Longview is going to 4A? Wow. Kind of strange that the former 13-5A (also called 12-5A) could conceivably get back together in 4A. Marshall, John Tyler (should be 4A if not already since it has <1500 students), Nacogdoches, and if you go further back, Texas High and Pine Tree are already 4A. That leaves just Lufkin and Tyler Lee as 5A schools still, or at least I'm assuming that they are still 5A. Texas High of course would never be forced to travel that far again with the other 4A schools that are closer. Also there are a lot of 4A schools in NE Texas, albeit they are much smaller than Marshall (1800 to 1900), Longview (over 2000 last I heard) are giants in 4A for enrollment compared to other schools in Marshall's district. I suppose if the 3A cutoff moves up that some of those schools would be forced to move down from 4A. As for the south of Austin region, I had heard people discussing that New Braunfels was going to 5A soon. They had just over 2000 students this year. They are projected to have >2200 in 2010 and almost 3000 in 2016. Canyon is still just under 1800, so that leaves Smithson Valley as the only 5A for now in Comal ISD (NBHS is in NB ISD). The expectation though is that Canyon will be a 5A in the next decade although Comal ISD just added a new high school for students that used to feed into Canyon.
Here's an update. This guy has done some actual research and gotten enrollment numbers of a lot of schools. They've done their own aligning and here are their ideas: The Link He sees the Austin district, 25-5A, losing San Marcos and Seguin to 4A. They'd be replaced by Del Valle (2200+) and New Braunfels (2144). The Unicorns used to be a member of this district in the not to distant past. They also see 14-5A gaining Pville Connally and Vista Ridge, which necessitates Georgtown moving in with 12-5A and the Killeen/Temple/Bryan schools.
To drive the discussion out to West Texas, I've heard there's an outside chance that the Abilene schools will drop to 4A. It would be really interesting to see what happens to the Panhandle, Midland-Odessa, and El Paso districts if that occurs. The Abilene schools would be in with San Angelo Lake View and maybe the Wichita Falls schools. Midland and Odessa might have to join up with some of the El Paso schools, too.
The Link That has Cooper dropping to 4A, 2-5A consisting of 10 teams, and Abilene High moving to 3-5A with Weatherford.
UIL rules state that ISDs with 8+ schools can petition to opt a school up a classification. Houston and Fort Bend ISDs come to mind. Austin qualifies, but never does this. I guess Abilene could petition to try and keep Cooper in 5A, but they don't have nearly 8 schools. I've also heard from people there that they would not fight it if Cooper was dropped.
Oh, and re: re-drawing boundaries, that wouldn't work for this alignment. The numbers are pretty much set from that specified day in October when attendance was taken and calculations made. Private school transfers and whatnot can effect numbers though. Cooper, if they miss the cut, will only do so by a few dozen. They'll likely be back in 5A come 2010. But the next 2 years is the school board's chance to redistrict if they want to.
