Council Voted 3-2 to Keep FM 1171 at Full Speed — and Erased Three Other School Zones

If you drive FM 1171 near Cross Timbers Road and Flower Mound Road, nothing about your commute changed last week. That's the decision. A 3-2 vote.

Town Council voted 3-2 to deny a proposed amendment to the town's speed limit ordinance that would have slowed FM 1171 traffic down to 35 miles per hour for about half of a mile. The request wasn't coming from a bureaucrat pushing paper. It came from parents at Founders Classical Academy who often park at RockPointe Church and walk their kids to and from the school. The concern was the dangers of walking along the 8-foot sidewalk on FM 1171 between the school and the church parking lot — which would have fallen outside TxDOT's proposed school zone anyway.

So the zone parents asked for wouldn't have covered the stretch they were worried about. That's the nuance council leaned into. Council felt it would be more useful to work with the school on improving pickup and drop-off on campus rather than slow traffic on a busy road with a school zone that doesn't address the actual stretch of concern. "If this would increase safety and actually solve a problem, we could consider, but that doesn't seem to be the case here," said Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Brian Taylor. Mayor Cheryl Moore was blunter. "It just doesn't seem like this is going to benefit anyone," she said.

Not every council member read it that way. Council members Chris Drew and newly-elected Clare Harris voted against the denial, wanting more information before closing the door. That's a real split. Two council members thought the town was moving too fast to say no.

As for what comes next near the school: town staff noted that Trotter Park, which will connect the Founders Classical Academy property with RockPointe Church's property, will include a walking trail set back from FM 1171 — with completion expected in 15 to 18 months, putting it at the end of 2027, and construction anticipated to start in fall 2026. Mayor Pro Tem Adam Schiestel also suggested the town look into trails that incorporate a large parkway — a strip of grass, trees, or shrubbery between the sidewalk and the roadway. Those are reasonable ideas. But they are a year-plus away at minimum, and parents are walking that sidewalk now.

Then there's the part of this vote that got less attention. Drivers around Flower Mound will see some speed limit changes to school zones around town — but FM 1171 won't be one of them. Three existing school zones elsewhere in town were removed in the same action. The source reporting doesn't identify which locations lost their zones, so the full scope of that change isn't yet clear. Worth asking the town directly.

Here's what's actually at stake: school safety infrastructure was reduced, not expanded. If council is right — that a zone on FM 1171 wouldn't have solved the real problem — then they made a defensible call. If a parent or child gets hurt on that sidewalk before Trotter Park opens, that 3-2 vote will get revisited in a very public way. The parents who showed up to ask for this zone will remember how it went.