(Seguin) — The Seguin ISD’s plan for a possible May bond election has been put on hold — at least for now.
Trustees unanimously voted to hold off on the district’s latest attempt at ordering a $21.75 million bond issue.
During the past few weeks, the district had been contemplating a bond issue to assist in the funding of several proposed projects.
However, Thursday night, new Seguin ISD Superintendent Dr. Veronica Vijil laid out the framework on why the district and its facilities committee felt that more time and planning was needed to really meet the needs of the district.
In addressing what was a proposed $7.5 million for upgrades at the newly acquired Irma Lewis Seguin Outdoor Learning Center, Vijil said a suggestion was made that the center work toward being more aligned with state standards and activities. She says this is in effort to better meet the needs of kids in all grade levels.
“It’s a wonderful idea and it would give Pete Silvius an opportunity with more time to create what a kindergartener’s experience will be at the Seguin Outdoor Learning Center – first grade and so on and align it to the state’s standards so that all the activities that are going on there are aligned to our state standards,” said Vijil.
And while the facilities committee agreed that the proposed $3 million for land acquisition would have been a good investment for the school district, the team felt that it was even more important to revisit their demographics study and see if the growth is continuing as predicted.
“The last demographic study that was conducted was two years ago and in demographic time, that’s a long time and so what we would like to look forward to is a demographic study two years later to see if the growth is still in the same location that they had predicted and the rate of growth before we make further decisions,” said Vijil.
Now while the renovation of Weinert and Jefferson Elementary School were not included in the initial bond proposal, the schools’ needs quickly surfaced as priorities – priorities that Vijil states were part of the 2019 facilities long range plan.
“Very very importantly, we talked about the 10 year plan, a lot of time, effort and investment went into the 10 year plan and that included work to Jefferson and Weinert. At the time, these were priorities that were put in place by the committee and we know that things have changed – the acquisition of the Outdoor Learning Center being one and so, it would be a good idea to go back to the 10 year plan, see if the outline of priorities are still as they remain there or do they need an update to include where we are today. We want to be very loud and clear about the needs of Jefferson and Weinert. I’ll say it over and over again, I don’t want anyone to think that they are forgotten and that we won’t place them at a high priority. There’s a lot of needs for our district but more time would allow us to garner community support, answer more questions, realign priorities as necessary,” said Vijil.
Also, on the list of proposed bond projects was $6.5 million for school safety and security – specifically the purchase of the Front Row System – a robust solution for school wide communication which includes emergency notification and response with paging intercom abilities for all classrooms. The district was also proposing $750,000 for the purchase of six student activity buses to help the transportation of students in athletics, fine arts and CTE.
Wrapping up the ballot would have been a roll out of classroom technology. This would have included $3.7 million in touch screen or digital white boards.
During their vote to hold off on the bond, Vigil also noted that the timing of a bond issue in May would conflict with this month’s retirement of longtime Chief Communications Officer Sean Hoffmann. She says Hoffmann’s role plays a critical piece to the overall bond campaign providing the public with the required information and resources they deserve.
District officials Thursday did not indicate how long it would be until another bond proposal was brought back to the table. These opportunities are considered by voters in November or May.
Although they are not moving forward with this particular bond proposal, district officials say they remain thankful for the input and feedback received throughout this process by the facilities committee, community and staff.