HISD supports the concept of neighborhood schools, but also offers alternatives through its Transfer, Choice, and Magnet Programs.  Neighborhood schools are defined using attendance boundaries, which are the geographic and administrative tools used to assign students to the nearest campus.

Boundary configurations help manage school site enrollment by matching the number of students with appropriate campus facilities to alleviate overcrowding.  In 1991, the district implemented an annual process to review and modify school boundaries for new schools to manage overcrowding, to respond to demographics shifts in the population and to improve the geographic relationships between the student's residence, the school, and the potential pedestrian hazards in between.