McKinney National Airport’s commercial service terminal is still on track to open this fall.

Latest update: Officials from the city, McKinney Community Development Corp., McKinney Economic Development Corp. and Avelo Airlines toured the terminal Feb. 26. Construction started on the $79 million project in 2025 and is ongoing.

As of February, all of the terminal’s interior walls have been installed and the passenger parking lots have been constructed, according to the airport’s website. Work is currently focused on mechanical, electrical and plumbing within the terminal.

Quote of note: “I’m always shocked by how much progress has been made,” McKinney National Airport Director Ken Carley said. “Last time I was in here, this was all just a shell. There [were] no interior walls or any of the utilities.”

Zooming in: The new terminal will include multiple areas familiar to air travelers such as a ticketing and check-in area, a TSA security checkpoint area, a concessions space and the terminal gates.

Peridot Plant Co. is opening soon in East McKinney.

The business, owned by Maridith Stockmeyer, is part of the Build Your Own Business program at Tupps Brewery. The program offers vendor spaces in converted grain silos on the Tupps Brewery property for small businesses.

The details: The shop will offer botanical gifts, candles and ceramic plant holders. It will also have a large potting bench where guests can build their own terrariums and kokedamas, which are plants inside of a root ball of moss, Stockmeyer said. The business will hold events at Tupps Brewery, including ticketed workshops and private events, for activities such as making terrariums.

Quote of note: “Peridot blends artful plant design within a creative, interactive space,” Stockmeyer said in an email.  

• 402 E. Louisiana St., Silo 104, McKinney

McKinney ISD officials are requesting an exception for two missed school days due to inclement weather.

The big picture: The McKinney ISD board of trustees approved asking the Texas Education Agency for an attendance waiver after four days of school and facility closures due to Winter Storm Fern at a Feb. 16 meeting.

The specifics: McKinney ISD was closed from Jan. 26-29 due to extreme cold and hazardous road conditions, according to district Facebook posts.

The district’s approved 2025-26 academic calendar includes two designated bad-weather make-up days April 6 and April 27. The district plans to use these two days to make up for Jan. 26 and Jan. 27 closures, district documents state. However, the district would still fall short of the number of instructional days required by TEA, and is required to submit a waiver, per TEA’s website.

If approved, the two missed days will not impact the district’s funding, which is based on average daily attendance, according to TEA’s website.

The Texas Education Agency must correct roughly 4,200 errors in its elementary and middle school curriculum, the State Board of Education ruled Feb. 25.

The overview: The changes to the Bluebonnet Learning materials, a set of state-developed textbooks, include replacing improperly licensed images, fixing formatting errors or typos and correcting factual errors.

The SBOE approved the Bluebonnet materials in November 2024. The curriculum, which became available to districts ahead of the 2025-26 school year, has been criticized for frequent biblical references in the reading materials, although proponents said the materials would help improve student outcomes.

Zooming in: Before approving the changes, several board members expressed concerns about the “unprecedented” number of issues with the state-developed textbooks, noting that Texas taxpayers will cover the costs of reprinting the updated materials, as they were developed with state funds.

“I’m very concerned that, as a board, we have set a precedent for sloppy publishing. Many times, even if it's a typo, it could become an error of fact,” SBOE member Pam Little, R-Fairview, said.