Despite the dip in the oil and gas industries, conservative estimates show Lamar CISD, located in western Fort Bend County, will continue to grow at an increasingly rapid rate.
Population & Survey Analysts (PASA) gave its annual demographic report to the District’s Board of Trustees at its regular February meeting. The report suggested 12 elementary schools be built by the 2024-2025 school year.
PASA’s study recommends:
• Two elementary schools in the “northern” portion of the District be added in time for the 2016-2017 school year, providing relief to the overcrowding at Hubenak and Huggins elementary schools;
• Another elementary in the southern portion of the district for the 2017-2018 school year to provide relief to Williams and Thomas elementary schools.
• An elementary school for the 2018-2019 school year, to be situated between Beasley, Bowie and Meyer elementary schools;
• Two more elementary schools, to be ready for 2019, located to relieve Huggins again and also one of the schools scheduled for 2016; and
• Rounding out the next five years, PASA recommends an elementary in the north be ready in 2020 to deal with students who would be overcrowding the school built to relieve Hubenak/Huggins in 2016.
Lamar CISD voters approved five new elementary schools in the November 2014 bond election.
Foster High School is expected to exceed 2,500 students by 2016, but Fulshear High School is on pace to open that year.
The District is now just a few students shy of 28,500, but the “slow growth” projection shows 34,000 students by 2019 and almost 45,000 by 2024. The “moderate growth” scenario, which the District’s demographer described as the most likely forecast, has a little more than 36,000 enrolled in Lamar CISD schools in 2019, with just shy of 50,000 students in 2024.
PASA estimates about 38,000 single-family homes will be added inside the District’s boundaries in the next 10 years. Added to those houses, PASA also projects almost 7,500 new apartments.
Among the factors driving the growth are above average scores on STAAR tests, a highly-educated population, a high median income and the availability of property in the “development path.”
Lamar CISD will feature four “epicenters of growth,” including:
• The area between the boundary with Katy ISD and FM 1093, where 10 new subdivisions are expected;
• Just south of 1093, between FM 723 and the Brazos River, where about 6,600 acres are expected to be developed;
• The Twinwood master-planned community, located both north and south of FM 1093 and west of 359; and
• Parcels owned by the George Foundation, which should develop as the Grand Parkway is extended further south.
In total, 24 subdivisions or master-planned communities have been platted within Lamar CISD in the past 24 months.
Click here for a summary of the 2015 Demographic Report.