Celebrating 40 Years in Frisco ISD
Frisco, Texas: A fast growing city
From a quaint farming community on the Shawnee Trail to a thriving city with more than a quarter million citizens, Frisco has repeatedly been named one of the fastest-growing cities in the US. Attracting an influx of families seeking a desirable lifestyle and plentiful job opportunities near Dallas, the suburb’s unbridled growth put Frisco on the map as one of the top places to live in Texas.
A pivotal attraction is Frisco ISD’s commitment to providing an exemplary school system and quality education to its PreK to 12th-grade teachers and students. Dating back to the 1980s, Corgan partnered with Frisco ISD to provide architectural and design services for more than 70 elementary, middle schools, and high schools. Read on to find out some of the lessons learned from our long and prodigious relationship.
Meeting the demands for quality education
Keeping pace with rapid growth means managing resources, time, and funding to build schools in record time while preserving the quality of education and meeting the needs and demands of the community. Like other fast-growing districts, Frisco faced three key challenges:
- Putting key players in place to simultaneously build multiple campuses
- Meeting tight timelines for new builds and additions to keep up with district growth
- Maintaining aging facilities while at the same time building new ones
While Frisco and many rural and suburban districts across the nation faced explosive enrollment projections and fast growth, Frisco ISD quickly responded by putting the necessary leadership in place and working closely with Corgan to create innovative solutions to meet the demands for fast turn-around times in facilities design and execution.
Frisco ISD and Corgan: A relationship built on trust
Frisco ISD’s partnership with Corgan beginning in 1982 made possible the design and construction of more than 70 elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools over a 40-year period. The trust and dedication between city officials, FISD leaders, and the Corgan team solidified the district’s reputation and economic growth, bringing in citizens that approved seven bond elections for over $3 billion in funding for PreK-12 grade education.
Lessons learned: Keys to success
District leaders stayed true to their vision throughout the process, making for a successful and collaborative long-term relationship. Fortunately, several key factors were on their side, enabling project teams and architects to collaborate effectively, and enabling decisions and problems to be rectified more quickly when challenges arose. In addition, an unwavering vision, design innovations, research, and planning helped ease tensions and create lasting partnerships. Many factors led to a strong foundation and contributed to the district’s success including:
- The vision and ideals between City officials and district leaders were closely aligned, easing processes and limiting bureaucracy.
- The evolution of the curriculum reinforced superior educational standards.
- Corgan’s agility and dedicated resources over an extended period of time helped facilitate speed and collaboration between everyone involved.
- Prototyping and efficiencies in resources and materials reduced costs and turnaround times.
- The combined leadership of the city, the district, and Corgan made possible continued growth while maintaining continuity and small school environments across the district.
- The initiatives received overwhelming support from the community and passage of bond elections.
Frisco ISD championed smaller classrooms limited to 25 students or less per teacher, making Frisco ahead of its time.
Decades-long growth
In 1993, Corgan built Curtsinger Elementary School, the district’s first school implementing the small school model. Thirty years later, they debuted Panther Creek High School -- a modern three-story facility on a huge campus with adaptive use and flexible spaces, athletic facilities, a state-of-the-art auditorium, and classrooms and shared common spaces that provide an increased emphasis on the student and teacher experience.
Throughout several decades, the relationship has endured, and Frisco’s education system has continued to thrive and keep up with explosive population growth along with garnering continued community support and involvement, serving as a model case study for other districts to follow:
A small schools model
While the neighboring suburbs of Plano and Allen were building mega high schools with enrollments of 3,000 or more on their 11-12 and 10-12 campuses to develop academic programs as well as sports to catapult them to 4A status, Frisco championed smaller classrooms limited to 25 students or less per teacher with 11-12 high school enrollments of 1,800 – 2,100 students.
To this end, rezoning and redistricting plans promoted equity and inclusion among all schools across the district, making Frisco ahead of its time. Their mission to “know every student by name and need” created a culture of developing relationships with each student and encouraging engagement and meaningful learning with an enriched curriculum and extracurricular activities while meeting each student at their level and need.
