Heights reader takes issue with KISD's plan to renovate Peebles

Why is renovation and expansion of Peebles Elementary a project on KISD’s strategic facility wish list?

KISD’s latest enrollment projections released at Thursday’s joint workshop with the Killeen City Council shows KISD with an 84% utilization rate of all its elementary classrooms. KISD is projecting nearly 4,500 unused elementary seats for the 2023-2024 school year.

Yet, KISD wants to renovate and increase Peebles student capacity by 535 seats for a projected cost of $57.6M as of May 2022. This despite KISD’s own projections showing a decrease in Peebles enrollment and multiple adjacent elementary zones next to Peebles showing less than 90% usage.

Could the answer to this question be a lack of a true strategic facility plan?

I’m not saying KISD needs to have strategic plan as wordy as the city of Killeen’s, but everyone should be able to agree that one page is not a strategic plan by any stretch of the imagination.

Maybe if KISD had a strategic plan, it would be obvious that the existing Peebles location is no longer needed by KISD and might serve the community better as something else, like, I don’t know… maybe a northside grocery store?

The Peebles lot is in an established neighborhood on a four-lane thoroughfare with a high volume of vehicle traffic from one of four major gates from the largest military base in the country. The potential foot and drive-by traffic of this location would seem to suggest a potentially profitable and sustainable situation for any grocer.

I know folks will tell me it’s not that simple, but maybe it is.

And maybe KISD could be a “hero” for the City of Killeen and the residents of the ’41 to help solve the lack of a northside grocery store.

Just saying.

Stan Golaboff

Harker Heights