Do you support or oppose the $349 Million RRISD bond issue? Why or why not? From February 14th through March 5th you can voice your opinion about the $349 Million Round Rock Independent School District Bond Issue. Click here to read the NASWC FAQs on the RRISD Bond Proposal. Read more about the bond here. Last Updated: 03/10/2005 22:29 Click here to return to the main Quilt page.

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I just found out that the contributors to the YES Campaign, which is promoting the $349.3 M bond issue, include a $5000 corporate contribution from Bartlett-Cocke. Bartlett-Cocke is the construction contractor/manager for the PROPOSED middle school on the bond AND the PROPOSED elementary school in Avery Ranch, also on the bond!!!

Five Thousand dollars to help print all those flyers that clogged my mailbox this week.

Who is benefitting from this bond issue if it passes? The children or the contractors?!?

Additional donations of $1000 each came from:

Summit Commercial Properties
First Texas Bank
University Federal Credit Union

These political contributions make me say NO, you can’t have more tax money until you clean up your process as well!

I oppose giving the RRISD Board a credit card with a huge limit and my name on the bill! Oppose is too mild a word.

I froth with fury at the stupidity of schools at 85% capacity being defined as "full" unless there is some enormous growth spurt about to happen that I am unaware of, at the foolhardiness of using money from bond issues that must be paid back with interest over many years to buy any form of rapidly obsolescing technology, and, at...well, at anything they propose to do they haven't told us about yet!

I have been listening to Dr. Gaul for about 6 years now. He has always said we could not afford to add on to schools that portables were the fiscal answer. Why is it that now portables are suddenly so expensive? With the amount of money RRISD has spent on RRHS on portables over the years they could have added a beautiful addition years ago! I believe the real reason behind all the improvements all of a sudden is that Dr. Gaul wants to build his BIG high school. He said to parents at Ridgeview middle school 3 years ago that he "loved the power of a large school" at the time he was referring to a school he had been a principle of but he was relating it to SPHS and how great it would be to have such a large school. Well he is about to build his Taj Mahal and if history repeats itself,like all the other schools he has built, if he is projecting 3000 kids it will really hold 5000 kids and I have two small children that will someday be lost in that jungle! But just as he didn't care about my shy 9th grader going to SPHS he isn't thinking about my other two kids and the challenges they will face in this new high school.

The reason for all of these upgrades all of a sudden is that he is buying votes for his new high school. It appears to be working because the school board has shown a new interest in Forest Creek and the young parents there who know nothing about all of this. He is using them and people at all the schools who are looking for the upgrades needed to get the BIG high school that he wants. If not than why can't they be two seperate issues?

My comments on the RRISD bond election are as follows:

My wife and I have lived in the district for 16 years and I have worked in Round Rock since 1978. This will be the first time we will have voted against an entire bond package. We did not approve the issues related to the Parmer Lane Football monument, nor did we favor the expenditure for the performing arts center. In each of these cases, we were not opposed to the need for either facility, merely the cost.

We are opposed to the current bond package primarily because of cost. The costs proposed for new facilities are far in excess of what they could be built for if frugality was important to the decision-makers. By frugality, I do not mean cheap structures that are expensive to maintain. I mean structures that are designed to a conservative budget.

I also am at a loss as to why students need laptop computers. These cost more initially than desktop PC’s and they are far more fragile. I do not believe it is wise to spend money on equipment that can so easily be damaged, and is so expensive to repair. When we go to public libraries are there laptops available for use? No!

Equally, if not more important, I would be willing to pay higher taxes if the money were going to education and teachers and not overhead. RRISD must learn to live within the constraints of a responsible budget and I do not feel this has been demonstrated with the current proposal.

I am not opposed to new facilities. I am not opposed to properly equipping our classrooms. I am opposed to extravagance and until I hear some administration official admit that the miniature Memorial Stadium was a mistake I will continue my belief that the district has lost sight of who pays for these projects.

If RRISD continues on the present path, we will see a reversal of our current problem in the not too distant future. We won’t have overcrowding; we will have empty classrooms. Families with school-aged children will move elsewhere because they can no longer afford to live in RRISD.

I am opposing the $350 million bond package for RRISD. We should be able to handle student growth without doubling our bond indebtedness. We should not distinguish RRISD by making it the district most in debt. Today, we spend only 45 cents of each education dollar in the classroom - and we are rated only "acceptable." We should be able to build a new high school for less than $91 million when other districts are building similarly-sized schools for almost half that. After RRISD went $9 million over the stadium, I am not confident that this bond package has been closely scrutinized or is all necessary. Let's wait and see what the legislature does with school finance before we take this enormous step.

I cannot vote for the RRISD $349 Million bond issue because I don’t know enough about this number to trust it. But I do know enough about the past actions of the district NOT to trust it.

Do you tend to believe one of these three myths? Don’t assume RRISD is spending your tax dollars responsibly and the way you voted.

Myth #1 - A great deal of time was spent developing the list of projects covered in the current RRISD bond issue. ?

Fact: Round Rock school district took less than two months to decide the scope of the current $349 Million bond issue.

Myth #2 - Architectural plans and models are reviewed and estimates are made from solid design proposals to determine the cost of each new school project. ?

