Farmers Branch Voters Say No To Separate ISD

FARMERS BRANCH (CBSDFW.COM) - Farmers Branch voters overwhelmingly said they do not want to start their own school district.

Two-thirds of the voters turned down the referendum, backed by their outgoing mayor.

Tim O'Hare made the push for the separate district and explained to KRLD that one problem was the fact that Farmers Branch students are part of both Carrollton-Farmers Branch and Dallas schools.

"Our kids are split up into two different districts," he said. "We don't have a high school in our town."

O'Hare said he doesn't know of a city as large as Farmers Branch that doesn't have its own school. "I just think for Farmers Branch to achieve its' full potential it has to have its own high school."

O'Hare believes the measure lost because Farmers Branch has a large population of mature residents "The older people usually control the vote and those folks didn't see the same vision that I had."

Even if the proposal had passed there would have been little, if anything, the city could have done to move forward, since Farmers Branch doesn't have the required 8,000 school age children to form a new district. There are currently fewer than 4,000 students in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD.