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News / Schools
Eanes school district staff prepares for November bond election
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
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The Eanes school district took steps toward a bond election during a board meeting June 23.
Board members asked administrators to prepare for a November referendum and approved an executive summary of the district’s vision plan for the coming 15 years.
“We put a stake in the ground,” said Paul Stone, school board president. “It let us say, ‘This is what we want.’ Now we have to figure out how we are going to pay for it and what the time line will be. Very clearly, we need a bond in November.”
District Superintendent Nola Wellman said a full long-range vision plan would be completed in July. Included in the 15-year vision plan is a new elementary school in the western part of the district, but, despite the recommendation of district administration, the approved summary of the master plan does not prioritize that new school.
“We have a consensus that the board wants a new elementary school on the west side,” Stone said. “What has not been decided is what triggers the building of it.”
A new school on the River Hills tract in the western perimeter of the school district to replace Valley View Elementary School has been a controversial topic for area residents and board members in recent months. Families who live in the western edge of the district and send their elementary-aged children on hour-and-a-half long bus rides to and from Valley View each day want a replacement school in their neighborhood. District administrators would like to repurpose Valley View as a step in restructuring district facilities.
“We have about a 450 population of students that have been misplaced for the last 13 years,” board member Ellen Balthazar said of the Valley View students. “We’ve got a school full of children who are disproportionately away from their home community.”
Balthazar’s comments drew loud applause from audience members at the school board meeting there to support the new school.
But other area residents have spoken out against the idea, hoping to keep a clamp on rising taxes. Board member Clint Sayers strongly opposed prioritizing the new school and replacing Valley View in the district’s long-range vision plan.
“Valley View, we’ve been told, is one of the most energy efficient buildings we have,” he said. “To mothball it just for some flex space – I don’t think that’s being financially responsible or fiscally conservative.”
Sayers expressed other concerns with basic components of the vision plan, including a stated need to expand Westlake High School campus.
“I want to know (exactly) what that is before I vote on something,” he said.
For now, board members backed away from a fight over whether or not the district is going to move forward with the building of a new elementary school campus as a key component of a long-range plan.
The approved long-range plan summary mainly contained general ideas that included relevant curriculum requirements, preservation of assets, appropriate facilities for special needs populations, energy efficiency and legal compliance. The plan did provide for a few specifics – the replacement of all portable buildings with permanent facilities and moving all non-high school functions away from WHS.
The next steps in the bond process will be meetings to decide the specifics of the upcoming November proposal, Stone said. Three study sessions on the bond issue are scheduled for July.
“We are going to decide how big the bond will be, what will be included in it and whether there will be one bond package or some divided options,” Stone said. “We are going to present the community with a bond offering that the district can be proud of. Hopefully, we will have a consensus on that.”
The next board study session addressing the district bond package is scheduled for July 12 at 6:30 p.m. in the district administration building, 601 Camp Craft Road. The meeting is open to the public.
Vote “No new Taxes” until Superintendent Nola Wellman can cut her administration staff in half!
It’s unfortunate that the only matter of concern is what the board wants–not what the citizens of the District (as opposed to one neighborhood) want. Tone deafness seems to be on the rise as we move from the election.
I believe that is why it is called a Bond Election. You need to go vote it down if you don’t like what is on the ballot.
Aren’t we all one community, Eanes Mom? Let’s ask the voters address all the elementary school needs: Eanes Elementary needs renovation, Forest Trail needs to get rid of those portables, and Cuernavaca needs a school in the neighborhood. During her campaign, Dr. Jones acknowledged there is a compelling case for building a new elementary school on the River Hills tract. Didn’t Dr. Jones campaign to be the elementary school representative on the board? Surely the elementary school representative will support the elementary school package. Or did Dr. Jones mean that she would be the “Eanes Elementary School” representative?
Yes, we are one community, and I am an EISD mom, not an Eanes elementary mom. I don’t speak for Dr. Jones, but for myself. Our community cannot afford everything you list above–just like when you have a child who sure could benefit from a sports camp or cheerleading lessons, but you’ve got to prioritize another child’s dental work and you can’t afford both. I heard about the everyone for a new Valley View elementary, stand up and holler at the board meeting (and the Valley View principal stood up–so much for governmental employees staying out of it!). How inappropriate and juvenile!
Those of you who are rabid for a facility we can’t afford will only ensure one thing–the bond will not only be defeated–it’ll go down to a record defeat!
There are several “dental” needs that our district needs to address, but our present board can’t isolate those without layers of pork (the HCMS track smothered in astroturf, lights, and stands).
We all need to look for what’s best for the whole family (community) not our own wishes and desires. And you’re more than willing to try to divide the community to do so. What’s really shameful is the school trustees (who should know better) and school employees who join in this destructive path. It’s time to clean house!
I guess we do not need to renovate a elementary school at all. The bucket list of wishes in the school package is incredible. We do not need middle school track and field at all. We do not Need new bleachers. We do not need a technology package. We certainly do not NEED a Aquatics center.
We do need an elementary school within 2 miles of every student – how this happens I have no concern… redistrict, build a new one, it does not matter to me, and for your $200 – $600 ( It was less than $100 per year per 100k of appraised value.) It really should not matter to you. If it matters to you to save this money, you must remember our school taxes are one of the lowest in the whole state of Texas! Our school district is extremely smart with the money they have been given.., but they rely on bonds to get the basic maintenance done. While I do not agree with this method for a variety of reasons, it saves you money. So if your money is so important to you please reconsider where you live. If you are like me $100 does not cover dinner and $500 will not cover a month of taking your wife out to dinner. Please stop arguing about a small percentage of this bond – the new elementary is less than $25 million and Even the rebuild of Eanes Elementary is more ($38 million right?)
Perhaps if you understood that our current tax rate produces a tax of over $1200 per $100,000 valuation, not $100, you’d have a better perspective on the financial picture. However, you’re still missing the big picture. This isn’t simply about how much we all pay in taxes and whether we go out out to eat. Even if we were all willing to pay every penny we have, state law wouldn’t let us.
The problem is that the state limits what we can tax by law. We are, without building anything more, running a $4.6 million deficit on a $50+million annual budget. Because over 80% of our budget is personnel salaries, we have a daunting task of cutting the equivalent of 92 teacher slots (based on the $50,000 figure used by EEF) each year because we also cannot engage in deficit financing in this state, and we’ll have depleted our reserves (that are not required to remain in place for other legal reasons) in less than three years, according to Dr. Wellman.
Yes, by all means, let’s redraw the boundary lines. Most of us can’t understand why Cuernavaca is being bused into Valley View and Rob Roy is being bused out to Barton Creek.
This really isn’t about wanting to deny you a convenient school. It’s about a majority of our board and the administration facing a significant financial crisis by proposing outrageous spending (and that’s setting aside the new elementary), even on necessary projects–like the middle school tracks. Why do we need articial turf, stands, and lights? HCMS, as one board member astutely pointed out, has soil that is incompatible with using artifical turf. But it’s still in the bond issue.
If someone doubled the square footage of your house for free, could you afford the taxes and utilities without making your family sacrifice on other things that might be more important? Many of us feel that the most important thing for this district is the quality of instruction in the classroom–not brick and mortar buildings. We’ve got to make serious financial decisions before we consider what “goodies” we could afford in a bond issue. Sadly, the majority of the current board has not shown any indication that they have the financial fortitude to make hard decisions. They gave lip service to the electorate for two weeks after the election–now everything they initially cut is back in and adding up all over again. The separate facility for a handful of handicapped students went from $750,000 to $2.6 million without explanation–and the vast majority of special needs parents strongly oppose the proposal.
Please join us in restoring financial sanity to this district. No one wants Cuernavaca treated unfairly. But we need to do what’s possible without extra buildings first, then get our operating budget balanced, and in the end consider what bond projects we could afford to not only build, but maintain.
Why does Nola Wellman want to triple the size of the administration building?
Why do you set up a straw man argument, Eanes Parent? Nola Wellman doesn’t want to triple administrative space and never has. What is your true agenda? Are you pleased that instead of using existing facilities, the trustees are considering purchasing a disaster of a building on Walsh Tarlton with 30,000 square feet to satisfy the legitimate need for 4,000 square feet for the 19+ program and building new structures for the legitimate needs of The Learning Center and the Alternative Education Program? These alternatives far exceed the costs of retrofitting existing buildings and would be maintenance nightmares–in addition to taking a multi-million dollar property off the tax rolls. Happy now?
Call it a straw man or whatever you want, but I’m not voting for a bond that increases the size of the administration building because if we build it, they will fill it, and I think school money should be spent on more teachers and less bureaucrats.
