In recent years, West Brook has become the most populous schools within the district. This year the campus enrolled over 2300 students, which led to the denial of many transfer requests. With the westward expansion of Beaumont, Superintendent Dr. Caroll Thomas, along with the school board now faces current and future population problems.

“The zoning was done, probably, oh I’d say back in the integration days, trying to increase certain segments of the students,” Thomas said. “However, the zoning is done to distribute kids because we can’t have all kids in one school, and so therefore, we created the zones so that we could spread students around to each of our schools.”

West Brook has become one of the most requested schools among parents and students to be transferred to. However, the school did not accept any transfers this year because of the large number of students already enrolled. Also, transfers are done on a first come, first serve basis Thomas said. Many other West End schools such as Marshall Middle School, Sallie Curtis Elementary, Regina Howell Elementary, and Vincent Middle School are among the top five most transfer requested schools according to the district.

Within the past eight years BISD has grown immensely and many transfer students come from private schools, which has further increased the district’s size. Also, test scores have affected the vast amount of transfer requests to west end schools because the general perception of those schools are of a higher educational standard Thomas said. However, he feels that as far as education quality is concerned, the three high schools are pretty equal.

“You would get the same type of education at Central or West Brook. However, West Brook has a greater number of students who come from backgrounds that should lead to success, and are doing quite well,” Thomas said.

Due to the population boom in west Beaumont, east side schools have become under-crowded, where as west end schools have become overcrowded. However, 2002s failed $150 million bond proposal was a means to help prevent this disbalancement in area schools Thomas said.

“A couple of years back when we started talking about the bond issue-that’s what the bond issue was about- is to stay ahead of that (overcrowding). So that we would not have to deny transfers, and that we could have built an additional school, added additional space, and done some things,” Thomas said. “That problem is going to get a lot worse if the district does not pass a bond issue soon.”

However, there is a committee of citizens looking to propose a bond Thomas said. If a bond is proposed and passed, the money will come from taxed. Thus, taxpayers decide what they are willing to spend to better the district Thomas said. He also commented that if a bond is not passed soon the district could be seeing serious problems.

“What could happen is, if we don’t pass a bond, then the district will be forced to rezone. Which will send kids where space is available, which is worse than not transferring,” Thomas said. “I know parents don’t like that because they like the schools that they are zoned in, and we work for the taxpayers of this city, so we like for the taxpayers to be happy. So we want their kids to go to the schools they want them to go to, but if we don’t do something about that then we’re going to be forced to possibly do some rearranging to accommodate our population of students.”