LISD will allow students to transfer schools during the fall semester for the 2018-2019 school year in addition to the regular spring transfer. The transfer request window was Nov. 15 to Dec. 1, and students will be notified by Dec. 20 of approval or denial.

“[Fall transfer is being added] to give us a better indication of how many students we’re going to have next year, so we know how many staff members we need,” principal Scot Finch said. “We’re still going to have the spring open enrollment transfer so you can still do that. We’re just trying to get ahead so we can predict and staff schools appropriately.”

During the five to six years since the transfer policy has been enacted, Finch said most students transferred out purely based on rumors.

“The transfer rule last year was you had to go to a school for one year before you could have the opportunity to transfer to another campus,” Finch said. “They wanted to enact [the] rules where families and students would need to go to the school zoned for where they live [before requesting a transfer.] That was meant to slow down people [from] transferring just based on rumors and what people would say about that campus.”

Since students are not guaranteed for their transfer request to be approved, they can go through an appeal process after in order to have their case reviewed.

“With people moving around between schools, sometimes [it’s hard to hit the target],” Finch said. “So [community services is] trying to do this fall open enrollment for transfers [to] be more accurate. Knowing how many students are going to be at campus [helps us save money by not having] extra staff members. We don’t want to have [less staff members] because [we] need to have enough staff to meet the needs of the student as well.”