By A special meeting of the Houston ISD Board of Managers will take place on June 27 to consider recommendations made by the Community Advisory Committee as to how best to apportion the funds in the 2024 bond proposal.
The CAC has been gathering community feedback and weighing possible changes based on that information as well as their own analysis of the $4.4 billion “Renew HISD” bond aimed at rebuilding, repairing and improving district campuses.
Gathering community feedback
The district hosted five community engagement events during May and June to gather feedback and answer questions regarding the bond including, four on HISD campuses in each of the four geographical divisions as well as one virtual session.
In each event, a presentation was given by district officials, and was followed by a question and answer session for audience members to give feedback on the bond proposal as well.
Improvements badly needed
HISD serves over 180,000 students across 274 schools. Many of these schools urgently require improvements to create safe and effective learning environments.
It has been nearly 17 years since voters approved a bond specifically targeting elementary or middle schools, and 12 years since the last bond was approved.
The last approved bonds were for the following:
- 2007 bond funds were for elementary and middle schools
- 2012 bond funds were for high schools
Meanwhile, other large Houston area public school districts, including Cypress Fairbanks ISD, Katy ISD and Conroe ISD have all recently passed bond proposals over $4 billion.
From the district
The district and the committee have gathered feedback from the public as well as internal discussions to address the reasons for the need for the bond proposal.
“HISD needs to catch up and invest in its facilities to provide a conducive learning environment for students. Increasingly, failure or ineffectiveness in these areas will negatively impact academic performance which is strongly aligned to all the board goals around student achievement. We cannot wait much longer to ask the public to provide additional revenue to help our schools,” the bond report states.
