Silos Elementary School is a sprawling $43 million campus under construction on the slight ridge of a new subdivision in far west Bexar County.
Medina Valley Independent School District, a mostly rural but rapidly growing district, plans to open its sixth school for kindergarten through fifth-grade students there in the fall.
But the district’s plan for which students will attend Silos has Medina Valley parents questioning how those decisions were made and what to do about it.
The new school, which will relieve projected overcrowding in other schools, is located in the Silos neighborhood at U.S. Highway 90 and State Highway 211, a community with over 1,500 lots and newly built homes priced between $200,000 and $400,000.
The situation illustrates how San Antonio’s bourgeoning western growth is having a disruptive impact on school districts that once served mostly rural and less populated areas. The student population at Medina Valley ISD has grown by more than 56% in the last decade, making it one of the fastest-growing in the state, according to a district spokeswoman.
Keeping ahead of growth
Though the Medina Valley ISD map spans mostly the eastern part of Medina County, the school district also serves a portion of western Bexar County near Highway 90 — small in comparison but increasingly dense in new housing developments with more to come.
With the student population expected to grow by another 53% in the next 10 years, a second high school — estimated to cost $323 million — is also under construction and set to open in 2026.
Last year, voters passed a $376 million bond for the high school, and for safety and security enhancements across the district, traffic improvements, an agricultural and Junior ROTC facility, and land purchases. Another bond proposal will go before voters in May.
The growth has outpaced the district, said Medina Valley ISD Superintendent Scott Caloss. “It feels like we’re in catch-up mode, and we’re kind of trying to go as fast as we can,” he said.
Finding and acquiring land, even in a district that spans 300 square miles, is costly and challenging. “Where the heavy development is, the only land that’s left is land that’s not very desirable,” he said. “Either the topography is not good [or] utilities may be challenging. … Access to the property might be a challenge. There’s a lot that goes into purchasing a piece of land.”
Discontent over rezoning
With the completion of Silos on the horizon, the district released in February a new zoning map that showed parents which school their children would attend come fall when the new school opens.
The map was the result of a similar rezoning process the district followed that seemed to work well in the past, Caloss said.
“We meet with our demographer, we look at reports, we look in particular at our projected growth, not only for the district but at each campus,” Caloss said.
But a group of parents have filed grievances over what they say is a lack of transparency and community involvement. Using the district’s official complaint process, they have raised concerns ranging from the lack of programs at receiving schools to the impacts of switching schools on students and the financial costs of travel.
Some children are being rezoned to a school that is farther away than their current school, creating a time and transportation burden, parents say.
After reviewing the current and projected enrollment, the school board decided where to send students following discussions at three meetings last year. He said the process did not include any public input sessions, but district officials may consider adding such sessions in the future.
“I thought it was a good process,” Caloss said. “At the end of the day, we feel like we’ve got our campuses in a situation where we can handle growth over the next three years. So I think from that standpoint, it was a good process that worked well for us.”
Following some parents’ complaints about being rezoned, the district is approving all transfer requests for fourth-grade students, allowing them to remain in their current school for fifth grade, if they choose. So far, the district has received 70 such requests.
The district also invited families to submit an in-district transfer request if they have been rezoned and don’t want to switch schools. But those requests will be considered on an individual basis without any preference for hardships, Caloss said.
“We can’t tell parents right now that, yes, we’re going to grant your transfer or no we’re not,” he said. “We’ve got to wait till we get closer, into the summer, and see where our enrollment [will be] on those campuses.”
‘Logistically impossible’
Brenda Kuehl, who has two children attending Potranco Elementary School, said the rezoning has put hers and other families in an impossible situation.
“Our neighborhood is 1.4 miles from [Potranco], I clocked it,” she said, or just a few minutes in the car. The new school is closer to a 25-minute ride, she said.
“For many of my neighbors, that was a selling point for the house, they wanted to be within a two-mile radius of a school,” she added.
Analisa Roland, who has three children, including one in day care, said she is looking at other school options in the event her children aren’t approved for a transfer request.
“It’s pretty much logistically impossible when my husband is traveling for the military or for his civilian job, for me to get … my two older kids to school and my youngest to day care, and myself to work in time,” she said.
MVISD provides daily transportation for 3,500 to 4,000 of its 8,700 students who live at least two miles away from their assigned campus. The district operates 58 school buses, with most running more than one route in the mornings and afternoons, said a spokeswoman.
Caloss said he “can’t guarantee” transportation for all students because it’s a challenge to hire enough drivers. But the situation has improved since he began working in the district almost two years ago, he said.
In the morning, children are picked up at bus stops starting at 6 a.m. and continuing through 8:20 a.m. For elementary students, school starts at 7:30 a.m., middle school starts at 8 a.m., and high school begins at 8:30 a.m.
Transportation plays into the way the district rezones, Caloss said. But it’s not the only factor because the district is already stretched to provide enough bus drivers to cover all the possible routes, even with staggered start times.
“We cannot guarantee any student 100% that they’re going to be transported to and from school and that’s not a product of the rezoning,” Caloss said.
Taking the long view
Caloss acknowledges the rezoning has created a chain reaction in the district, with students shuffled from one school to the next since it began expanding its number of campuses in the last couple of years in order to balance enrollment at each campus. But he stands behind the new rezoning map.
“Another thing that people have to realize [is] we can’t just look at what the enrollment is this year,” Caloss said. “We have to really look three, four or five years down the road. And where is the growth happening?”
Most of it is occurring in suburban housing developments and multifamily units going in between Loop 1604 and State Highway 211 and along Potranco Road and Highway 90 West toward Castroville. In other words, it’s not evenly distributed throughout the district or Medina County.
Schools nearest to the westward spread of San Antonio sprawl are becoming overcrowded at a faster pace than, for example, Castroville Elementary and LaCoste Elementary schools.
When Silos opens, some LaCoste students will go to Silos, leaving a void that will be filled by students who currently attend Castroville Elementary and sending parents who reside in the small town to social media to complain.
“It’s a domino effect,” Caloss said.
