Carroll ISD's Board of Trustees dug into the district's 2026-27 District Improvement Plan and Campus Improvement Plans during a meeting on Monday, laying out five goals that range from staff retention to a dramatic cut in classroom technology. The plan also puts new weight behind expanding career and technical education, or CTE, programs meant to connect students with local businesses and real-world job training.
The District Improvement Plan functions as a staff guide for reaching district goals and lifting student performance to meet state standards, and Campus Improvement Plans across all school sites are required to align with it, according to Community Impact. That kind of annual review isn't optional — Texas Education Code §11.252 requires every public school district to develop, evaluate, and revise a District Improvement Plan each year with input from a district-level committee, according to the Texas Education Agency.
Five Goals, One Big Tech Rollback
Among the plan's five goals are ensuring strong educational experiences, recruiting and retaining qualified staff, supporting technological resources and training, optimizing resources, and expanding opportunities to engage the community, per the district's presentation. Trustees also set a goal of increasing small-group instruction to shrink student achievement gaps, and of expanding career and technical education programs district-wide.
The technology piece of that plan is already well underway. Carroll ISD has cut its digital resource list from 1,236 titles down to 168, according to the district's own figures reported by the same outlet's coverage. District employees worked with campus principals to figure out which programs were actually being used regularly and which ones could be dropped, and the reduction has already produced some cost savings, the report notes.
Screen-Time Limits
The cuts build on the district's ongoing “Dragon's Unplugged” initiative, which the board updated in August to set maximum daily instructional screen-time limits — zero minutes for Pre-K and kindergarten, 15 minutes for first grade, 20 minutes for grades 2-4, and 50 minutes for grades 5-8, according to the same Community Impact report from that month. High school classes are capped at 15 minutes of screen time per period, among the lowest limits in the region per that same account. The district also trimmed its technology spending budget by 8% that same month as part of an effort to keep classroom teachers, not software, as the primary source of instruction.
Those classroom changes are layered on top of a statewide mandate. Texas House Bill 1481, passed during the 89th Legislative Session and in effect for the 2025-26 school year, requires a “bell-to-bell” ban on personal communication devices during the instructional day statewide, according to the Texas Education Agency. Under the law, personal smartphones, smartwatches, and laptops must stay off and out of sight from arrival to dismissal.
Expanding Career and Technical Education
Carroll ISD is looking to expand its career and technical education programs.
The district is also looking to expand its CTE programs.
There's a financial incentive behind the push, too. Under Texas House Bill 3, passed in 2019, districts receive additional state funding through College, Career, and Military Readiness Outcomes Bonuses for graduates who earn industry-based certifications or complete high-demand CTE pathways, according to the Region One Education Service Center. That law overhauled Texas public school finance by tying supplemental funding directly to postsecondary readiness outcomes.
A High-Performing District With Room to Grow
Carroll ISD isn't struggling academically. Enrollment sits at 7,877 students across 11 campuses, per the Texas Tribune. Texas funds schools based on average daily attendance rather than total enrollment — making student retention a financial matter as well as an academic one.
