Rural districts must react to population surge
by Connie Pryzant, Staff Writer of The News

Sunday, 9 December 1984, Page 37A and 38A

When Richard Capps decided to move four years ago, he figured the most important attraction a new city could offer was its public schools.

“I wanted my sons to grow up in a small-town atmosphere and be known by their teachers and principals,” Capps said. “I wanted to walk downtown and see ‘Go Rabbits’ on the windows.”

He chose Forney – a town about 18 miles east of Dallas in Kaufman County – where Capps is now superintendent. Forney is “the closest last frontier” of Dallas, he said, and a place where the schools are still the pivotal point of social life.

But big-city growth has hit small-town Forney with a stead rhythm of new subdivisions and increased school enrollment that Capps said is bound to change the district.

Rapid growth has been accompanied by pains and pleasures in several small school districts such as Forney, those on the fringes of the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

As a district grows, the community may benefit from improved academic quality, but it may suffer from high taxes, space crunches and loss of small-town identity, school officials say.

In Red Oak, for instance, the district of 2,223 students is playing a game of musical school buildings to accommodate the 15 percent growth rate until additional classrooms are built.

The district, about 20 miles south of Dallas in Ellis County, has gained an average of 10 students a week since school opened this year, said Superindendent Edd Burleson.

“The main crunch we’re feeling is space,” he said. “We have 100 kindergarten students in a Baptist church. Were it not for that relief, we would be overcrowded.”

The district will soon break ground on an addition to the high school, and money provided by a recently approved $6 million bond issue will be used to build a new junior high, and administration building and an addition to the elementary school, Burleson said.

The residents of the district will pay dearly for the growth.

The property tax rate of $1 per $100 of assessed valuation will increase to $1.30 once the bonds are sold, officials said. Red Oak has no significant commercial tax base, and utilities are insufficient to support industry, said school board member Jackie Wyatt.

“We’re caught between a rock and a hard place,” she said.

“Red Oak is a bedroom community. People work in Dallas or farther north. They just want to get out of the city to live, come out in the country and away from the traffic.”

Homeowners are sending a message that they won’t rubber-stamp bond proposals. The most recent bond issue passed by seven votes, and only after a previous bond issue of $15 million had failed.

“If the public could be assured that a 30 percent increase would be the end, I think they would have supported the bond issue more strongly,” Burleson said. “But they’re wise enough to see that $6 million is a stopgap at best.

Capps said his district, whose enrollment has grown by 46 percent since 1980 to the current 1,245, has been supportive of bond issues. After he came to Forney, two bond issues passed overwhelmingly within 2 1/2 years.

“What makes my job easy is community support,” Capps said.

The school district still struggles to keep pace with growth. Often the district may not collect taxes for up to 18 months because of the way taxes are assessed and collected, Capps said.

“I think people are willing to say, ‘Whatever the school needs, we’ll give it. Just show us we need it,'” he said.

School officials in Cedar Hill, in south Dallas County, are working to convince residents that the district needs money for more schools and renovations. All but one of the schools are at capacity this year, and the district anticipates using portable buildings to handle the growth at the high school, said Superintendent W.S. Permenter.

The enrollment of 2,312 is expected to nearly double by 1987, he said. Cedar Hill is near Joe Pool Lake, where a building boom is anticipated.

Evidence of that boom appears everywhere in the district, from the flagged lots to the completed homes of new subdivisions, Permenter said. More than 9,500 homes and apartments are planned or are under construction, according to a recent district study on building needs.

“We do not feel this thing will not go,” Permenter said. “Developers are putting millions of dollars into additions. All of the lots are sold to builders. The price of land will not allow them to speculation, to buy it and hold it.”

The population is growing faster than the district’s tax base, however, and school officials are planning a bond issue of several million dollars for February. If approved, the bond issue likely would increase the tax rate of 95 1/2 cents per $100 assessed valuation. Voters in 1982 approved issuing $3.6 million in bonds for improvements, after rejecting a $5.5 million package.

“We are faced with a future we’ve got to do something about,” Permenter said.

Anna, a small town about 15 miles north of McKinney in Collin County, is in the infant stages of growth, said school Superintendent A.C. Mosby. With just under 500 students, even a 6 percent growth rate affects classroom space, he said.

The district is conducting a feasibility study to define needs for a bond election – the first since 1973 – to be held within the next two or three months, Mosby said.

Although evidence of the transition from rural to suburban district is more apparent in Forney, Cedar Hill and Red Oak, Anna expects spillover growth from Plano and McKinney, Mosby said.

“We feel there’s going to be significant development,” Mosby said. “There’s nothing on the drawing board, but fairly large tracts of land have been sold. The owners have not made public what’s going to be done.”

Like other small school districts, Anna suffers from limited resources. Mosby said that the high school library is “substandard” and that the instructional program barely covers the basics.

“The attitude of the community is that they’re aware of the critical situation,” Mosby said.

Many newcomers have moved from the Dallas metropolitan area, Mosby said.

“They like to get out and get an acre of land. The influence of the move-ins has been positive,” he said. “They are very concerned about adequate school facilities, which is not to say the natives are not.”