Ahead of the November bond election for Round Rock ISD, the Round Rock Chamber held a panel discussion with co-chairs of the district's citizens bond committee to answer some questions voters may have about the propositions and their impact to the tax rate.
The gist
The chamber held a panel discussion with the co-chairs Fabian Cuero and Lindsey Ledyard, moderated by chamber board chair Jessica Scanlon, on Sept. 24.
Both district parents, Cuero and Ledyard said they have been active in district committees. Cuero chaired the growth subcommittee for the 2018 bond, while Ledyard has chaired the Capital Projects Oversight Committee for the past two-and-a-half years, which oversees the execution of projects from the 2018 bond.
Questions from voters revolved around the $998 million bond package headed to voters Nov. 5, made up of four propositions.
Responses have been edited for clarity and length.
Proposition A it is about 80% of the total bond package, by far the largest one. One thing that stands out to me about Proposition A is that, unlike other bond packages that you might be familiar with, there's not a new campus being proposed. Can you speak to Proposition A, the projects that are in there? How is it addressing some of these needs of the different facilities?
Ledyard: So Prop A really does contain primarily deferred maintenance and addressing needs on our existing campuses. In past bonds we've had new campuses being constructed, but in this bond cycle, the growth committee, when they were looking at the overall needs there wasn't the there wasn't the desire and the data didn't support the need for new campuses being built in our district. It supported targeted expansions to campuses where we know that we have core academics happening in portables...We're taking care of some needs across the district. The board of trustees looked at our middle schools, and we have four middle schools that don't have field restrooms. So when you have games or activities or practices happening, trying to make sure that we have facilities across our district that are equitable, that they have the similar resources available. Then there are targeted additions to campuses, as I previously mentioned, a couple of our high schools, Cedar Ridge and Stony Point, will get campus additions that will alleviate portables.
I think one of the questions that comes up is enrollment growth and tackling some of that. Everybody that's in this room knows the area is growing, and families continue to move to the area. There's nothing changing that. So can you just speak a little bit more about how this is how that growth was considered when you guys were making decisions?
Ledyard: The growth subcommittee looked at the overall feeder pattern. And so they were able to see that, if you look at it holistically, within the Stony Point learning community, that within all of the elementary schools, there really is capacity. From a perspective of wanting to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars, and say, do we really need to build another, an additional elementary school, or do we just need to better utilize our space? Do we need to make a recommendation to administration or to the board to look at where programs are? Are there certain programs that can be moved to another campus to be able to better utilize the facilities that we already have, and being very judicious about what their recommendations were.
Can you talk a little bit more about proposed CTE center that's up on [Prop A] and how it's going to be used?
Ledyard: The goal of the having the CTE center is that they still attend Stony Point or Cedar Ridge or McNeil or Round Rock or Westwood [High School], and then they can go to the CTE center and participate in these CTE programs and give them those opportunities, while also making it easier to staff those those programs and fill out those programs. You may have students at Round Rock or Westwood that are really interested in Ag programs, but those are only available at certain campuses. So those programs may not be available at Round Rock or Westwood, but they also don't have the space on those campuses to expand those CTE offerings. Having a centralized space allows students at those campuses to go to the CTE center and be able to participate in that.
Can you talk to us a little bit about the discussions that talked about the kind of the life cycle of [district technology], and how did it end up in [Proposition B]?
Cuero: A lot of our devices, technical networks and so forth, they haven't been refreshed in [six years]. So a lot of the items that we have here in this proposition need to be refreshed or replaced, for our students to learn. RRISD has a one-to-one device to student ratio, and these devices, as I mentioned, are running out of their life cycle.
Why is [Proposition C] its own proposition?
Cuero: Initially these items were in Prop A, but in one of the board meetings, legal recommended—because of the language passed down by the legislation—that buildings that are not attached to the main campus need to be put in a separate prop.
Can you talk to us about where [Proposition D] came from?
Ledyard: I think the factor that played into their decision to include the construction of a new facility on the east side of district was when they started asking about how this would impact students. The reality is, even if we had Dragon Stadium upgraded to be comparable to Kelly Reeves, we run into a lot of scheduling issues in our district, and we have a lot of students that have Thursday night games that they're going to, and they have to come home almost at midnight—our staff as well—then still expect to come to school on Friday morning and perform and be able to do their jobs. The idea of this, construction of a new facility [near A.W. Grimes and E. Old Settlers Boulevards] is to be able to alleviate the need for scheduling Thursday night games.
Will there be a tax rate increase with this bond?
Ledyard: Our initial recommendations were just over $1 billion. When it ended up coming in below that, trustees went back to administration and said, can we go back to our financial advisor? Is there a way to structure the bond program in such a way that we could go out for a bond to this magnitude and still provide a decrease in our tax rate? So at the Aug.15 board meeting, they did come back...the financial advisor did a really good job of explaining how you can structure a bond to be able to provide that tax rate decrease now, and you'll see it's more of a stair step versus a flat. Stays flat, and then it drops by four pennies. Now we'll get an immediate decrease in the tax rate, and then it'll stair step down, beginning in 2032 and so that was a little bit of a welcome surprise. I think that we are going to be able to do that for our taxpayers and still be able to go out for a bond of this amount.
