Starting the school year of 2016-2017, AISD will be implementing a new transfer policy that will impact many high schools in the area, including Bowie.

Interim Director of Student Services and Discipline of AISD Andri Lyons sent out an email on Monday, November 23 informing staff that a new policy will be taking effect.

“Beginning with the 2016-2017 school year, in an effort to relieve overcrowding, majority to minority transfers will only be accepted at campuses where space is available,” Lyons said in the email. “Beginning with the 2017-2018 school year, in a continuing effort to relieve overcrowding, in addition to the majority minority priority transfers, sibling, and tracking transfers will also only be accepted at campuses with space available.”

There are three different ways of transferring to a school: sibling transfer, tracking transfer, and a majority to minority transfer.

“If a school has a population with an ethnicity rate 50 percent or more, some students have the option of moving over to a school where the ethnicity rate is less; students will be placed on a waiting list so they can be transferred,” said assistant executive to Kathy Ryan, Jessica Torrez. “Sibling transfers are where if one sibling gets into a school, all the siblings can got to that school, they just have to be on the same campus. Lastly, the last transfer option is tracking where if the student has two unbroken years of attendance, the student has to option to go to another school for the two latest years offered at that school.”

On campus there are just over 400 students on transfers from other schools in the district. Senior Michaela Gero and sophomore Yelenna James are one of the few people on transfers.

“I’m on a sibling transfer here with my brother; we got the transfer from my brother who was able to come to Bowie for the special needs department,” Gero said. “If we had not gotten the transfer, we are zoned to Akins, so if this new policy takes effect, my brothers junior year might be at Akins.”

Bowie and Akins are two frozen schools in the south which means no one can transfer into either of these schools if the new policy is enforced, which is something that will remain to be seen.