By Brittany Anderson
HAYS COUNTY — With how quickly Hays CISD is growing, the district utilizes bonds in order to keep up with these changes and address campus areas that need improvement — and a 2023 bond may be on the horizon.
The Hays CISD Board of Trustees unanimously voted to charge the Facilities and Bond Oversight Committee (FBOC) with developing recommendations for a future bond during the Aug. 29 board meeting.
According to Hays CISD Chief Operations Officer Max Cleaver, statutorily, the FBOC has until February to come up with a plan, which is when the board would officially call for a bond. The committee, however, “likes to try to get all our stuff together and bring a recommendation back by December,” that way they can come back from winter break and hold public forums in January without “losing steam.”
Some of the current draft plans include:
• Elementary school #17 construction
• Design fees for elementary school #18
• Design fees for high school #4
• Renovations/additions to Johnson HS, Lehman HS and Hays HS, Dahlstrom MS and Kyle ES, including increasing capacity at Johnson HS and Hays HS
• Various projects to benefit extracurriculars including field turf, weight rooms and fine arts halls
• Other maintenance projects such as roof, awning and window repairs, paint and furniture replacements, namely at Tom Green ES and Kyle ES
• Future buses
Board member Esperanza Orosco stressed the importance of schools being proactive in bringing forth items that they would like to see on a bond.
“I don’t know how to convey to principals to make sure to bring these things that are definitely needs on their campus,” Orosco said. “I don't want to wait until the last minute like we’ve had to do on some of the bonds where it’s like, ‘Oh this was vital, this is so important,’ but this was brought late to the FBOC and brought directly to us [the board] during public forum. I want to convey to the principals that they need to bring these needs, and we need to have a plan on how to address it. … We don’t want people to sit on it. Teachers need to let their administrators know if they see something, to bring those ideas forward. We don’t know what we don’t know. We’re not on the campus every day.”
During the public forum portion of the meeting, FBOC chair Jessica Bedwell suggested that the district move away from having “really large packages every few years” to smaller, more frequent packages.
“It’s easier to manage for all of us,” Bedwell said. “The issue becomes, when they get super huge and take a long time to complete, [that] our budget estimates get further off, and that has unpleasant results.”
Echoing Bedwell’s sentiments, board member Will McManus said that there should be some “bond fatigue” if the district goes every year.
“Would it make more sense, rather than asking the voters for all of this in 2023, to say we can really do 2023, 2024, and 2025, and sort of spread those out amongst three years and make them into more manageable chunks?” McManus said.
While some kinks still need to be worked out — including the size and cost of the bond and prioritizing projects to ensure needs are being adequately met, especially at older campuses — board president Vanessa Petrea said this is the “whole gamut” of what the committee will be considering, giving the board an opportunity to see the full road map.
With the board’s approval to charge the committee with making a recommendation, a bond election could take place in May 2023.
