Last school year, Austin ISD implemented the policy of ending tracking transfers. Tracking transfers include students that transferred in elementary school and followed current elementary students to their assigned middle and high schools.

Overcrowding has been a constant problem for students and faculty at Bowie. As soon as the bell rings indicting class has ended, hallways are bombarded with a sea of students similar to sardines packed in a can.

“The reason the school board and school district decided to stop these transfers to frozen schools was directly due to overcrowding,” assistant principal Susan Leos said.

Although the decision may seem sudden, the issue has been discussed among AISD board members to decide the best decision for students.

“AISD has considered many ways of honoring that parents and students sometimes want to transfer as well as considering other factors like overcrowding, the facilities & facility conditions, the number of students-to-teachers ratios, etc. before they make these kind of difficult decisions,” Leos said. “AISD has also discussed changing school boundaries and even possible school closures in order to help both overcrowded schools and low-enrollment schools, but those are also very challenging decisions that impact our real-life students and families. In short, there are no easy answers.”

The effects of the policy are slowly, but surely being implemented through the students at Bowie.

“We do still have some students in our junior and senior classes who were able to transfer into Bowie prior to these decisions being made by the AISD School Board and AISD officials,” Leos said.

Despite the policy being implemented to fix a problem in AISD, there comes drawbacks.

“Lower class students won’t get the chance to experience Bowie’s level of education/opportunities for sports,” senior Lauryn Lomas said.

While this policy may come with criticism, the overall effect is to benefit Bowie and the students attending it.

“I think the policy is fair because Bowie is really overpopulated as it is and the classes are getting overcrowded,” Lomas said. “This is resulting in students getting less individual attention.”

The problem of transfers may seem inconsequential to the students of Bowie; however, according to Austin ISD Board of Trustees Member, Cindy Anderson, it proves to have negative consequences.

“Another way that extra students can impact a campus is in the cafeteria.  On campuses that are overcrowded, the cafeteria often has to expand their hours of service in order to feed all of the students,” Anderson said. “So for example they may have to start serving lunch at 10:00 a.m. or 10:30 a.m. and/or may not be able to finish serving students until almost 2:00 p.m.”

Ultimately, the solution to the issue of overcrowding at Bowie is the district’s enforcement of the new changes to the transfer policy..

“Changes to the policy will help us better manage enrollment at campuses that are overcrowded,” Anderson said.