In a nutshell
Board President Amber Landrum said the board will likely hold two more meetings—Aug. 8 and 13—to narrow the scope of potential bond projects before the board of trustees will vote on whether to call a bond election.
Trustees, district staff and RRISD's Citizens Bond Committee, chaired by Fabian Cuero and Lindsey Ledyard, have narrowed the $1 billion-$1.5 billion proposal to about $1.17 billion in projects to address several areas of needed maintenance to capital assets within the district, including:
- Safety and security
- Deferred maintenance of existing buildings
- Technology replacements
Initially, projects included in the bond proposal totaled $1.13 billion. The dollar amounts of the four propositions under consideration have changed slightly as the district works to prepare a final bond proposal, which sits at $1.17 billion as of Aug. 1:
Proposition A: general improvements, up to $874.87 from $830.57 million
- Capital renewal, up to $571.74 million from $553.17 million
- Fine arts and athletics, down to $137.76 million from $138.24 million
- Safety and security, up to $65.46 million from $62 million
- Secondary growth, up to $76.61 million from $33.35 million
- Bond management has been removed from the proposal as a separate category
- Elementary growth, $17.28 million
- Early College High School construction costs, $6 million
- Student and staff devices, $61.37 million
- Technology infrastructure, down to $50 million from $54.36 million
- Classroom and facility devices, down to $27.38 million from $30.3 million
- Subscriptions, $2.53 million
- Robotics technology equipment, $693,550
- New construction of a centralized 165,000-square-foot CTE center to allow expansion of CTE offerings
- Refurbish Dragon Stadium into a districtwide facility, removing Round Rock High School-specific branding
- Expand press box
- Update stands to Americans with Disabilities Act standards
The impact
To fund the $1.17 billion in potential bond projects, a few scenarios were presented to the board. Per Ledyard, the district could take on up to $1.25 billion in bond projects without having to increase the debt service tax rate, set at $0.1980 per $100 valuation for fiscal year 2024-25.