Fact: There are NO architectural plans or physical models used to generate the bond amount for the proposed new construction projects.

Myth #3 – The current bond contains funding for a project that MY school needs and it is a project I want to make sure they get. ?

Fact: Passing the current bond issue does NOT mean your school will get the project as described in the bond report. Round Rock ISD can, and has, cut bond-funded projects!

Mike Jolly, RRISD Official, said in a newspaper interview that the board plans to issue the $349 Million in increments over the next five years, which would give trustees a chance to scale down the debt *if they decide that some projects can be eliminated or postponed.* (AAS, 2/08/05)

Taxpayers deserve to know the truth and, truth is, taxpayers deserve more facts!

We deserve to know the final costs of all portions of past bond projects. When bond projects are “scaled back”, we have a right to know why and we deserve to know where that project’s remaining bond money was spent. We have a right to expect the school board and the district will adhere to the authorized bond amounts on a project to keep the costs in check. Taxpayers should also demand that estimates for new projects be made from actual designs and not from cost projections based on bloated past bond projects.

Until the district respects me and shares the real data and process, I’m VOTING NO on the RRISD bond proposition.

I believe new students will arrive and RRISD will need new capabilities. (I was not distracted by the video tape scandal.)

I voted against the bonds because they are extravagant. I expect the RRISD board to act like Trustees and present us taxpayers with proposals that are fiscally responsible, and not one that pushes the taxing rate to the legal maximum. There are many alternatives, including less extravagant construction, expansions and redrawing lines. We don't need coliseums or architectural awards - we need academic excellence.

RRISD spends only 45% of its operational funds on teaching, ranking 883rd (of 1,031) in Texas. Only 15 districts (of 1,031) have a higher property tax rate. Eighty-five percent (85%) of Texas districts have a better student-teacher ratio. And, the district is only accredited "Acceptable". Is it any wonder RRISD tax payers have become hostile?

My daughter asked me for $25 for "pencils and paper for school". "Why so much?" I asked. "That's what things cost, Dad" she replies. Since it's for school I give her the $25. On the way to buy the school supplies she decides that $5 is enough for pencils and paper, and she needs a new $20 pair of "school jeans". Since I gave her the $25 she might as well spend it.

Hypothetical situation, yes, but this is how I feel about school bonds. I am 100% for supporting our schools, teachers, staff, and administration. I want good facilities, adequate supplies, and teachers comfortable with their salaries. I don't even mind higher taxes if that's what it takes.

What I DON'T want is a School Board telling me they need, for example, $31 million for a new high school; PURPOSELY building a smaller and cheaper school than voted for; then getting $16 million MORE in new bond money to expand the too-small building.

Oh, wait - that really happened at Stoney Point HS. Parents and Teachers alike were quite upset when the school opened with and entire block of classrooms "missing", and an assembly area too small for all the students!

What happened to the school we voted for and paid for?

But the RRISD Sports Complex went many millions over-budget. Where did that money come from? Not new bonds. So in my opinion it came from the money the Board shorted on other projects.

Now RRISD is asking us to approve over 1/3 of a BILLION dollars in bonds. That's billion with a "B". Once approved the Board can spend that money however they see fit. They can cancel and cut-back on "voted-for" projects and add new, "un-voted" projects.

I am very uncomfortable with that. Especially since this $349,000,000 turns into about $650,000,000 once all the interest is paid. By 2007 about $700 of each of our RRISD tax bills will be spent on the interest alone for these bonds. This is all in the RRISD material if you look for it.

So to the School Board I say:

• give me smaller bonds elections
• give me more specific project costs
• show some accountability for MY money
• build the projects for which I voted

THEN- I will give you my money.

The Board wants $91 million for a new high school on Gattis. Why does this new HS cost THREE TIMES MORE than other high schools? The folks in that neck of the woods want their own new sports complex. If the new high school costs much less than the $91 they're telling us they need, or is built smaller, who knows where those "free" millions will be used.

Say "NO!" to this one, folks, or we're giving them a blank check.

Become INFORMED before you vote --- then vote 'no'.

I bought my home in June of 1998 not knowing what was about to happen. The air was clear then and I could not hear any traffic. People who came to visit me would comment on how quiet everything was, and that it seemed like we were out in the country. At night, I could go out into my back yard, enjoy the quiet, see multitudes of stars and breathe fresh air.

Since then, Our subdivisions have been assaulted on all sides... by clouds of dust and noise from the enlargement and estension of Anderson Mill Road, Highway 183 and now this gigantic Toll Road and Toll Plaza.

Our Air Quality is on the decline (it smells like Houston sometimes) the noise is a constant hummmmm from the highway. My understanding is that they will not put up a buffer wall between our elementary school area and the Toll Plaza. Add onto this list, runnoff from the Toll Plaza will jeapordize the health of our forest.

Now they want to raise bond money for the Schools????? The county and the school district are robbing us blind as it is. We are not receiving anything in exchange for our tax dollars now. We have got stop this constant picking at our pocketbooks.

Disclaimer

The Community Quilt is a forum for the free exchange of opinion from area residents on selected topics. The views expressed on The Community Quilt are not necessarily those of NASWC, its Executive Board, or its Officers. NASWC is not responsible for the content of opinions posted.

updated: 05/14/2008