Trustees push to keep bond plan under $1B

Leaders say a single package has a better chance of passing.

Austin school district trustees analyzed the administration’s recommended $989.3 million bond proposal into the early hours of Tuesday morning, tossing about ideas on how to keep some projects, while cutting out others.

The board spent three hours discussing the recommended bond package, and largely was in consensus about keeping the amount under $1 billion to keep the tax rate flat (a larger bond package could increase the tax rate). Most also seemed in favor of lumping all the projects into one proposition, citing fears that breaking them into two or more propositions would lead to their failure.

Though the school board entertained bond projects totaling $1.5 billion, there was a consensus at Monday night’s meeting to ask voters for considerably less. Taxpayers facing double-digit increases to their tax bills in recent years shot down a bond package requested by the Round Rock district in May, and rejected two Austin proposals adding up to more than $400 million in 2013. The 2013 election was the first time Austin voters had turned down a school funding request in 25 years.

The proposal for a November bond pitched by Superintendent Paul Cruz includes 14 modernized or new campuses. Among the plans is tearing down and rebuilding the shuttered Brown Elementary, building a new school for grades 4-8 to relieve Blazier Elementary, and building a new elementary in Southwest Austin,

among others.

It also calls for rebuilding other schools, including Casis, Govalle and Menchaca elementaries; major renovations to Bowie High School to relieve overcrowding; the first phase of an overhaul for Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders and spending millions to improve technology and transportation and to fix critical deficiencies in existing buildings.

But that package excludes several other projects deemed essential by an advisory committee, including $125 million to move and build a new home for the Liberal Arts and Science Academy High School, or LASA; the modernization of Martin Middle School; a new middle school in Northeast Austin; acquiring property for a new southeastern elementary and revamping the Alternative Learning Center/ Old Anderson High School, among others. Those projects, which total $407.3 million, would bring the total bond package to $1.4 billion.

“Our work here is not about patchwork,” Cruz told the trustees. “It’s not about cutting back and reinvesting again in something that would should have just fixed the first time with a fully modernized site. It’s also not about kicking the can down the road and delaying what we really need to do now. It’s understanding that we really cannot afford another situation where we have another T.A. Brown.” The elementary was closed suddenly midyear after an engineering firm determined the floor was unstable.

Trustees discussed other possibilities to put some projects back in and take others out.

One idea discussed included eliminating the $125 million to build a new LASA campus and instead move the high school to the existing Eastside Memorial High School campus, which would be revamped. Eastside then could be moved to the Alternative Learning Center, which also would get upgrades.

Proposed cuts included shaving the $70 million to revamp the Ann Richards school, reducing $15 million in improvements to the House Park football stadium used by multiple schools, and delaying plans to spend nearly $10 million to replace campuses’ furniture, as well as some of the $65.5 million for technology.

But more projects pushed off the first bond will likely mean more need for future bonds, which could be scheduled every four years to work through the 25-year facilities master plan that includes hundreds of recommendations to modernize the district and all of its campuses.

“We absolutely need everything on this list,” said Trustee Amber Elenz, who also advocated that the bond amount stay below $950 million. “This is horrible to have to choose. But I think we have to be realistic.”

No decisions were made, and trustees will spend at least two more hours working through the bond issue on Wednesday night. Trustees on Monday are scheduled to call for a November bond election, including the amount of a bond package they will put before voters, and whether they will settle on one bond proposition or break the plans out into more. But they could push the decision back to June 26.