Fort Bend Independent School District taxpayers likely will be presented with a bond referendum in May to take care of building and facility needs over the coming two years or so.
Meanwhile, groundwork was laid Monday for a long-range facilities plan for FBISD, which probably will include resetting attendance zones district-wide.
In a Monday afternoon workshop, FBISD Board President Steve Smelley also indicated that, once enough data has been gathered to create a plan for rezoning, the district may propose a second bond issue on the heels of one in May, to finance building needs four to eight years from now.
None of those events have been voted on; the purpose of the workshop was to discuss such issues, and at the end of the meeting Superintendent Dr. Timothy Jenney indicated options for bond issues and school rezoning will be presented more formally in two or three weeks for board consideration.
Jenney began the meeting asking trustees for direction on whether they believe FBISD needs to be completely rezoned, or whether attendance zones could be left intact except for high-growth areas of the district.
Dennis Harner of demographics firm Harner & Associates, hired to conduct a complete demographic analysis of the district, demonstrated software tools FBISD now has at its disposal that allow for manipulation of population data to illustrate various scenarios resulting from different rezoning plans.
After more than 90 minutes of discussion, most board trustees indicated they believe all school attendance zones need to be recalculated.
“I think we’ve all agreed this needs to be an entire rezoning process,” said Trustee Sonal Buchar. But as much as possible, she said, the district should incorporate neighborhood schools into any new attendance plan.
Smelley indicated he would prefer to be able to use demographic data gathered for the district’s long-range plan not only for a rezoning proposal, but to present a bond issue to voters that would incorporate short-term building needs with longer-term needs. “Why couldn’t we do the whole thing in one lick?” he asked.
Calling the software “a fabulous tool to really plan” for the future needs of the district, Smelley said the question may become “how much are we going to bite off?”
With the ability to predict with reasonable accuracy student populations a decade out, Smelley said, the district may find it makes more financial sense to go to voters with a bond referendum that covers a greater number of years than has historically been the case.
“We may be looking at half a billion dollars” to take care of short-term needs, plus building and renovation required “five years out.” That, Smelley noted, “is a different sell” then past FBISD boards have presented to the public.
But Smelley also said he believes the district’s immediate needs to accommodate a fast-growing student population mean FBISD should go before the public with a bond referendum in a May election.
To be able to present a bond referendum that includes the district’s needs for the next five or more years, Jenney and the board members seemed to agree, they’d need detailed information from a long-range plan, probably by February.
However, “I don’t think there’s any way we can give you a comprehensive plan…by February or March,” Jenney said. “I think we can lay out a sketch…which includes the growth areas. I just don’t think we can have an inclusive long-range plan in place in time for a May bond referendum.”
“Instead of looking out four years, we’ll look out two,” Smelley said.
“Well, we’re going to make people upset no matter how carefully we do it,” Trustee Lisa Rickert said of the process of communicating to the public about the district’s financial needs. “What would make more sense to us – to do a rezoning coupled with a bond referendum, after watching Katy lose theirs?”
“I think the big key is, they want to see our plan,” Trustee Laurie Caldwell said of the public. “They just want to see us have a plan.”
“We are in a very difficult situation, not having the ability to put together a referendum on a date when we want it,” Smelley said. He referred to Texas legal requirements that force school districts to hold bond elections only in either May or November in any given year.
“What happens in FBISD if we don’t have a bond election in May?” Trustee Cynthia Knox asked. “Because that’s what I want to tell people – if we don’t have a bond referendum in May, this, this and this is going to happen.”
Knox said she can’t sell school district patrons on the need for a bond issue “unless we start fixing these problems that have to do with overcrowding.”
Harner’s population projections show numerous schools in the district will experience growth well beyond their capacity over the next five years.
Ironically, though, several schools – including Clements, Dulles and Bush high schools, are projected to lose student population during the same time span under current attendance zones (see chart at right).
Rezoning will have to occur in part of the district, as four new schools are slated to be on line in coming months. Some trustees spoke out against having to rezone part of the district to accommodate those schools only to have those boundaries changed again when the whole district is rezoned.
But that may be inevitable.
Jenney and Harner both said it will take too long to obtain all necessary data to realistically expect a rezoning plan to be created by the first part of 2007. Both men indicated sufficient time also needs to be devoted to explaining to the public the decision-making process behind any such plan.
“What I’m hearing, then, is rezoning an entire district – you have to actually hold that off until ’07-’08″ to be implemented in school year 2008-’09, Trustee Stan Magee said. “So now we’re just talking about new schools and patchwork” rezoning, “and working on the bond referendum.”
“I’m not sure I agree with the word ‘patchwork,’” Jenney said. “I think I’d rather call it ‘phase one.’”
