https://wacotrib.com/news/local/education/midway-picks-ritchie-road-site-in-hewitt-for-new-largest-elementary-school/article_cd281b44-f86b-11ea-aeb1-bf6ea9115bf2.html

The new $38.5 million elementary school is part of a $148 million bond package Midway ISD voters approved in November, which also includes facility upgrades for the high school's career and technical education program, and renovations to three other schools.

If all goes according to plan, Midway ISD will have a brand new, 104,823-square-foot elementary school in time for the 2022-23 school year, ready to welcome about 750 students, district Maintenance and Transportation Director Buddy Freeman said. It will be built on the east side of Ritchie, near a Hewitt water tower and between West Warren Street and Park Place Drive.

The Park Meadows subdivision is the biggest housing development in the Hewitt area, Waco Metropolitan Planning Organization Director Chris Evila said. The developers plan to build about 700 homes there, with the potential for more, and other subdivisions along the Ritchie Road corridor are in the works that could result in almost 2,000 new homes in the area.

Evila said the MPO identified the Ritche Road corridor in Hewitt and Woodway as "one of the fastest growing areas" for development more than 25 years ago, consistently seeing the need to update transportation infrastructure there to keep up with the expansion.

Figures it was going to be back there. There is a lot of construction in that area with very strange properties lines for schools. I know the new subdivision Callan is going to be Lorena ISD

Good, less ridiculous lines at SBE

1outawayBear said:

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Good, less ridiculous lines at SBE

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Nope. They'll still be just as bad.

1outawayBear said:

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Good, less ridiculous lines at SBE

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I think this is the goal. Problem still remains that people can try and force their way into certain schools

ImwithBU said:

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Figures it was going to be back there. There is a lot of construction in that area with very strange properties lines for schools. I know the new subdivision Callan is going to be Lorena ISD

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And I have no idea how Callan is Lorena, but Park Meadows (closer to Lorena) is Midway.

Bearicade said:

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ImwithBU said:

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Figures it was going to be back there. There is a lot of construction in that area with very strange properties lines for schools. I know the new subdivision Callan is going to be Lorena ISD

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And I have no idea how Callan is Lorena, but Park Meadows (closer to Lorena) is Midway.

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I assume these borders were set years ago when there was little out this way, but it's very irregularly shaped, and doesn't necessarily line up with what are the major roads today. Lorena ISD goes all the way to Ritchie road in several spots. LISD reaches Ritchie Rd at Chapel Rd, Panther Way, and Spring Valley. Midway has a section that extends west across Ritchie at Warren Rd. There is a map at the link below. It's a pdf so takes a minute.
https://www.co.mclennan.tx.us/DocumentCenter/View/762/McLennan-County-School-Districts-PDF

I or my family have lived on Ritchie Rd across from Park Meadows since 1970. It was always my understanding that the other side of Ritchie was Lorena ISD, until Park Meadows came to be. Stonehenge is Lorena ISD, I believe.

I've been wrong before and could be this time. I don't suppose we ever actually checked anything but this side of the road. Is it possible to find maps from a few years ago, pre Park Meadows?

Liteitup said:

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I or my family have lived on Ritchie Rd across from Park Meadows since 1970. It was always my understanding that the other side of Ritchie was Lorena ISD, until Park Meadows came to be. Stonehenge is Lorena ISD, I believe.

I've been wrong before and could be this time. I don't suppose we ever actually checked anything but this side of the road. Is it possible to find maps from a few years ago, pre Park Meadows?

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I live in Stonehinge. It is Lorena ISD. We built here in '99 because it was Lorena ISD and close to "town." The new Callan has always been Lorena. I believe that the Park Meadows area was always Midway. The Midway line extends down Warren Rd past the joggle in the road.

Back to the OP, was the new school just officially announced? Someone mentioned to me that it was the new school about a month ago.

What's going to get interesting about 10 years or so from now is when Midway will have to build a new high school. It will obviously be built along the 84 corridor. There will be some mad homeowners in Hewitt when there home values will not appreciate like those in Woodway.

Coke Bear said:

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Liteitup said:

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I or my family have lived on Ritchie Rd across from Park Meadows since 1970. It was always my understanding that the other side of Ritchie was Lorena ISD, until Park Meadows came to be. Stonehenge is Lorena ISD, I believe.

I've been wrong before and could be this time. I don't suppose we ever actually checked anything but this side of the road. Is it possible to find maps from a few years ago, pre Park Meadows?

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I live in Stonehinge. It is Lorena ISD. We built here in '99 because it was Lorena ISD and close to "town." The new Callan has always been Lorena. I believe that the Park Meadows area was always Midway. The Midway line extends down Warren Rd past the joggle in the road.

Back to the OP, was the new school just officially announced? Someone mentioned to me that it was the new school about a month ago.

What's going to get interesting about 10 years or so from now is when Midway will have to build a new high school. It will obviously be built along the 84 corridor. There will be some mad homeowners in Hewitt when there home values will not appreciate like those in Woodway.

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I wouldn't doubt if it were built out towards Harris Creek since that is still Midway ISD.

If you go back in time on Google Earth, the school district lines make more sense as they follow property lines for different agricultural tracts. For example, property owners facing ritchie road (where Park Meadows is now) were included in Midway, likely because it touched Ritchie. The land where Callan is located appears to have been owned by someone that lived off Farmiller Road and had land also on the other side of Farmiller, so all of their property likely got lumped into Lorena ISD.

Same thing over by Moonlight Park off Old Temple. The land where Moonlight Park is being built was contiguous with land owned by the same family that extended well into Lorena ISD. So all of his land likely got lumped into Lorena. The Hewitt Drive extension bisected the property, so it's logical now to expect one side of the road to be Lorena and the other side to be Midway but that's why Lorena ISD extends onto the "Midway" side of Hewitt Drive over there.

Of course, back in the early 90s, there was hardly anything but farmland in all of those locations.

The Callan development and the property where Park Meadows is now, all the way to Warren was one property owned by the Callan family(Central Freight) and farmed by the Maddux's. Ritchie road went to Pantherway, turned right and then left on the road beside Chapel Ridge. It was gravel, I t-boned a tree doing power slides in the gravel. Stonehenge hadn't been built. At that time, late 60's, we were led to believe everything across Ritchie was Lorena ISD. Jay Hudson built on the corner of Ritchie and Chapel early 70's and had to put a travel trailer cattycorner across the road so Jay Jr could attend Midway, on what was probably the Hyman property.

We moved in Thanksgiving day, 1970. There were three houses between us and Hewitt Drive, Scoggins on the corner, the Woodliff's, and a small white frame house. Gerald Mann's lumber yard was at the corner of Pantherway and Hewitt drive

Of course I was twelve and may be misremembering the whole thing.

Love this thread, hearing about these memories and thinking about the future. Great stuff.

Waco is constructing a larger water tower to replace the giant mushroom.

I attended Lorena ISD and actually road the bus that went along Ritchie Road.

That dude who has an exotic ranch out on Chapel Road actually lives on the Lorena side of the street because the last house in the Lorena ISD sits there on the circle at Richie Rd.