Amid optimism about Waco's growth and opportunities, some worry about school takeovers and cuts to social safety net services.
For our small but intrepid news team at The Waco Bridge, news is more than a list of facts about what happened today on the street or in the halls of power. We’re interested in stories: Small human stories and the longer narrative arc about where our community is headed.
We gathered around a whiteboard on New Year’s Eve to hash out what we thought were the most important storylines for us to cover in 2026, and we narrowed a long list to six.
Most of the themes were continuations of the eventful year of 2025: The excitement of a growing community with visions of thriving schools and a vibrant downtown, mixed with uncertainty about federal and state policies on our education and social services systems. You might say uncertainty is the only thing you can be certain about when you’re presuming to write our future history.
We also talked about the looming change in community leadership (county judge, local school boards, Texas Senate District 22); about new industries moving into our community; and about generational decisions to be made about regional water planning. We’ll write about those in the coming year, too, but six was plenty to keep our brains busy.
What do you think are the biggest storylines to watch in 2026? Drop us a line at community@wacobridge.org.
Waco ISD tries to avoid Connally’s fate
We saw one Waco-area school district fall to state intervention in 2025. In 2026, we’re watching to see whether the area’s biggest school district is next.
State Education Commissioner Mike Morath announced in December that the Texas Education Agency will appoint a conservator and board of managers to take over Connally Independent School District based on five consecutive years of failing accountability scores at two campuses.
To avoid the same fate next year, Waco Independent School District must turn around South Waco Elementary School, which has had four years of failing grades on the state’s A-F system. The district approved a state-mandated turnaround plan for that campus in June and followed suit in November with several other at-risk campuses, including G.W. Carver Middle School and Dean Highland Elementary School, both of which have three years of failing grades.
The Connally and Waco school districts are part of a statewide pattern of the state seeking control over struggling low-income districts, including Houston, Fort Worth and Beaumont. More than 88% of Waco ISD’s 13,350 students are economically disadvantaged, according to a Texas Tribune data tracker. Connally has 2,266 students, with more than 80% disadvantaged.
We’ll be watching both districts in 2026 to see what instructional changes are made and how they affect both low- and high-performing students.
Waco takes the wheel on growth
Last year saw Waco embark on an immense park-building and redevelopment spree, arguably without parallel among Texas’ medium-sized cities.
Waco greenlit the first $167 million phase of its downtown redevelopment project, approved a $27 million facelift to the Waco Riverwalk and began construction on the $25 million Alice Martinez Rodriguez Park.
Next to that park on the former Floyd Casey Stadium site, construction is underway for Cordova Springs, a public-private development with plans for 260 single-family homes and 96 multifamily units.
The city also has public-private partnerships in the works worth tens of millions of dollars for the future Westlake and Riverway planned communities on the edge of town, representing more than 3,000 new homes.
We’ll be watching how those projects proceed in 2026 as the city navigates budget constraints, statewide property tax revolts and an unsettled national economy. The next 12 months will give us an idea of the success of the city’s strategy of guiding growth through public incentives.
Data center: Drain on resources or a tax boon?
November’s news of a proposed $10 billion data center outside of Lacy Lakeview sent shock waves through the rural area surrounding the project site. Community resistance to the project organized almost instantly and across party lines, a rare feat these days.
The Lacy-Lakeview City Council in December approved a nonbinding memorandum of understanding with the development company, Infrakey, to annex the rural site near Ross and provide utilities in exchange for a huge tax windfall. But questions remain about water and electricity supply and the willingness of the city of Waco and McLennan County to work with Lacy-Lakeview to solidify the agreement.
If that data center project and others in Central Texas move forward in 2026, McLennan County residents will have to grapple with the same questions facing many communities where the nascent industry has staked a claim: How will these developments affect water security, air pollution, electricity prices and local tax rolls?
The political cost of supporting data centers may increase too, if public opinion around the industry continues to sour, with possible impacts on midterm elections in 2026. The Bridge team hopes to be a resource in the coming year to those interested in understanding the data center boom.
