With voters in the Eanes school district headed to a $150 million bond election on Nov. 2, many watch to see if the school board will appoint a bond advisory committee.

Some local residents have vocally supported the idea. Eanes parent and Americans with Disabilities Act advocate Cheryl Fries served on an ADA task force committee that reported findings to district superintendent Nola Wellman in 2007. Now involved in a lawsuit against the district over ADA issues, Fries said oversight committees that report directly to the school board can be critically important in big issues such as a bond process.

“Once a bond passes, the money can be spent on any project, not just those the voters approved,” Fries said. “This happened with the $53 million bond voters passed in 2006. Here we are four years later asking for another bond to address many of the issues that were supposed to be addressed then, including safety, ADA compliance and improvements to infrastructure. I am very hesitant to support another bond until we have better protections in place to ensure that the money is spent the way we are told it will be spent, and that we are only borrowing what we truly need to borrow.”

Eanes school board member Colleen Jones also thinks the creation of a bond oversight committee prior to the referendum in November is a good idea, and the sooner the better. She said bond oversight committees are considered best-practices methods in other school communities.

“It is important to create transparency and trust prior to the bond election,” she said. “Those things might be vital to the passage of a large bond like the one facing Eanes voters.”

Jones broached the topic of a bond oversight committee during a July 28 board meeting. She said such a committee could track bond expenditures, monitor the quality and timing of work and build trust between the taxpayers and the school board.

“I think a bond oversight committee can build a huge bridge between the board and the community,” she said in the July meeting. “I think it is important that we, as a board, stick to what we say we are going to do. There are going to be changes (during a bond process). I think we need to be responsible for those changes, and I think the public has the right to know why those changes were made.”

During the same board meeting, business services head for the Eanes school district, Larry Keiser, proposed an administrative bond progress committee that would report to district Superintendent Nola Wellman. But Jones said the community needed a bond committee charged with oversight, and that the committee should report to the school board rather than district administration.

“The board decides on a bond and has responsibility for the bond,” she said. “The board should (decide) who should be on the committee, and the committee should report to the board, not the superintendent. The committee should be a function of the board.”

Jones, who has served on district administrative committees in the past, said they give the community the feeling of being involved, but no real responsibility.

“In a bond like this one, where there are a lot of open-ended projects that are not clearly defined and no solid numbers available, it is essential that the community have some oversight in the process.”

Fries agreed.

“(A bond committee) would only work if structured so that board-appointed representatives for all major stakeholders report directly to the elected trustees,” Fries said. “Anything less eliminates the possibility for a fully transparent, accountable process.”

The topic of a bond oversight committee will likely be added to an upcoming meeting agenda, said Paul Stone, Eanes school board president. Agendas for meetings are drafted by district Superintendent Nola Wellman, and agendas for meetings scheduled for the near future should be released in the next two weeks, he said.