New Sherman ISD elementary on West Travis Street goes to council Monday, with a request to shrink its storm shelter

Sherman ISD's next elementary school would rise on a 17-acre tract along West Travis Street, and before the district can build it, the City Council is being asked for two things: permission to put a school on land zoned for retail, and a change to the city's storm shelter rules that would let the campus be built with a much smaller safe room.

Both items are on the council's Nov. 2 agenda, posted Tuesday. The meeting starts at 5 p.m. Monday at City Hall, 220 W. Mulberry St., and each item comes with a public hearing.

The campus

The district owns 16.962 acres in the 2601 block of West Travis Street, zoned C-1 (Retail Business), and is asking for a specific use permit to allow a school there. The Planning and Zoning Commission voted 6-0 on Sept. 22 to recommend approval, and city staff say the use fits Sherman's comprehensive plan.

A project narrative from the district's architects, WRA Architects, places the school about 600 feet west of the intersection of West Travis Street and Northgate Drive. It is expected to open in fall 2028 and is designed for about 712 students. A traffic study filed with the request projects an opening enrollment near 600, reaching capacity around 2030.

Parents would enter from West Travis, where a right-turn lane, a left-turn lane and a median opening are proposed, and from a new collector road to be built on a 75-foot right-of-way along the site. Buses would get their own driveway off that collector road. The plan shows 148 parking spaces.

The traffic engineer, Zeetek Engineering, concluded that the site can hold the expected afternoon pick-up line, but recommended a school-zone speed limit on West Travis and police or other traffic control for 10 to 15 minutes at dismissal during the first weeks of school. Sewer service would come through an off-site line to an existing main near U.S. 75.

The storm shelter

Sherman's building code requires schools to include a storm shelter sized to the building's occupant load. For the new school, that would mean room for 2,227 people, figured at about 20 square feet per person, according to the city staff report.

The district asked the city to ease that requirement to reduce project costs. In a Sept. 4 letter, WRA argued that Texas Education Agency space rules cap how many students a school can hold, so the building code's formula overstates a campus's real population by about 80%.

For a typical elementary of about 108,000 square feet and 42 classrooms, the letter says, TEA's standard works out to 1,130 occupants, and the shelter would shrink from about 12,000 square feet to about 6,100.

The proposed ordinance would apply to all educational buildings in the city. It would let the building official base a school shelter's required capacity on the number of people the building is actually designed for, even when that is lower than the code's calculation. City staff made no recommendation either way.

The architects' letter lists 15 area cities, among them Anna, Bonham, Melissa, Van Alstyne and Whitewright, where it says the TEA figure has been accepted.

Also on the agenda

The council will also consider a petition from landowner Sherman Lakes JV, LLC to create the Sherman Lakes Municipal Utility District over about 184 acres inside the city limits, a construction contract for Heritage Ranch public improvements, a new ambulance for the fire department, and a Main Street reimbursement grant for 903 Brewers.

Sources

shermantx.api.civicclerk.com

shermantx.api.civicclerk.com