Old High could become a middle school. Trustees expected to vote Monday.

Wichita Falls ISD School Board trustees are considering a proposal to turn Old High into a middle school in the wake of the two new high schools opening for the 2023-2024 school year.

Trustees are expected to vote at a meeting at 6 p.m. Monday, June 19, in the WFISD Education Center downtown to determine whether to move forward with the plan floated by a committee or to pause the three middle-school option.

A proposal discussed at Tuesday's noon School Board meeting would turn Wichita Falls High School into a middle school instead of retiring it. Rider and Hirschi would still be transformed into middle schools.

“If they approve it, we will immediately start working towards the planning of that," Dr. Donny Lee, superintendent, said after the meeting.

WFISD officials will also need to know how soon trustees would like to carry out the three proposal for Wichita Falls, Rider and Hirschi middle schools, Lee said. The administration would work on notification of parents and attendance zones.

The proposal is a recommendation from a School Board ad-hoc committee, including School Board President Katherine McGregor, trustees Mark Lukert and Jim Johnson, former trustee Bob Payton and the superintendent, as well as Dr. Peter Griffiths, associate superintendent, and Debbie Dipprey, executive director of school administration.

More: Take a look at WFISD's construction cams for the new high schools' building sites

During Tuesday's meeting, McGregor said Hirschi is "absolutely not closing," and there have been no conversations about shuttering it.

The original plan was to transform Hirschi and Rider into middle schools to feed into the new high schools, but flaws soon became apparent.

“We have too many students for those two middle schools, and so there would be capacity issues," Lee said.

Hirschi's capacity is about 1,100 students, which would not be enough room, he said. WFISD has 3,000 middle-school kids, Lee said.

Having four middle schools, housing about 750 students each, turned out to be a too expensive proposition that would eat up any savings from campus closings, according to information presented by Griffiths at Tuesday's meeting. Expenses for staff, transportation and four fine arts and athletic programs would be too much.

The option for three middle schools is a compromise allowing equitable campuses with the three high schools being renovated into middle schools, according to Griffiths. It also resolves the issue of overcrowding at Hirschi. But there will be a price tag to prepare Old High to become a middle school.

The option also opens up the possibility of Barwise Middle School becoming an elementary.

Making Barwise into an elementary campus would allow WFISD to close two old elementary schools in bad shape, possibly moving those students into Barwise, Lee said.

At the same time, WFISD could shutter two elementary schools on the west side of town and send those students to McNeil as an elementary campus, he said.

Elementary kids could go to first-class facilities at McNeil and Barwise instead of attending aging buildings in bad shape, and the district could save money, Lee said.

"We're very excited about that possibility. We know that we operate at a very high building level with extremely high maintenance and operations costs,” he said.

No decisions have been made about closing additional elementary campuses, Lee said.

More: Class of 2023: Almost 860 seniors graduate at WFISD

"That would be another discussion for the board to ultimately decide,” Lee said. “But it would be the ones that are in the most terrible shape."

As part of long-term facilities planning, WFISD is evaluating facilities on the south and west sides of Wichita Falls.

"Those conversations and reviews are taking place as we speak,” Lee said.

Campus closures and reshuffling have already taken place in the east and north areas of Wichita Falls.

Trish Choate, enterprise watchdog reporter for the Times Record News, covers education, courts, breaking news, politics and more. Contact Trish with news tips at tchoate@gannett.com. Her Twitter handle is @Trishapedia.

This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: WFISD mulls making Old High into middle school with Rider and Hirschi