Glad to see you acknowledge the need for the 19+ building, Straw Man. There are real problems with facilities in EISD, and while the current 19+ facility is the poster child of neediness, the LC and the AEP are real needs, as well. Have you seen the AEP? While it is far from being the shame that is 19+, it would have to come up to be sub standard. Love your idea of retrofitting existing facilities, but that won’t work for the LC or AEP. It would work for Eanes Elementary, but the real solution for the River Hills/Valley View debate is to redistrict the elementary schools so that Cuernavaca can have what many other residents in EISD have: easy access. But why stop there? Why send kids from Lost Creek to West Ridge? Why does everyone in an $900,000+ house think that their sweetness has to go to Bridgepoint or somehow they will wither and die?
Our trustees have every tool they need to solve this; but it takes more courage to redistrict than it does to promise people a shiny new school at some future date.
Kudos by the way to Clint Sayers for saying things that most of us think: it is absolutely stupid to retrofit Valley View elementary school into an administration building. The dumbest idea ever, in fact. But Dr. W. is sure stuck on that. Guess the downtown views are better or something, but there is no economic rationale that comes close to making that notion make any sense at all.
Nola Wellman needs a huge new admin bldg because she has greatly increased the number of district administrators. In fact there are so many new administrators that Nola Wellman cannot tell you who they are. Ask her. Others have including a board member. Wellman could not (would not?) respond. She would likely need to commission a study led by her “cabinet” to answer that question. Then she would need to run it past the in-house attorney or one of the seven private law firms on retainer. Then she will direct the Communications Director (hired just last week) to spin the response because Wellman is incapable of straight talk … or truth.
I was not referring to the tax rate which is 1.2 before any homestead exemption but instead the bond program. Indeed, I understand how the school tax program in Eanes ISD. To further clarify, bond programs are not subject to recapture – which is why Eanes ISD uses them for basic repairs that should be included in the regular taxing rates. Compare our tax rates to Round Rock – 1.38 Hutto 1.45 Pflugerville 1.45 or around the state Keller 1.46, or Conroe 1.76. In the case on Conroe that is more than $560 more per $100k valuation per resident. Yes in most cases, each household pays $1500 more than we do (based on a 300k valuation.) Our school tax rate is much lower than many other districts. Our district depends on the generous nature of its residents – and in financial hard times it is hard pressed to find. In the same breath, I feel one should cut back on administration and redistrict instead of adding new buildings.
But heck- I’d hate for the administration to have to feel the wrath of the parents who’s children can no longer attend the school they have become accustomed. Bet then there would be much more support for a new school! And I also bet the school board has thought about that.
There are plenty of parents (taxpayers) whose children cannot attend Eanes ISD. The administration under the leadership of Nola Wellman have seen to that.
Over seventy percent of our voters do not have children in enrolled in public schools in the district. If the bond election is held with a highly contested general election, far more of that group will be voting in it. Certainly we understand the need to shift as much of maintenance into bond tax to try to maximize our dollars. Unfortunately, as evidenced by spending $450,000 on the unnecessary signs at high school (so our fire department/EMS around the corner can find it??)this spring, our money is being mismanaged at best, and squandered at worst. Even when they “cut” everything back to a bare bones $80 million + for just tech upgrades, maintenance, and “essentials”, there was still $2.6 mill for both middle schools’ practice fields (including artificial turf for HCMS which has clay soils that won’t work with it) and “upped” the figure for the special facility for a handful of special ed kids (opposed by most of the special needs parents) from $750,000 to $2.5 million without explanation or justification.
Before a bond passes in this district, we need a truly independent citizen oversight committee, both to review the numbers being proposed and any shifts in funding or change orders that are subsequently approved. We’ve approved so many projects multiple times that have never happened. I know the HCMS remodel ran way over budget and a lot of unexpected things happen any time you remodel that can justify a need to reallocate, but I think most of us have little confidence that even the board members know what’s going on. At last report, no one knew who or how those signs were approved. What else don’t they know about that isn’t so visible?
Yes, we do need a “truly independent citizen oversight committee” … I agree with you Eanes Mom. The board should appoint that committee because Nola Wellman is anything but “independent” when she cherry-picks her insiders to “serve” on committees. Most recently she chose to appoint, as bond advisory committee chair, a citizen who is in business with the head football coach! And we would have never known except for sleuthing on the part of a district taxpayer!