How Williamson County school zones work

01The short version

Every address in Williamson County is zoned for a Williamson County Schools high school. Below ninth grade, part of Franklin belongs to a second district, the Franklin Special School District, which runs eight schools from pre-K through eighth grade and then hands its students to the county's high schools. Which district, and which school within it, comes down to the address. The zone lines follow streets and lot lines. They ignore zip codes and subdivision names, and the FSSD's line ignores today's city limits.

Take two addresses in the 37064 zip code, less than three miles apart. The Franklin Theatre, at 419 Main Street, is inside the FSSD: Johnson Elementary, then Freedom Intermediate and Freedom Middle, then Franklin High. Pearre Creek Elementary, at 1811 Townsend Boulevard in Westhaven, is Williamson County Schools all the way through: Pearre Creek, then the Hillsboro K–8 school in Leiper's Fork for sixth through eighth grade, then Independence High in Thompson's Station. Both are Franklin addresses, and the two paths share no school.

The lines move. Williamson County's school board draws its zones and redraws them when a school fills up or a new one opens. It last redrew lines across the district in November 2022, and on October 19, 2026 it voted 12 to 0 to move one subdivision from the Fairview schools to Franklin's, starting with the 2027–28 school year. The FSSD's outer line has not moved since the General Assembly fixed it in 1987. A family that wants a school other than the zoned one can apply for an open seat each spring, by lottery when there are more applicants than seats, and then drives the child there itself.

02Find your school

Each district has its own lookup, and an address inside the FSSD needs both.

Williamson County Schools' lookup sits on its Bus Routes & School Zones page. Type the house number and street with the street type abbreviated (Rd., St.) and leave the zip code blank, as the district's own note advises. It returns the zoned elementary, middle and high school. For an address inside the FSSD it returns the high school and two placeholders, "Franklin Special District Elementary" and "Franklin Special District Middle," because the county's zones stop at the district's line below ninth grade.

The FSSD's lookup is the map on its District Map page. It names the elementary and middle school for an address inside the district. The district calls its answers "projected schools of attendance" and takes questions at its central office, (615) 794-6624. Williamson County Schools' main number is (615) 472-4000.

The shortcuts fail in predictable ways. A Franklin zip code covers addresses in both districts. Subdivisions split: the FSSD's own list, last revised in 2023, marks eight neighborhoods divided between the two districts, among them Lockwood Glen, Falcon Creek and Founders Pointe. And the lines run through places people think of as one neighborhood. On the FSSD's map, most of the blocks around the Public Square are in Johnson Elementary's zone, the blocks east of about Third Avenue are in Liberty's, and Franklin Elementary and Poplar Grove take the edges of downtown.

Neither lookup tells you whether a line is about to move or whether a school has room for an out-of-zone student. Sections 06 and 07 cover both.

03Two districts, side by side

The FSSD is older than its charter. Franklin's aldermen created a city school board in 1906, and the district runs today under a 1949 private act of the General Assembly. Its board is elected by the voters inside the district and answers to no one at the county's school board. It has no high school: its charter leaves grades nine through twelve to the county.

Enrollment: Williamson County Schools' 2026–27 count, prepared September 4; the FSSD's demographics report, October 2, 2026. The county's school fund is split between the two districts by attendance; our property tax explainer has what each costs a house.

A parent notices the difference in a few places. The FSSD's elementary schools end at fourth grade, so most of its children change schools after fourth grade and again after sixth, where a county child moves once, after fifth. Each FSSD elementary runs a free pre-K class, with places given mainly by family income. And an FSSD address carries the district's tax, which on a $970,000 house this year comes to $1,861. The calendars nearly match in 2026–27: both districts started August 10 and share fall and spring breaks.

04From kindergarten to a diploma

Inside Williamson County Schools, an address's elementary school leads to a middle school and the middle school to a high school, all by zone. Most middle schools send every student to one high school. A few split, and the board's policy gives the students who split off a way back to their classmates, covered below. These are the nine high schools with zones, with this fall's enrollment against each building's capacity.

Students: Williamson County Schools' first-month count for 2026–27. Capacity: the district's building capacity. Open seats: the open-zoned spots the board approved on January 20, 2026 for this school year, set from projections before it began. Which middle schools feed each high school is our reading of the district's zone maps and its open-zoning list; a few streets at the edge of a middle school's zone can go to a neighboring high school. Renaissance High (164 students) and Vanguard Virtual High (127) take students by application and have no zone.

