Brentwood Parents’ Group Pushes for Separate School District

brentwood high school

A Brentwood parents group would like the city to study forming a separate school district. On Monday night, at the city commission meeting, a spokesperson espoused the group’s views in the public comment portion of the meeting.

The group’s argument is that the city should at least study whether or not it would make sense for Brentwood to form its own district. Grady Tabor, a parent of Brentwood High and Middle School students, spoke for the group. He said that the city gives more than it gets back and that it will only get more pronounced.

Currently, Brentwood’s property taxes provide about 27 percent of Williamson County Schools local funding. Its students make up about 24 percent of enrollment.

“But enrollment could be less than 20 percent in 10 years,” Tabor said. “Because Brentwood is almost built out.”

Other parts of the county, however, still have much room to grow. This could mean Brentwood, while demographically having a smaller and smaller percentage of students, would pay more and more than its share.

Supporting that point, Tabor said that while Brentwood’s school are estimated by WCS to increase in enrollment by 14 percent in the next five years, that rate is much higher in other municipalities. 

“If the county decided to fund school needs using property taxes we would feel the increase more than anyone else in the county because of our home values,” he said.