Is Frisco Maxed Out? With New Growth And Home Sales, Four Frisco ISD Schools Are at Capacity

Frisco is exploding with growth as rooftops, retail, and a Universal theme park are coming to town — but those who chose the area for A-ranked Frisco ISD may have cause for concern. 

Frisco ISD is one of the fastest-growing districts in the nation, and one middle school and three high schools are at capacity, Frisco ISD reported in December. That means some potential students are getting turned away for the 2023-24 school year, forced to enroll in a different school than the one their parents bargained for when they purchased the home. 

Frisco ISD enrolled 65,167 students during the 2021-22 school year, according to Txschools.gov. 

District officials said in a board meeting in late 2022 the enrollment is expected to increase to 70,434 students in five years and 72,872 students in 10 years. 

Lauran Ituarte, VP of Sales for “The North” office of Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty in Plano, said the information was a complete surprise to Realtors in Frisco. 

“From my understanding, basically anybody who moves in now will not be grandfathered into those particular schools, even if the family leaving … if there were three kids in the household, there will not be three new spots,” Ituarte said. “They will be bused to different schools within Frisco ISD, and some of these schools are quite far away from where they’re actually living. This will be a big challenge. This is pivotal. This could be a dealbreaker. These are the most popular schools that are being affected.”

Frisco ISD Schools at Capacity

The affected schools include Nelson Middle School, Lebanon Trail High School, Reedy High School, and Wakeland High School. 

Redrawing the boundaries of attendance zones is a process offered to school districts to redistribute growth, similar to municipalities that undergo mandatory redistricting, which can slice neighborhoods in half and cause residents to be represented by a new city council member. 

“This happened in the Lakewood area,” Ituarte said. “It happens all the time, but it’s new to people in ‘The North.’ If you’re moving to Frisco to go to a particular school, I can see this being harmful. There is no guarantee that you’re going to stay at the school you were originally zoned for.”

While issues of racial segregation and gerrymandering are brought up in state and local redistricting matters, at the school level, the crux of the matter is more likely to focus on a child’s education. Some homebuyers also may have an expectation that their children will attend school with their friends and neighbors and participate in athletics and extracurricular activities at the school closest to their home. 

“Frisco ISD seeks to educate students in schools as close to their homes as possible,” Superintendent Mike Waldrip said on the district’s website. “However, in order to effectively and efficiently utilize space, more than one school can become a consideration for a neighborhood or area based on its location. This is particularly the case in areas where FISD has schools in close proximity to one another. This means that during the boundary modification process, neighborhoods may be moved to existing schools or to campuses that are not the closest in proximity.” 

Homeowners can input their address on the Frisco attendance zone website to determine where their kids will go to school. 

New campuses are under construction, and the school district provides easily-accessible public information on the land it owns and future plans for additional campuses. 

Frisco Housing Market

Three developments — Fields near Legacy Drive, Brinkmann Ranch off Coit Road and Main Street, and the Grove off Custer and Stacy roads — will bring about 13,000 new homes to the district by 2032, Frisco ISD officials estimate. 

Developer Fehmi Karahan is bringing thousands of homes to his mixed-use, $10 billion Fields Frisco project near the Omni PGA Frisco Resort. A major selling point when he unveiled his plans last summer? The school district. 

More Than 3,500 Homes Planned For Fields ‘City Within a City’ Development in Frisco

Certainly, there’s a retiree and empty-nester appeal in Frisco, with its proximity to golf courses and all the custom luxury homes that are either under construction or already built. There also are families who send their kids to private schools or homeschool them.

Bella Custom Homes is one of Frisco’s premier builders.

The mayor of Frisco, Jeff Cheney, is an agent for Monument Realty and told CandysDirt.com in February that there’s no danger of Frisco being over-developed because it’s been so well-planned. 

“Frisco has been very intentional about master planning,” he said. “We have very intentionally preserved quite a bit of park space. One thing that’s unique in Frisco is we now consider commercial projects part of our open space. They’re required to have 10 percent green space. Every retail development has some greenspace or a pocket park.” 

Ituarte, however, said in her opinion, Frisco is getting close to being built out. Real estate agents are responsible for making new home buyers aware of what they’re getting into, she added. 

“When I moved here myself, we were zoned to go to one school, but they just made the change, so we ended up going to a different high school,” said Ituarte, who lives in McKinney. “It wasn’t a big deal for me, but it really taught me that especially here in DFW, we really need to do our due diligence for the buyer. I would be advising my clients to look into calling the ISD to find out if there are proposed zone changes, or if there’s a zone change already.” 

Schools are a leading factor in how people choose a home, and it’s particularly relevant because Frisco is known as one of the best districts in the state. 

“You really can’t pick a ‘bad’ school in Frisco, but there are the preferred ones,” Ituarte said. 

In addition to the massive stock of single-family homes coming online in Frisco, more than 21,000 apartment units are projected to open in the next decade, city officials have said.