Are Boerne ISD schools good?

By the state's own measure, yes. Boerne ISD has earned an A rating from the Texas Education Agency for six consecutive years, scoring 92 points in the 2024-2025 ratings with 20 distinction designations. Not every campus rated A — the Boerne Star reported lower grades at four elementaries.

The record

Six consecutive years of "A" ratings from the Texas Education Agency, including the 2024 and 2025 rating years. In the 2024–2025 ratings, Boerne ISD scored 92 points and earned 20 distinction designations (Boerne Star; TEA 2025 Accountability Rating System).

Six years is the number that carries weight. Any district can post one strong year. Six in a row, through a period in which the county's population grew sharply, is a durable result rather than a fluctuation.

What an "A" actually measures, precisely

Most explanations stop at "it's a state rating." The actual arithmetic is public, and it changes how you should read a 92 (TEA, 2025 A–F Accountability Ratings summary).

The overall grade is built from three domains, combined this way:

The better of Student Achievement or School Progress, weighted 70 percent, plus
Closing the Gaps, weighted 30 percent.

And each domain measures something specific:

Student Achievement — "What students know and can do." Built from STAAR, CCMR and graduation.
School Progress — "How far students have come or how campuses have done compared to similar comparison groups." It is itself a better-of: the higher of Academic Growth or Relative Performance.
Closing the Gaps — "How different student groups are performing."

A is the 90–100 band. Boerne ISD's 92 sits in the lower half of that band, not at the top of it.

There is also a floor rule worth knowing, printed in TEA's own summary: "If a campus receives a D or an F for 3 of the 4 domains listed above, their final scale score is capped at 69 and 59 (respectively), unless the campus is not scored on all four domains, or the student achievement domain is above a D or F (respectively)."

The honest reading of a 70/30 better-of formula

Put the structure and the campus results side by side, because they explain each other.

A "better of" weighted composite means a strong achievement score can carry a weaker growth score. If a district's students already test well, the achievement domain can supply the 70 percent on its own, and how far those students moved this year never has to be the number that counts. The reverse is also true and is how a district serving a harder population can rate well on growth alone.

That is exactly why Boerne ISD can hold six straight A ratings while four of its elementaries rate lower. Both facts are real. The district composite is not an average of campus grades, and it is not a promise about any individual campus.

Neither half of that should be softened. A six-year A is a genuine, hard-to-fake result. It is also a weighted composite of standardized assessment, CCMR and graduation outcomes, and it does not measure class size, teacher retention, the arts program, athletics, special education services, counselor load, or whether a particular child will be happy in a particular building.

Distinction designations are a separate award layer — campuses earn them for top-quartile performance in specific areas relative to a comparison group of similar campuses. Twenty of them across a district the size of Boerne ISD is a broad result, not one flagship school carrying the average.

The district rating is not the campus rating

Not every Boerne ISD campus rated A. The Boerne Star reported that Viola Wilson, Currington, Herff and Kendall elementaries received lower grades (Boerne Star).

That matters more to a buyer than the district average does, because a child attends one campus, not a district. Two houses a mile apart inside the same "A-rated district" can zone to campuses with different ratings, different demographics and different programs.

This is also why "we bought in the A district" is an incomplete diligence story. Look up the individual campus rating for the attendance zone of the specific address, on TEA's own reporting rather than a real estate portal's summary score, and confirm the zone with the district office. When you pull it, look at the domain breakdown, not just the letter — a campus rated on growth and a campus rated on achievement got there by different routes, and the routes tell you different things about what your child would walk into.

Attendance zones move in growing districts

Kendall County grew 20.3 percent between 2020 and 2025, from an estimated 44,568 to 53,289 residents, mostly through domestic migration (Community Impact).

Districts absorbing that kind of growth rezone. New campuses open, boundaries shift, and a home that zones to one elementary this year may zone elsewhere after the next boundary study. No listing, no agent and no website can promise a future attendance zone. The district is the only source, and even the district can only tell you the current one.

If a specific campus is the reason you are buying a specific house, ask the district directly, in writing, what the current zone is and whether a boundary study is underway.

The rating has a cost line

Building classrooms for a growing enrollment is financed with bonds, and bond debt appears on the tax rate. Boerne ISD's 2025 rate was 1.0109 per $100 of taxable value — 0.6969 maintenance and operations plus 0.3140 debt service. Recent history: 0.9909 in 2024, 0.9932 in 2023, 1.1786 in 2022 and 1.2046 in 2021 (Kendall County).

Two things to read out of that series. First, the rate is not a straight line; it has come down substantially from 2021 while the debt component funds growth. Second, the school district is the largest single line on most Boerne-area tax bills, which is the trade a buyer makes for the rating.

Texas school districts are required to grant a residence homestead exemption, and Kendall AD notes that Boerne ISD is among the local jurisdictions offering over-65 and disability tax "freezes," along with the City of Boerne, Comfort ISD and Kendall County (Kendall Appraisal District). Kendall AD is the office that applies those to your account.

Who else is in Boerne ISD — and who is not

Most of Fair Oaks Ranch is served by Boerne ISD, even though that city's limits span Bexar, Comal and Kendall counties (Wikipedia, Fair Oaks Ranch). So a Fair Oaks Ranch address can be in a different county from a Boerne address and still feed the same district.

Bulverde is served by Comal ISD, not Boerne ISD (Wikipedia, Bulverde). Comal ISD is a separate district with its own rating record and its own adopted rate. Do not carry Boerne ISD's numbers across that line.

Comfort ISD also appears on Kendall County tax bills, serving the western part of the county (Kendall Appraisal District).

What to actually do

Get the exact address, not the subdivision name.
Ask the district for the current attendance zone for that address, in writing.
Pull that campus's own TEA rating, and read the domain breakdown, not just the letter.
Tour the campus. A rating cannot tell you whether the principal is any good.
Confirm the taxing units on the parcel's appraisal record with Kendall AD before you build a payment estimate around them.

Questions about a specific property?

Call or text 830-446-3847 · Email heath.shepard@kw.com

School ratings and attendance zones are published and changed by the Texas Education Agency and the school district, not by real estate professionals. Verify the campus and zone for a specific address with Boerne ISD, and exemption questions with Kendall Appraisal District.