Watching effects of ICE enforcement
Wacoans are awaiting the effects of a massive expansion of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations under the Trump administration, which has set a goal of deporting 1 million undocumented immigrants a year.
“I think you’re going to see the numbers (of deportations) explode next year,” U.S. immigration czar Tom Homan told Reuters in December.
While Waco hasn’t seen deportations on the scale of some parts of the U.S., stepped-up enforcement has had ripple effects here on immigrant communities and employers. The deportation of longtime restaurateur Sergio Garcia last year attracted attention far beyond Waco.
Texas economist Ray Perryman said in a November labor report that immigration enforcement and deportations will increasingly affect food prices, housing costs and labor in fields such as construction and nursing.
“The worker shortages will affect daily life,” he wrote.
Other experts predict that school attendance will drop as the result of deportations and fears of enforcement, affecting student performance and school funding. If so, that could affect Waco ISD, where 61.8% of students are Hispanic.
As with data centers, we’ll also be watching to see if declining public approval for ICE raids materializes in midterm election results. In the short term, the Bridge will be tracking how a forthcoming agreement between ICE and the McLennan County Sheriff’s Office plays out over the coming months.
Holes in the safety net
Waco-area nonprofits got a taste in November of what happens when the federal government drops a corner of the social safety net. The federal government shutdown temporarily halted payments to SNAP beneficiaries, including some 31,000 in McLennan County, leaving charities to try to make up the difference.
By the time funding was restored in mid-November, it was clear that local efforts could not replace the more than $11 million in monthly SNAP payments in McLennan County.
State and federal cuts to safety net programs in 2026 may be less visible but have a longer-term impact.
New federal requirements under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act greatly expand the number of SNAP beneficiaries who will have to prove they are working or seeking work, with exemptions now eliminated for veterans, homeless people, former foster children, people ages 54 to 64 and parents of teens.
Jeremy Everett, head of the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty, said in a July 2025 statement that the federal SNAP cuts under the new bill “will be devastating for struggling Americans.”
“Families will lose access to basic nutrition,” he wrote. “Children will go to school hungry. Seniors will skip meals to afford medicine. Some states may opt out of SNAP entirely. This isn’t reform – it’s abandonment.”
Meanwhile, the expiration of federal Affordable Care Act subsidies starting in January will cause uninsurance rates among McLennan County’s vulnerable populations to soar, said Dr. Jackson Griggs, CEO of Waco Family Medicine. His unofficial estimates are that 9,000 county residents will lose coverage, costing his nonprofit clinic system and local hospitals some $14 million a year.
“Those individuals who have only paid zero to $50 a month for insurance are now going to be paying $150 to $250 a month for insurance,” he said in a Dec. 19 interview on “Friday Forum with The Waco Bridge.”
“And if you make $30,000 a year total household income and you have a family of four, that differential is like food on the table, it’s like basic needs. So you end up going without, which only leads long-term to higher healthcare costs.”
Budget, enrollment struggles for ISDs
The same financial pressures that caused two of the Waco area’s most prosperous school districts to ask voters for a financial lifeline in November will likely continue to plague local school systems in 2026.
Midway ISD this year will begin spending some $83.5 million that voters approved to upgrade existing facilities, including routine items such as air conditioning replacement, security, technology and lighting. Even so, Midway is working on ways to close a budget deficit of more than $3 million by changing middle school programs and offering online classes to public and homeschooled students.
China Spring ISD voters also approved a tax rate increase to raise $2.2 million a year to avoid staff and program cuts and bridge a $1 million deficit.
The pressures continue despite the Legislature’s $8.5 billion increase last year for public schools, much of which went to boost teacher salaries. Local school officials say the state’s “basic allotment” to local school districts has failed to keep up with skyrocketing inflation over the last few years, leading to deferred maintenance and deficits.
In the meantime, local school districts have seen enrollment growth stall, limiting the amount of per-student funding they get from the state. And they may increasingly find themselves competing with private schools for students as the state education savings account program takes effect this year.
Families can begin applying for the voucher program on Feb. 4 for a limited number of savings accounts awarded in time for the 2026-27 school year.
