At its Feb. 26 meeting, the Eanes ISD board of trustees approved an election order calling for an $89.5 million bond for the May 10 election. The bond election comes after a yearlong facilities master plan discussion that resulted in a number of projects and improvements intended to be completed during a 10-year time period and throughout multiple bonds.
EISD Superintendent Nola Wellman said the district talked about its mission and vision for learning while creating the plan as well as its facilities, how they should function and the preferred future for the facilities.
She said the district also performed a gap analysis to see where the district is versus where it has the potential to be.
2014 bond
The $89.5 million bond is designed to fund major construction, technology improvements, facility needs and classroom updates.
Wellman said the bond would be used for four major district projects including:
Construction of a new elementary school on the west side of the district and relocation of the Valley View Elementary School population to a neighborhood school
Improving the efficiencies of building usage and maintenance costs such as eliminating portable buildings
Upgrading learning spaces at all campuses to create 21st-century learning environments
Removing multiple district operations off of campus land and consolidating them in a new facility on the former Shriner site near Westbank Drive and Capital of Texas Hwy.
The district estimates that if the bond is passed, homeowner property taxes would increase by 2.5 cents per $100 of valuation, or about $10 a month based on a home value of $500,000.
More than $50 million of the bond would be used for the master plan improvements, including more than $35 million for the construction of the new elementary school.
"Those folks out on Cuernavaca [Drive] have been disenfranchised for long enough," EISD board President Rob Hargett said. "Those kids spend a lot of time on Bee Caves Road [traveling to school]. It's time they have their own school."
The rest of the master plan improvements proposed with the bond include a new playground for Barton Creek Elementary School, a support services facility, the first phase of a second- and third-floor connector for Westlake High School and fine arts facility improvements for Hill Country and West Ridge middle schools.
"The middle school fine arts have just exploded," Wellman said. "With these improvements we will have more room for band, choir and orchestra."
The bond would also address traffic flow and parking issues as well as a gym expansion for Eanes Elementary School, which could be hard to access during the planned widening of Bee Caves Road, Wellman said.
"I expect there to be limited to no access of Eanes Elementary during the Bee Caves Road widening in 2015–16," she said.
Focus on learning
"Quickly we realized that in order to talk about facilities you have to talk about learning," Wellman said during a Feb. 13 bond discussion. "What kinds of activities would we have in certain spaces, what are our facilities now and what might they need to become to promote 21st-century learning?"
Wellman said the district wants to encourage student choice and have purposeful learning through technology.
"We talked about what kind of tools, furniture and workspace children would need to promote that kind of learning," she said. "We looked for flexibility, relevance and personalization and moved from a factory model where every student gets the exact same thing to a model in education where students get to personalize their learning."
The proposed bond allocates more than $15 million to help achieve the 21st-century learning improvements. $7.5 million would be used to purchase new furniture and equipment as well as refurbish classrooms. More than
$8 million from the bond would also be used for updating technology throughout the district.
"We want teachers to design those kinds of [21st-century] learning experiences," Wellman said.
Going forward
The EISD board of trustees approved the bond measure to appear on the May 10 ballot but will still hear from residents in the district at two open houses before the election. District representatives will be at Laura's Library, 9411 Bee Caves Road, Austin, at 6 p.m. on March 18 and Westbank Library, 1309 Westbank Drive, Austin, at noon on April 1 to discuss the bond.
"We started this process more than a year ago," said Colleen Jones, EISD board of trustees secretary. "This is a 10-year plan, and the $89.5 million only covers a portion of that plan. It will be up to future boards to see what transpires in the community. I challenge all of us to wrap our heads around how future education will occur."
