Voters crush Dripping Springs ISD’S bond plans

Voters rejected a half-billiondollar bond package in the fastgrowing Dripping Springs Independent School District on Nov. 8, drawing attention to the district’s intense growing pains and prompting calls for a new bond next year.

The $481 million bond package was divided into three propositions and meant to address growth and development within the school district. Three of the district’s eight school campuses are over capacity, and a fourth campus is expected to be next school year.

Proposition A, the “growth and lifecycle” bond, was for $199 million and would have paid for a new elementary school, an expansion of the middle school and new school buses. Proposition B, the “high school #2” bond, was for $275 million and would have been gone toward construction of a new high school. And Proposition C, the “technology lifecycle replacements” bond, was for $6.5 million and would have been for instructional technology.

The first proposition failed 48 percent to 52 percent, while the second and third each was defeated by a margin of 46 percent to 54 percent.

There were “a lot of different factors” in the failure, said Holly Morris-kuentz, Dripping Springs superintendent. The school board will spend the next several months going over why the bond failed and what the next steps will be.

“Some of (the factors) are within our control, and some of them aren’t,” she said.

Dripping Springs ISD’S trajectory mirrors the rest of the community. The city south of

Austin has experienced exponential growth in the past decade. Morriskuentz said that in 2011, the district had 4,490 students enrolled. Now there are more than 8,000 students, and in 10 years, the district expects to have nearly 16,000.

“You can imagine the impact that has on a community, as well as the impact it has on a school district,” she said.

Parents and community members who had supported the bond vented their frustrations at the Nov. 14 school board meeting, the first since the Nov. 8 election.

J.C. Pohl, a parent of a child in the school district, said he was “crushed by the results of the election.”

“I believe the vote against the bonds hurt our kids, it hurt our staff, and it ultimately hurt our schools,” he said.

Leah Finn, who has a son in the first grade at Dripping Springs Elementary, agreed. She said the school district needs to regroup and come up with a bond package that will be more appealing to voters.

“Move forward, cut the fat, strip it down, whatever it takes to make a new version of the bond more digestible to those voters who were ‘no’ votes,” she said.

The bond was the largest in the school district’s history. Parents and staff members were concerned that misinformation campaigns on social media could have led to the bond’s failure.

John Adams, a teacher at Dripping Springs High School for 27 years, said he’s “never seen a bond fail” in his time with the district.

He placed the blame squarely on the school board members he said “chose not to provide leadership” during the campaign for the bond.

“The failure of the bond proposals to pass has left me speechless,” he said, before remaining silent for the remaining 90 seconds of his allotted threeminute public comment speaking time.

The school board is expected to come back with another bond proposal in the spring or summer of next year.

Annie Blanks writes for the Express-news through Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. Reportforamerica.org. annie.blanks@expressnews.net.