sports Southwest and Fox Sports Southwest). Emrich will also call the 3A Division II game between Gunter and Woodville at 3 p.m. on Thursday, the 4A Division II between Carthage and Waco La Vega at 11 a.m. on Friday, and the 6A Division II game between Southlake Carroll and Austin Vandegrift at 3 p.m. on Saturday. I hope he has plenty of lozenges.
• I attended the Class 5A Division I semifinal between Highland Park and Denton Ryan at Frisco’s Ford Center on Friday, and that’s how I found out that I’m a spoiled high school football fan. I’ve grown accustomed to watching a quarterback who fires lasers to receivers who can catch those throws in stride while running precise routes. I didn’t see much of that on Friday night.
• I’ve looked over the rosters of all 12 teams in the College Football Playoff, and I found two athletes from Coppell: Indiana kicker Nicolas Radicic is a redshirt freshman, and SMU safety Jonathan McGill is a graduate student in his sixth year of eligibility. He was on Stanford’s roster for four seasons before transferring to Southern Methodist. Did I miss anybody?
Restaurant Roundup
• The former home of Tangerine Salon on Denton Tap Road has been empty ever since owners Brandon and Janet Hensley moved their operation to Old Town in 2020. This Thursday, the Coppell Planning and Zoning Commission will consider a proposal to convert that vacant space into a Jason’s Deli with a drive-thru. The sandwich emporium would share a building with competitors Subway and Little Greek, which is still sporting a “WE ARE OPEN” banner nearly two years after it returned from a pandemic-induced hiatus. At this point, that banner has been displayed longer than the joint was closed.
• Last January, I reported that the leasing flyer for Valley Ranch Plaza, the shopping center on the southwest corner of MacArthur Boulevard and Belt Line Road, indicated it would have a new tenant called Singas Famous Pizza. Nothing has happened since then, but a zoning change related to Singas is also on the agenda for Thursday’s Planning and Zoning Commission meeting.
• On Dec. 5, a restaurant called Sushi Box received a certificate of occupancy for the space that Phantom Kitchen has occupied for a couple of years on the northwest corner of Denton Tap and Sandy Lake roads.
Chronicle Crumbs
• Jim Walker sent me this picture of himself and fellow Coppell City Council Member Biju Mathew outside Kroger on Saturday, when they were participating in the Salvation Army of North Texas’ annual Mayoral Red Kettle Challenge. “People had a hard time getting the money into the kettle by the end of the day,” Walker reported.
• Tuesday’s Coppell City Council meeting was supposed to include a public hearing on the zoning case I wrote about in “Community Supports Noncompliant Carport,” but owner Derric Bonnot asked for the hearing to be delayed until the council’s Jan. 14 meeting. Because Bonnot’s application for a planned development district was rejected by a majority of the Planning and Zoning Commission, he needs approval from six of the seven City Council members. Only six were present on Tuesday, so he had no margin for error.
• As expected, the Lewisville ISD Board of Trustees on Monday voted to “retire” five elementary schools next summer: Creekside Elementary in Lewisville, Garden Ridge Elementary in Flower Mound, Highland Village Elementary in Highland Village, B.B. Owen Elementary in The Colony, and Polser Elementary in Carrollton. To spread the pain, each campus is in a different city and in a different high school’s feeder pattern.
• At 2:50 on Friday afternoon, the Texas Department of Transportation issued an alert that all westbound lanes of Interstate 635 would be closed at MacArthur Boulevard for bridge maintenance. The closure was scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. on Friday and end at 5 a.m. tomorrow.
• On Dec. 5, a Planet Fitness franchisee called Excel Fitness received a certificate of occupancy for the space that Texas Family Fitness has occupied for several years on the southeast corner of Denton Tap and Sandy Lake roads. I reached out to Excel Fitness to ask what this means for Texas Family Fitness members. President Chris Epper said it was too early to share those details, but he promised to keep me in the loop. While I wait for more information, I’ll just knock out a few more sets of curl-presses.
Community Calendar
A Christmas Carol: Theatre Coppell will stage four more performances of Charles Dickens’ classic tale about Ebenezer Scrooge. The next one is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. today at the Coppell Arts Center.
Knit Wits gift wrapping: In exchange for a small donation, the Coppell Senior and Community Center’s group of knitting/crocheting/sewing enthusiasts will wrap your gifts between 1 and 3 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday.
Bad Art Night: Teenagers are invited to don their ugly sweaters and get crafty at the Cozby Library and Community Commons between 6 and 8 p.m. on Wednesday.
Coppell Youth Soccer Association: Registration for the spring season, which begins on March 1, is open through Jan. 6. The association urges parents to remember to register their players before the daze of the holidays.
Assistance League of Coppell: The next meeting is set for 11 a.m. on Jan. 16 at the Cozby Library and Community Commons. The featured speaker will be Laci McKinney, who serves as the Organizational Effectiveness and Innovation Specialist for the City of Coppell’s Employee Experience Department.
Love Jim Walker’s “Santa Cowboy Hat”! 👍
Dan, you cracked the case on Planet Fitness. They announced the acquisition of Texas Family Fitness. Stock is up today!