“No trust, no bond,” has become a common refrain at Houston ISD board meetings, with more than a dozen public speakers uttering the phrase during Thursday night’s session.
The district’s state-appointed board of managers is considering whether to place a $4.4 billion bond package on the ballot in November, citing the needs for significant facilities upgrades at aging campuses, bolstered safety and security measures and expanded pre-kindergarten and career and technical education programs. It would be the largest school bond package in Texas history and the first since 2012 for HISD, the state’s largest school district with roughly 180,000 students.
The board members drilled down on the bond proposal without taking any related actions during Thursday’s meeting, asking questions of both district administrators and HISD’s Community Advisory Committee, a 28-person group tasked with driving community engagement about the bond. Perhaps the most pressing question facing the board and district as a whole is whether Houston voters – many of whom have been critical of sweeping reforms and widespread staffing shakeups during the first year of the state’s takeover of HISD – would support the measure.
“As you heard from the people in the room today, they have a lot of trust issues,” said committee co-chair Garnet Coleman, a former state representative from the Houston area. “It’s better in a democracy to acknowledge and address those trust issues. When people believe they aren’t being heard or understood, or not being heard from an internal perspective of how they feel, then you have a problem going down the road. So those discussions need to be had.”
The board is planning to vote Aug. 8 about whether to place the bond proposal on the Nov. 5 ballot. District administrators have spent the last month providing community information about the plan and trying to drum up support for it, first holding a series of public engagement sessions and this week inviting members of the media to tour some of HISD’s most dilapidated campuses – some of which have leaky ceilings, faulty water and HVAC systems and problems with mold.
![Revere Middle School Hallway](https://cdn.houstonpublicmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/28122428/RevereMSHallway-1000x750.jpg)
Adam Zuvanich/Houston Public Media
Coleman said he could “smell the need” while touring some of HISD campuses. The district wants to make upgrades to all 274 of its schools while focusing mostly on elementary and middle school campuses after high schools were the focus of the 2012 bond.
There are more than $10 billion in facilities, technology and security needs across the district, according to Alishia Jolivette, HISD’s interim chief operating officer. So some on Thursday described the bond proposal, in which more than 40 schools would be rebuilt, as a down payment or first step.
District administrators say the bond would not come with a tax increase for property owners.
“The bond is going to help us address some of it,” Jolivette said. “It won’t address all of it.”
Much of the bond discussion Thursday centered around the plan to spend $200 million to expand HISD’s prekindergarten program to 4,000 additional 3- and 4-year-olds served by the district – which has a need for 25,000 more pre-K seats – to renovate HISD’s existing career and technical education center while building three new facilities and to merge underutilized elementary and middle school campuses through an arrangement described as “co-locations.” The latter idea entails building seven new campuses that would house a total of 15 schools, for the purpose of consolidating space and resources while avoiding the closure of schools.
Superintendent Mike Miles called the co-location plan an “elegant” solution for a district that has seen steady declines in enrollment in recent years.
“In this way, we’re able to save money, do more rebuilds, but also protect this notion of a community concept, where these schools are able to hold on to their identity, their community, their kids and get a building that’s worthy, safe, environmentally sound, healthy, but also good for their educational experience,” Miles said.
Judith Cruz, a former HISD trustee serving as co-chair of the Community Advisory Committee, said the group has “grappled” with the idea of co-locations. She urged district administrators to explore other ways to maximize campus space while also generating new revenue streams, such as through the use of campus clinics or after-school programs.
Cruz, Coleman and some of the other board members also had questions about the need for three new career centers and how well they might be utilized. They would be strategically positioned across the district to enable all HISD students to have feasible access to centers and their offerings, according to Kristen Hole, the district’s chief academic officer.
The committee co-chairs recommended that HISD further explore partnerships with community colleges in the region, both to help provide job training and to help fund that endeavor.
“They’re ready,” board member Paula Mendoza said of local colleges. “They do have funds and they’re ready to jump on board.”
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Alexandra Elizondo, HISD’s chief of communications and public affairs, acknowledged that initial community engagement has revealed that many residents are hesitant to jump on board with the bond proposal because of a “lack of trust” linked to the state’s intervention. Miles was installed about a year ago by Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath, who also replaced HISD’s elected trustees with a board of managers because Wheatley High School had a string of failing academic ratings from the state.
Elizondo said skepticism among community members, however, seems to wane when Houston residents are informed about the realities facing the district and its students and the needs for newer, better and safer campuses.
District leaders hope that becomes true with the community at large. They also said, if the bond measure should be placed on the ballot and passed by voters, there would be oversight committees in place to ensure bond initiatives are executed as planned and approved.
“I just think that regardless of what your position is on the intervention, regardless of what your position is on policy … our kids deserve great facilities and minimally safe – cool in the summer, warm in the winter – and a facility where they can get high-quality instruction,” Miles said. “I have confidence the community will come through and invest in our kids.”