Dear Frisco ISD family,

Welcome to the 2014-2015 school year! Whether you are a returning family or new to the Frisco ISD, we hope you are excited and ready for the 2014-15 school year!

We have officially greeted more than 600 new professional educators to Frisco ISD this summer. They began with a warm welcome at the New Teacher Breakfast, jointly sponsored by FISD, the Frisco Chamber of Commerce, along with area businesses, organizations and community leaders.

We will be more than 6,000 staff members strong as we finalize preparations for this school year. Frisco ISD is opening five new schools to meet the needs of growth, for a total of 61 campuses, and it is likely that FISD will welcome the 50,000^th student sometime during this school year. This fall we will be creating student attendance zones for Reedy High school, which will relieve high school overcrowding on the west side of the District. In addition, we will be creating zones for Trent Middle School (opening in 2015) to relieve Stafford Middle School, which has a capped enrollment at this time. Students moving into the Stafford zone this year will be temporarily attending Griffin Middle School. We are also preparing a 15^th middle school to relieve Pioneer Heritage Middle School and will be rezoning for that school this fall as well. All three will open in the fall of 2015.

With the completion of those schools, funds from our 2006 bond program will be expended. That program was intended to meet the needs of 52,000 students and it is, as we are projected to exceed 52,000 students in 2015. We thank you for your support in the passage of the May 2014 bond election, which authorized $775 million in bond funds to build 14 new schools to provide for the needs of up to 66,000 students. At this time we are projected to enroll that number of students in 2020.

But even as we continue to grow in the ranks as one of the larger school districts in the state, we are committed to our mission of knowing every student by name and need. In order to sustain that mission, we continue to work as a team to ensure that each one of us is doing our part to support every level of the organization to make a difference where it counts – in the classroom. We will continue to focus attention on staying connected and engaged with each other, with students, and with you as parents. We believe our partnership with you is of significant importance to the success of your child in their educational journey. Because of that, and because we welcome so many families during the school year, we are planning two dates – one in the fall and one in the spring – to host new parents in a mini-orientation to the District. We know that many of our families are new to Texas and to how things operate within our school system, and we hope this will be helpful in navigating the waters of a changing environment.

So as I speak to all of our employees the week before school starts, we will be celebrating another new beginning and looking forward to all of the possibilities that a new school year brings. It is a time to start over, to make new friends and to reconnect with old ones; a time to build on relationships and on previous learning. We value this time together to be reminded of how fortunate we are to be here in the Frisco ISD family and how blessed we are to be entrusted with these amazing students. This is going to be a great year as we continue in our work to meet the needs of students and to create a place where they can thrive. The framework of our efforts is in the form of these three big questions –  is each student learning what he/she is supposed to learn, is each student learning at the appropriate level, and at what level are they engaged? We will depend on you to help us know how we are doing along the way.

Sincerely,

Dr. Jeremy Lyon
Frisco ISD Superintendent of Schools