Inside the FSSD, the district's map assigns each address one of five elementary schools, Franklin, Johnson, Liberty, Moore or Poplar Grove, each running pre-K through fourth grade. The first four send their students to Freedom Intermediate for fifth and sixth grade and Freedom Middle for seventh and eighth. Poplar Grove Elementary feeds Poplar Grove Middle, which runs fifth through eighth grade on the same campus. After eighth grade every FSSD student goes to the county high school zoned for the family's address, Franklin High or Centennial. Courses FSSD middle schoolers take for high school credit count at Williamson County Schools.

Three groups of eighth graders get first claim on a high school other than their zoned one, so that a small group zoned away from most of its classmates can follow them. Freedom Middle students who live in Franklin High's zone can choose Centennial. Heritage Middle students in Summit's zone can choose Independence. Page Middle students in Centennial's zone can choose Page. The board's policy gives this priority to a middle school's smaller group when fewer than 15 percent of its students are zoned elsewhere, and the open-zoning list names these three. A priority student still needs an open seat, and still gets no bus.

05Who draws the lines

Williamson County's school board sets every zone in its district. Its policy on attendance zones, numbered 1.703, asks it to give its staff "parameters" before any rezoning vote; in 2022 the superintendent proposed three, among them keeping feeder patterns intact and zoning planned subdivisions before they are built. The district's planning and zoning staff then draw a plan, the board hears it at a work session, the district holds community meetings, and the board approves the plan in a single vote. The change takes effect the following August.

The last rezoning ran on that clock. Staff presented it on October 20, 2022; community meetings followed at Heritage Elementary, Sunset Middle and Creekside Elementary over the next week; and on November 28 the board approved it in four votes, three of them 12 to 0 and one 11 to 1. The new zones took effect in August 2023, when Amanda H. North and Arrington elementary schools opened, and they are the zones the district's lookup still uses.

A rezoned student can ask to stay at the old school, but only in the grades the policy lists, and only by asking. In the district's words after the 2022 vote, "Grandfathering after a school rezoning is not automatic."

Who can stay at a former school after a rezoning, under Williamson County Schools' Policy 1.703. The family applies and provides the transportation. The board can go further: in 2022 it let rising third and fourth graders rezoned out of Creekside Elementary stay as well.

The FSSD has two kinds of line, and its board draws only one of them. It sets the zones of its five elementary schools. The district's outer boundary belongs to the General Assembly. A 1987 private act fixed it as the Ninth Civil District plus Franklin's city limits as they stood on September 1, 1986, and the FSSD says lawmakers froze it "to create stability for families and schools." Franklin has annexed a great deal of land since, none of which joined the district. By the county's 2025–26 budget, the part of Franklin outside the FSSD carries almost as much assessed value as the part inside it.

06What changes next

The county board approved two zoning changes on October 19.

The first moves Stephens Valley, the subdivision off Sneed Road that the district's map counts at 324 houses, from Westwood Elementary, Fairview Middle and Fairview High to Grassland Elementary, Grassland Middle and Franklin High, starting with the 2027–28 school year. The staff memo gives two reasons, "growth in the Fairview area" and "transportation purposes." At the meeting, Interim Superintendent Leigh Webb told the board that all but one of the students who live in Stephens Valley already attend the Grassland and Franklin High schools out of zone. The district will provide bus transportation for them once the change takes effect, and the one student at the Fairview schools can apply to stay there. The board approved it 12 to 0. Stephens Valley has been here before: in 2017 the board voted 8 to 4, against the superintendent's recommendation, to zone it to the Fairview schools instead of Franklin's. Both sets of schools have room this fall. Grassland Elementary is at 51 percent of capacity and Franklin High at 83; Westwood is at 72 and Fairview High at 63. The district also told the board it will review zones across the whole county over the coming months, take its recommendations to the board in public, and put them to a vote about this time next year.

The second, passed with the consent agenda on a voice vote, changes the deadline in Policy 1.703. Out-of-zone requests, including grandfathering and sibling requests, are now due 45 days after the out-of-zone process opens rather than on April 15, unless they come from a move. Brian King, the assistant superintendent of operations, asked for it so that schools and human resources can staff the next year sooner. If the portal opens February 4 again, the window will close around March 21, about three and a half weeks earlier than this year's.

No new school is under construction. The draft five-year capital plan, dated September 28 and due for approval in November, lists a middle school on the Split Log property in the east of the county for fall 2029, at $87 million, new elementaries in the northeast of the county and in Fairview for fall 2031, and a Cox Road middle school and a southern elementary for fall 2032, along with classroom additions at Nolensville High and Centennial. The Split Log school's date has moved before: the plan approved in November 2024 put it in fall 2027, and last year's put it in fall 2030. On October 19 the board voted 12 to 0 to send the county commission an $87 million intent to fund for it, which lets the design work start; where the money comes from is the commission's decision. Each new school will bring a rezoning with it. Enrollment, meanwhile, is falling: from 42,336 in 2022–23 to 40,648 this fall, 440 fewer students than the district projected.

