‘Statement’ school campus to break ground east of Houston (Source: Huston Business Journal)
By Paul Takahashi
Sheldon Independent School District is bursting at the seams.
The 9,000-student school district, located in the booming petrochemical corridor northeast of Houston, is the second fastest-growing school district in the Houston area, only behind Tomball. In the past five years, Sheldon ISD’s student population has grown 24 percent, or in other words, roughly one 700-student elementary school campus a year. By 2025, Superintendent King R. Davis projects Sheldon ISD will have 15,000 students, nearly double its current pupil population.
To handle the growth, Sheldon ISD has rezoned students at its eight elementary schools and is looking at adding five portable classrooms at sole C.T. King High School, a brick and stone campus built in 1967.
“These are temporary fixes,” Davis said. “Our elementary schools and high school are at capacity. We’ve had to rezone half of our elementary schools. But we’re a one high school town, so you can’t rezone that.”
Davis, who took helm of Sheldon ISD in January 2016, began working immediately to address the district’s growth. After local voters approved a $285 million school bond program last year, Davis started working with LAN Inc., an engineering firm based in Houston, and Huckabee, an architecture firm based in The Woodlands, to develop plans for a massive new education campus that will accommodate thousands of new students in the district.
