Leander ISD is considering a bond package of $453,860,841 to address a variety of projects throughout the district.
Shaun Cranston and Victor Villarreal, co-chairs of the appointed bond advisory steering committee, presented a bond proposal to the LISD board of trustees June 15. The bond total was divided into five categories—high school, middle school, elementary school, technology and ancillary needs.
“There was great synergy in what the community saw as needs and what the administration saw as needs,” Cranston said.
The bond could address funding four new schools in the next four years due to projections by the district’s demographer that LISD is expected to have 4,800 more students in the next four years. The focus overall, Villarreal said, was to keep bond discussions to projects in the next four to five years.
The bond is divided into three areas of concern—70 percent of the projects address growth, 15 percent for safety and 15 percent on maintenance and operations.
“We are in a fast-growing district, and we need to accommodate for future growth. We also need to maintain what we have,” Cranston said.
Some of the big-ticket items in the proposed bond include $196.8 million for the construction, design and furnishings for schools; $61.9 million to purchase land for future schools; $47.7 million for technology needs; and $45.9 million for major maintenance on heating and air conditioning, lighting, carpets and painting at various campuses.
Regarding funding for future schools, Cranston said the committee wanted to give the trustees the ability to “strike when the iron is hot.”
“If you have your dollars in place to purchase land—you know you need the land, your demographer is showing you where you need the land—and what we wanted to do was give you the capacity to be able to purchase it when it is advantageous for you,” he said.
Trustees did have some questions on why certain projects were or were not included. Trustee Trish Bode asked for clarification on why only certain elementary schools were listed for major maintenance in the proposal. Cranston said other schools were discussed, but after visiting with staff members, the list was narrowed down to the projects most in need of funding.
“These schools specifically are on systems that don’t have spare parts available any longer and require a major undertaking to repair and rehabilitate,” he said. “Other schools are nearing the end of their life but are able to continue to be maintained through [facilities’] operations and maintenance budgets.”
Villarreal said the committee’s suggestion was to have the bond be one proposition on the ballot instead of being divided into multiple votes.
“Given the hit-and-miss nature of bonds in the last 12-18 months in this region, a one-proposition item on the ballot would likely have a higher probability of success,” he said.
Robert Stein, a Rice University researcher working with LISD to assess public opinion of the bond, asked at the meeting what information the trustees would like to ask the public. Stein said he will meet with people throughout the community to learn more about what the public knows about bonds and bring his findings back to the board in July.
If the board chooses to have a bond election in the November election, trustees must call it by Aug. 21.
