Renovated Ennis I.S.D. campus will open for middle school students in the 2022-2023 school year.
The halls of the old Ennis High School will once again be filled with the sounds of students as Alamo Middle School will open in the renovated facility that once served as the final grades for generations of Ennis residents.
In a YouTube video posted to the Ennis I.S.D. account in mid-December, Superintendent Jay Tullos lays out the plans for opening the old school campus a year earlier than initially planned.
“If you drive around our town for the last 18 months, you see a lot of new homes — a lot of new apartments going up, and we don’t feel like that’s going to slow down anytime soon. We’ve been working with city officials trying to project when those students will enter our schoolhouse doors,” Tullos says in the video. “About a year ago, we made the decision that we’d begin renovation of the old high school, or the Alamo Campus as it’s called now, there on Gaines Street.”
Tullos says renovation of the gymnasium is done and that renovation of the main portion of the building is currently expected to be complete in February of 2022.
“Our initial plan was … that we would have the need to open [the renovated campus] — in August of 2023. However, after looking at our projections, looking at our current campus capacities that we have with all the new students that we have, we’ve made the decision that we will open that campus this coming August — in August of ’22,” Tullos says.
Initially, the campus will serve as a new middle school, bringing together students from the areas served by the Lumus and Miller Intermediate campuses.
For generations through the mid-20th Century, the campus served as Ennis High School. Later by the early 2000s, the school district used the facility as a junior high school.
Tullos says the school district plans to host several open houses in the coming months so that the community may view the work that’s been accomplished.
“We know this building … not only plays a huge part in our school district, but it’s a huge part of our city as well,” Tullos says. “We’re very proud to be able to preserve that building to let these new students make great memories in that building as well.”