07Going to a school outside your zone

Tennessee law requires every district to hold an open enrollment period of at least 30 days for schools with room, to post the open seats at least 14 days before it starts, and to hold a lottery when a school has more applicants than seats. The parent provides the transportation. Each district runs its own version.

Each January, Williamson County's board approves a list of open-zoned schools with the number of seats each has for out-of-zone students, after holding some back for families who move into the zone, siblings and teachers' children. For 2026–27 the list held 3,632 seats: 2,394 in the elementary schools and the Hillsboro K–8, 480 in the middle schools and 758 in the high schools. Five schools had none (Arrington, Nolensville and Trinity elementaries, Page and Woodland middle schools), and Mill Creek's elementary and middle schools were left off the list entirely. Only county residents can apply, including families inside the FSSD.

This year the portal opened February 4 and closed April 15. Where a school drew more applications than seats, a random lottery ran on April 16, and families had seven days to accept a seat. Wait lists last until the business day before school starts. A student who gets a seat keeps it through the school's top grade without reapplying, though moving up to the next school, at sixth or ninth grade, takes a new request; a principal can send a student back for not following school procedures, and a student found to be using a false address is reassigned at once. There is no bus.

Some schools' open seats fill and some do not. At the end of last year's first semester, Franklin High had filled all 57 of its open seats and Ravenwood all 49, while Centennial had filled 34 of 216.

Some routes run outside the open-zoning list. The International Baccalaureate diploma program at Franklin High takes out-of-zone applicants, who return to their zoned school if they leave the program. Renaissance High, a high school of 164 students, admits by application; for rising ninth graders the window runs November 20, 2026 to January 8, 2027, and older students can apply at any time. Vanguard Virtual High, the district's online school, takes applications for 2027–28 from January 5 to February 28, 2027, and enrolling there cancels any out-of-zone approval the student holds. Children of district and county employees can attend schools in the feeder pattern where the parent works.

The FSSD runs its own version for its own residents. It posted its open seats February 1 to 16 this year and took requests February 16 to March 19, with a lottery if a school is oversubscribed, the family driving, and approval good through the school's top grade. A child zoned for Williamson County Schools can attend an FSSD school only as a tuition student: $2,000 a year for a Williamson County resident, half that for each additional child, and $4,000 a child from outside the county, approved one year at a time.

Changing high schools can cost an athlete a season. Under a state law in effect since July 1, a student's first transfer in high school keeps athletic eligibility if it happens over the summer. Under the bylaws of the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association, a transfer during the school year, or a second transfer, makes the athlete ineligible for twelve months. Moving from eighth grade to a high school is not a transfer, and a student moved by a rezoning stays eligible.

08Moving, buying or building

To enroll a child, Williamson County Schools asks for one proof of residency, a signed lease, a settlement statement, a warranty deed or a current mortgage statement, plus a utility bill from the month before enrollment, a parent's photo ID, the child's birth certificate and immunization and physical records. Online registration for 2026–27 opened March 16. A kindergartner has to turn five on or before August 15.

A family moving into a zone before the house is ready can enroll at the new zone's school early with a signed, non-contingent purchase, build or lease contract and an out-of-zone application, as long as the move happens within the school year. A contingent contract does not qualify. A family moving in from outside the county pays the semester's tuition up front, at this year's rate of $9,797 a year, and gets it back if it proves residency before the semester ends.

Moving out of a zone mid-year rarely forces a change of schools. A student who moves within the county can finish the year at the old school. Rising fifth, seventh, eighth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth graders who lived in the old zone for at least twelve months can ask to stay longer, with the family driving. A student who moves out of the county can finish the school year, paying tuition only for a semester that starts after the move; a second-semester junior or a senior can finish high school the same way. Within the FSSD, a family that moves to another of its zones after the first month of school can ask the director to let the child finish the year where they started.

For a buyer, the checks take ten minutes. Run the address through both lookups, not the subdivision's name. Look the subdivision up on the FSSD's list of split neighborhoods. Read the county board's November agenda in a year a new school is due to open nearby; the draft capital plan above says where those are. A listing's "zoned for" line is only as current as whoever typed it, and a zone can change after closing.

09The calendar

The dates for the 2027–28 school year have not all been announced. These are this year's, and what is set so far.