Enabling the district to build three to five schools per year on schedule with no cost overruns, Corgan created an innovative prototype design and supported construction and maintenance standards. The prototypes provided flexibility for future growth while preserving continuity across all campuses, protecting the same level of quality of education across the district. Each school shared identical envelopes with adaptable solutions including classroom pods with operable walls and shared common spaces; open flexible spaces transforming the traditional library; and efficient operations in school cafeterias, improving functionality and nutrition.
Each prototype adapted to site-specific variations in existing elevations and landscapes to preserve a unique sense of place while changing aesthetics in the brick, floor finishes, and color pallets, allowing schools to both maintain integrity while forging their own identities. The future-ready designs were built to endure, with renovations planned twenty years out. This model set a precedent for other districts and communities to follow.
A blueprint for success
Frisco ISD’s unprecedented growth required a blueprint all its own, involving both short and long-term planning and asset management. Corgan’s expertise in documentation as well as its background in designing quality education facilities made the agile firm an ideal partner, with the ability to dedicate full-time resources to meet regularly with all levels of leadership and collaborate with vendors and construction entities over the 40 years.
Listening to the district’s needs and desires and embracing its culture and philosophy developed a team with a deep understanding and shared purpose, empowering key players to manage change under tight timelines to accelerate site adaption and project completion while continually adding new programs to the curriculum.
The architects and project managers aided the district in anticipating future enrollment, analyzing demographics, and planning projections for future expansion. Additionally, familiarity with the history of the district and the area helped project managers navigate site selection while considering issues like master planning involving surrounding areas, road expansions, power lines, neighboring landowners, and fire and code enforcement.
Setting the stage for future growth
The benefits of partnering with the same architect with tenure in administration helped to maximize resources by supporting Frisco ISD leaders to prepare for bond programs by drafting layouts of each project and estimating construction costs, and then presenting information to stakeholders. The collaborative effort provided research and insights into demographic projections, potential programs to meet student needs, and project considerations, fostering an alliance that provided accurate and transparent information for the preparation and delivery of bond programs and voter outcomes.
Knowledge and participation by the architect team contributed to anticipating building cycles, maintaining aging facilities, and setting standards for asset management. In addition, planning and foresight coupled with forecasts of projected growth provided Frisco’s leadership with ongoing assistance in estimating long-range goals for renovations and scheduled maintenance plans.
Resource management was a key component made possible through facility planning guides, research, and functional capacity studies that included the evolving need for programs to support students. Energy efficiency and efficacy of each facility were achieved with Corgan’s continued vigilance and collaboration with the district to provide the latest equipment, materials, and technology. Over the years, new innovations were implemented including geothermal HVAC systems and other energy-saving solutions.
Corgan supported the acquisition of the school district’s accrued land sites with 75 land transactions completed over 18 years. The architects explored site feasibility based on site layout, code requirements, circulation, water, sewage, utilities, and adjacent roads, collaborating with civil engineers and the Corp of Engineers to assist in the mitigation process that might impact site selection. Providing continued insight into the cost-effectiveness and useability of sites as conditions, circumstances, and needs arose proved invaluable for acquiring the land necessary for building out the school district.
Excellence in education
Strong community support for public education along with visionary leadership supported by an architect firm willing to go the extra mile provided a transformative educational experience to every student, making Frisco ISD an exemplary case study in the annals of education. The speed and efficiency of building out the district while garnering high marks in state testing and graduation rates are among the measurements that demonstrate Frisco’s success.
The community’s rapid growth spurred the need for expanded capacity due to continually providing quality spaces for education, thereby enriching the lives of students and teachers, and changing the academic landscape for decades, empowering the success and achievement of families, students, and teachers, and changing the community for generations to come, providing a better future for all.
Frisco ISD has been proud to partner with Corgan for one main reason, their commitment to service and building relationships. The personal attention provided by their entire staff, from Principal-in-Charge to the student intern is always professional, prompt, and team-centered. Our district relied on Corgan to serve us with consistent performance and attention to detail, and they did just that.
Frisco and Scaling for Fast Growth
Learn more about Corgan's partnership with Frisco ISD in this episode of TheSquare, as we’ll explore the challenges and opportunities of a quickly growing district and how a student-centric approach inspired the enduring success of the district.
