Elections
Clear Creek ISD had items on the ballot both in May and November.
In May, two board positions were up for election, while in November voters approved both a voter-approval tax rate election, or VATRE, and a $302 million bond.
The bond will go toward a number of facilities upgrades, while the VATRE helped shore up a $17.4 million shortfall in the district’s fiscal year 2023-24 budget.
The 2017 bond finishes
With one bond beginning, another ended. The district’s $487 million bond that spanned about 50 projects was completed in 2023. The bond came in $30 million under budget, and included work throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
The last projects for the bond were wrapped up in the summer.
Enrollment
CCISD officials moved forward with a couple of new and expanded programs in an effort to reverse the trend of declining and stagnating enrollment over the past few years.
One program is the district’s pre-K program, which was expanded and will no longer have a cap.
The second is a new one aimed at accepting students who live outside of the district, but meet a certain criteria.
New grade ranking system
Approved in 2022, officials implemented a new grade-ranking system for high schoolers at the start of the 2023-24 school year.
The new system will no longer include noncore extracurricular activities in a student’s grade point average. The goal was to spur students to take noncore classes they might be interested in without having to worry about how it will affect their grades.
State passes education bills, doesn’t pass others
The state was at the top of mind for many school districts both in the area and across Texas, as the new 88th legislative session produced several new bills related to schools.
House Bill 3, for example, was a safety bill that implemented several new requirements for school districts, including having an armed officer at each campus during school hours. Many in response, including CCISD, approved exceptions to the bill because they couldn’t meet the requirements immediately.
The state’s new A-F accountability system also was set to go into effect but has been tied up in litigation due to concerns that it could damage public schooling in the state.
Meanwhile, attempts to pass school vouchers, while going on throughout the end of the calendar year, had yet to be successful in the state Legislature.
Many school district officials, including those at CCISD, publicly criticized the state as well for its lack of school funding bills. The state’s student allotment has sat still since 2019 and did not see a raise this school year.
