Coming Together

This school year Angi Tims will be principal of both Aledo High School and the Daniel Ninth Grade Campus.

“I’m starting my 19th year here in Aledo ISD as a high school administrator and I started my journey as an assistant principal in the high school building,” Tims said. “But I had the privilege of opening the ninth grade campus and serving as principal there at the high school.” 

The Aledo ISD administration has changed the roles of associate principles and restructured the leadership. Tims has hired a second associate principal, meaning one is over administration and operations, the other is over teaching and learning.  

“It was very important to me to make sure that we create a leadership and support structure that was going to make sure that all of our students and all of our staff were supported through the change,” Tims said. “So between the three of us we have built a calendar and schedule that will allow us to support students and teachers nine through 12.”

The restructuring came about because the high school is operating at capacity, but the ninth grade campus has some capacity left. To best make use of that space, the administration has moved Career and Technical Education (CTE) classes to the ninth grade building and moved health science to the high school. 

“We really moved some things that just made sense and we needed to because of enrollment in the program,” Tims said. “I do anticipate as we move forward and continue to grow, that we will continue to spill into the ninth grade building again because they have room whereas on our campus we just don’t have that.”  

Aledo ISD Superintendent Dr. Susan Bohn has worked along with the staff to plan for the growth of students approaching this school year. 

“As we've been planning for growth — and we’re going to have a little over 8,000 students this year — we will plan in multiple decades to have like 65,000,” Bohn said. “When we think about building multiple high schools, the ninth-grade campus model is harder to do.”

The school district has the support of a group of community members called the Aledo Growth Committee that comes together to help with long-range planning.

“They really started looking at high schools and the model of the ninth-grade campus plus the high school was just not something they were interested in pursuing,” Bohn said. “It’s less efficient, money-wise, and we're using taxpayer dollars so we have to make sure we're accountable to taxpayers for how we grow.” 

Bohn said the discussion of building a new school started in September of 2022 and continued through February, leading to a bond election in May. The conversation about a new high school is ongoing.

“We don't have a plan right now to build a new high school but we know we will have to,” Bohn said. “So the thought was when we do build the second high school it is a nine through 12 campus. It is not a 10 through 12 campus, and we figured out that we have to build another campus for an upgrade.”

Bohn said they didn’t make this change because of too many students, but it’s more about staffing and leadership. With the growth of the student body, the bond that was passed in May had also incorporated an addition to the indoor practice facility. 

“It doesn’t really add a lot of capacity but it creates space for student programs,” Bohn said. “This is something that the Growth Committee wanted us to do.” 

This will help create space for band, cheer, wrestling, and robotics since a majority of the space in the high school is shared. The district plans to build a second high school around 2030 to help serve the students. The second high school is planned to be constructed north of I-20 along Old Weatherford road.

In addition, the district purchased a tract of land behind First Bank at the intersection of Bailey Ranch Road and Champions Drive.

“It’s about 20 acres … the district has closed on that piece of property and the use of that piece of property is unknown,” Bohn said. “One of the concepts that the Aledo Growth Committee was talking about was a college and career academy.” 

Many districts in Dallas Fort Worth have the college and career academy. This would also leave room in the high school for students in the classrooms. For now, the classes that Tims has moved to the ninth grade campus are in the front of the building so students can make it to their classed at the main high school on time. 

“We were very thoughtful in trying to minimize the time it would take for the students to get from this building to that building,” Tims said. “We have a really great team of administrators, counselors, and teachers that have been working to tackle this and bring us together, and this isn’t something that I was able to do alone.”