Lockhart ISD partners with development group to make affordable housing for teachers

Lockhart ISD helps teachers become homeowners

Lockhart ISD is partnering with a development group to help local teachers afford housing in their school district. FOX 7 Austin's Jessica Rivera has more in this FOX 7 Report Card.

LOCKHART, Texas - Lockhart ISD is partnering with a development group to help build affordable housing for its teachers.

What they're saying:

Lockhart ISD is growing and wants to retain teachers to stay working with the district. Red Oak Development Group is helping it do that by offering affordable housing in the community.

"The whole goal is if they stay in the home, they get a good deal from us. They're encouraged to stay in the school for 10 years, right? So mark has a program too where he recruits the best teachers, and so the goal is those best teachers will have access to that program," says Staub.

Red Oak is launching TEACH (Teachers’ Economic Advancement Through Community Homeownership), a program aimed at helping hundreds of local teachers become homeowners so they can live in the same communities they help shape.

"Our big thing is to have a, you know, between eight to twelve different home types, different price points. So, it may be a couple, it may be a retiree that wants to be near their grandbabies. It may be someone who wants their own privacy as an individual," says Staub.

The backstory:

Earlier this year, voters approved a $94 million bond that will help with the construction of a new middle school.

"The ideal operating capacity for any school is around 85%. So. There's already significant overcrowding at that school right now, but we're projected to be at 100% by the start of the new school year and as high as 109% by 2029," Adam Miller with Lockhart ISD Director of School Safety & Community Relations, previously told FOX 7 in April.

Lockhart ISD bond election

Election Day is coming up and several school districts in our area are proposing bond packages.

To help alleviate some of the overcrowding in Lockhart, the school district partnered with Red Oak Development Group, which formalized a land donation agreement for a new $90 million middle school that will break ground in early 2026. 

CEO Tom Staub says the company is investing over $100 million through 2030 to complete the project.

"We're gaining about 200 students per year, right? So, there's a lot of demand on the school district, there's a lot of need for extra capacity. This community is going be a big part of that. And so, it was a no-brainer for us to work with them to say, hey, let's build a school to help our kids," said Staub.