Coppell Chronicle Vol. 5, No. 48
Coppell ISD Shifts Apartments to New Schools • Teachers Incentivized to Resign Early • Cozby Library Shortens Renewal Period • Survey Says Coppell Residents Love This City
I attended a Coppell Chamber of Commerce luncheon on Jan. 13 that featured a speech by Police Chief Danny Barton. A few of his statements resonated enough that I wrote them down:
“People don’t get upset with police because of what we did. They get upset because of how we did it.”
“We don’t have a separate police culture. It’s a culture of heart. That’s what we hire in Coppell — people with heart.”
Although his officers do occasionally get into physical confrontations, they do so with these instructions: “Once you have them under control, treat them like their mother would want them to be treated.”
Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone tasked with law enforcement in this nation followed the Coppell Police Department’s lead?
Coppell ISD Shifts Apartments to New Schools
Two Valley Ranch apartment complexes are being shifted out of the Valley Ranch Elementary School attendance zone.
On Jan. 12, the Coppell ISD Board of Trustees approved a plan to reassign the Anthem Valley Ranch and Devi at Valley Ranch apartment complexes to Mockingbird Elementary and Lakeside Elementary, respectively. The vote was 6-0, with Trustee Jobby Mathew being absent.
Several residents of these complexes spoke during the “Open Forum” portion of the meeting, and many of them requested that current fourth-graders be allowed to keep attending Valley Ranch during their final year of elementary school. Superintendent Leanne Shivers said those students would be grandfathered in, as would their younger siblings.
“It’s important for our families to keep them together,” Shivers said.
A few of those “Open Forum” speakers asked why attendance zones needed to be adjusted, considering the fact that Valley Ranch Elementary School was recently expanded. When Leigh Walker posed the same question during the trustees’ debate, Shivers said this is the first step in a long-term plan to address growth in the southern part of the district. Coppell ISD’s three elementary schools outside of Coppell’s city limits — Canyon Ranch, Richard J. Lee, and Valley Ranch — are all fuller than the seven campuses in Coppell.
“We now have a flexibility of about 160 [seats] to address room and growth needs at Lee as well as at Canyon Ranch,” Shivers said.
According to Google Maps, the Anthem apartments are 2.1 miles from Mockingbird, while the distance between the Devi complex and Lakeside is 2.3 miles. But Devi is 2.9 miles from New Tech High, which will soon be consolidated at Coppell High School. Lakeside students and faculty will take over New Tech during the 2026-2027 school year while their campus is expanded.
(See “Lakeside Students Will Spend Year at New Tech” in Vol. 5, No. 44.)
Trustee Anthony Hill asked whether that temporary situation was a factor in all this, and Shivers said no, because staffing is “the true root reason” for the proposal. “The staffing piece carries with it, whether Lakeside is in the building it is right now or if we move them temporarily to New Tech.”
Board President David Caviness reminded everyone that each elementary school has one principal, one P.E. teacher, and one nurse. Yet the people who have those jobs in the southern part of the district are overseeing, educating, and caring for many more students than their northern counterparts. Shortly thereafter, Trustee Jonathan Powers summed things up.
“At the end of the day, we have an imbalance between our campuses, and the only way to fix an imbalance is to move certain kids around,” Powers said. “And that’s not easy; it’s not a fun thing to have happen. And so then the question is, are we doing it in the best way that we can? And your reasoning, your logic makes sense to me, so I get why we’re doing it.”
The proposal approved on Jan. 12 also rezones the Anthem and Devi complexes from Coppell Middle School West to Coppell Middle School East. Additionally, the Townlake of Coppell apartments on Moore Road were shifted from East to Coppell Middle School North.
Teachers Incentivized to Resign Early
Coppell ISD is offering bonuses to teachers who give the district an early heads-up about their plans to move on.
On Jan. 12, the Board of Trustees approved issuing $2,200 payments to the first 40 employees who submit notice of their plans to resign. The deadline to claim one of the $2,200 payments is 4:30 p.m. on Feb. 27.