The time is now for some school districts that absorbed state cutbacks, waited out a recession and went a decade or more without a bond election.
The march to a $455.5 million request has been more than two years in the making for Garland ISD, the largest of eight area school districts with bond proposals on the Nov. 4 ballot. A facilities assessment revealing more than $1 billion in needs was in motion this time last year. Results were publicized over the winter, but the Garland school board stopped short of ordering a May election.
Garland ISD hasn’t had a bond election since 2002. All five school board candidates agreed in May that the district’s aging facilities needed attention. Securing the entrances of buildings is a specific need.
“We want people, when they walk into our schools, to have access to adults first. Not the kids,” Superintendent Bob Morrison said. “Sixty-six of our 71 schools, when you walk in, you do not walk into an office.”
Upgraded exterior cameras and fire alarms are also part of the safety element of the bond package. So are interior fire sprinkler systems, which for 35 campuses weren’t required by code at construction time. Garland ISD is an aging district whose facilities have been built over seven decades.
Voters have never denied Garland ISD at the polls, but all of the previous elections were in times of growth. The district’s population, about 58,000, has been somewhat steady. Instead of new schools, it is new band and choir halls, a one-to-one mobile device program for secondary students, a career tech center and a natatorium that add sparkle to the 2014 package.
Over those years without a bond, Garland ISD has paid off debt. The residents in the parts of Garland, Rowlett and Sachse served by the district enjoy one of the lowest tax rates in the area. A “no” vote would keep it that way. So in a sense, the district is victim to its own fiscal success. The bond package’s impact of $17 a month on a $100,000 home is a hefty spike, though it would raise the district’s tax rate only to about the midpoint for the area.
The Empower Texans group — which promotes limited government and cuts in spending — has criticized the package, arguing that it proposes to issue long-term debt to finance items that should be paid for out of the district’s operating budget.
Another complaint is that the bond is an “all-or-nothing” single-item proposal. But it’s that way across area school districts — in Aledo, Birdville, Duncanville, Keller, Sunnyvale, Van Alstyne and Wylie, as well as Garland.
Growth in the mid-cities triggers the next largest school bond elections. Some $333 million before voters in Birdville and Keller ISDs is tied directly to new sites and building construction.
As in Garland, technology, campus safety and renovation upgrades are also central to the proposals in the Duncanville and Wylie districts. But more than half of their respective packages are tied to growth. Duncanville hasn’t had a bond election since 2001. In its proposal, the tax increase on a $100,000 home would be just under $11 a month.
Wylie ISD is growing to the tune of 250 students a year. Its proposal comes without a tax increase.
After building all three of its campuses since 2006, Sunnyvale ISD’s enrollment is up 25 percent over the last four years. And the district is anticipating continued growth. It proposes to build on to Sunnyvale Middle School, the oldest of its campuses, at a cost of about $5 a month to its average home.
Though the community has been supportive of the district, Sunnyvale Superintendent Doug Williams realizes it’s asking for a fourth bond election since 2005.
“We knew all along that when we got to 450 that the middle school would have to be expanded,” he said, citing a 2010 study that showed that would happen sometime around 2014-15.
