ROUND ROCK, Texas — In under a month school will be back in session for Round Rock ISD students. A top priority for the district is safety and security.
When students return to school in August, the district will conduct a safety and security audit of all its campuses and buildings.
“We don’t want to be just in a reactive mode. We want to be on a proactive mode,” Superintendent Dr. Hafedh Azaiez said.
When the results from the audit come in, the report will be presented to the board of trustees.
“Hopefully, it will give us some information, more data, you know, any areas that we need to improve up on,” Azaiez said.
There’s also a big focus on mental health and communication. Azaiez said the district hired additional social workers for students and teachers this upcoming year.
“We are here to help and work together and collaborate with our parents and our students and our staff to ensure that everyone is safe. The last thing we want to see is a tragedy like what happened in Uvalde CISD,” Azaiez said.
Round Rock ISD’s resources will now extend to students who live outside district boundaries. For the first time, families outside the district can enroll their students at 15 RRISD campuses. It’s part of an open enrollment pilot program that would benefit students and the district’s budget.
“The more students we have, the more funding the district will receive, and obviously those funds will be used across the district to benefit every student in the district,” Azaiez said.
The campuses that are part of the pilot program are expected to be at 70% capacity or less this fall. Azaiez said enrollment numbers within the district have taken a hit since the pandemic started. With the open enrollment pilot program, Dr. Azaiez said the district expects to see an increase it hasn’t seen in two years.
“Our projection is for us to see actually an increase in enrollment and seeing more of those actually coming back to us now that many parents are feeling more comfortable having their students in person,” Azaiez said.
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