(ROCKWALL, TX – August 2, 2015) Rockwall ISD Superintendent Jeff Bailey presented details of a $256,816,104 educational bond referendum to members of the Rockwall Area Chamber of Commerce last Thursday.
A 2015 Bond Planning committee composed of 60 individuals from across the community met from January to June to discuss how to allocate funds to best benefit the district for the next few decades. The committee consisted of parents, teachers, business people, and elected officials all dedicated to improving the district as a whole.
“We wanted to make sure people from all areas of our community, north, south, east and west, were represented from a diverse group across the school district,” Bailey said.
The team reviewed information from the 2007 bond report and toured the campuses of Dobbs and Stevenson Elementary, the oldest and newest schools in the district, before they were presented with information on each category of the budget.
“We tried to provide our committee with as much information as we could for them to make decisions,” Bailey said.
The committee’s goal is for every single student in the district to be impacted by the 2015 bond in some way.
Some of the biggest investments will include the construction of three new school buildings. The first building, which would be constructed during the 2018-2019 school year, would be a College and Career Academy for high school students costing $53,013,088. The Academy would offer specialized, career-oriented classes and programs that would help students to focus on their futures.
The Academy would also feature new nursing programs and equipment, a video broadcast news station, a court room, video game design and graphic design technology, a hotel management program in partnership with Holiday Inn, vet tech certification, and the culinary arts program currently housed at Rockwall High School would relocate to the Academy to make it more accessible to students from both high schools.
Bailey explained that RISD high school students are now expected to select an endorsement within their diploma plan using STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) curriculum. The new Academy would facilitate students in exploring potential career paths and allow them to earn college credit before graduating high school.
Bailey said he is very excited about the prospect of the new Academy.
“This is something that has been discussed and planned for a number of years,” Bailey said. “Now I think from a financial standpoint we will be able to accomplish this. I think it’s just a great opportunity for our children. Our goal is for our kids to graduate with a year of college credit.”
The College and Career Academy would also partner with Collin College and Texas A&M Commerce to offer additional college classes to community members of all ages. Theoretically, Bailey explained, students could move on to earn their Associates and even their Bachelor degrees from courses at the Academy.
In order to attend classes at the Academy, students from both high schools would leave their home campuses for 2-hour blocks of time. Bailey said 800-1000 students would be on the Academy’s campus throughout each day, about 400 from each high school. This will alleviate the number students on each campus, which is especially significant since Rockwall High School is projected to reach capacity in 2018.
“That allows us more time to grow at our two existing campuses until we have to build a third comprehensive high school,” Bailey said.
Bailey said the district would provide transportation to the Academy, and that students would complete their core classes and all extracurricular activities on their home campuses. Bailey also explained that the partner colleges will lease back their space in the building, providing income to the district. He said that the facility might be open to homeschoolers and private schoolers who are interested in the courses as well, but that space would have to be reserved for RISD students first and foremost.
In addition to the College and Career Center, the bond designated $35,000,000 and $39,000,000 for the construction of two new elementary schools. The difference in cost can be attributed to inflation projections, Bailey explained. The buildings would be completed during the 2020-2021 and 2022-2023 school years.
Additional land purchases for future building projects will cost $8,250,000. Bailey said this land would be put into the district’s “inventory” for future necessary projects, since RISD is expected to grow by 3,867 students in the next 10 years.
“Land is cheaper today than it will be 10-15 years from now,” Bailey said.
The bond also budgeted a total of $58,808,800 for renovations to Dobbs Elementary, Reinhardt Elementary, and Amy Parks Elementary.
$29,277,500 will be used to completely rebuild Dobbs. Bailey said the annex building next to Dobbs, which currently houses The Boys and Girls Club of Rockwall, will be torn down and a new building will be constructed in its place. The original Dobbs Elementary building will then be used for Head Start, parenting programs, and Boys and Girls Club. Bailey said he wants to ensure Boys and Girls Club will still have a building to use in place of the annex.
“They are a critical program for our kids in this community and they need to have a place to be,” Bailey said. “We feel like it is important that they have a good facility to house their program.”
Bailey said the renovations to all three elementary schools are critical to ensure consistency in early education district-wide and provide a uniform learning environment between the new and existing campuses.
“We feel that our older schools need to be brought up to the same educational specs as our new schools,” Bailey said.
Technology updates on campuses at all district levels will utilize $17,800,527 of the bond total. Bailey said this will impact every student in the district, and will include replacements for laptops, teacher PCs, iPads, and projectors.
Transportation accounts for $4,500,000 of the bond. The district has a fleet of 84 buses, and this would allow the replacement of 45 of them.
The committee allotted $13,041,800 to athletics, which will primarily be spent on replacing grass with turf on both middle school football fields. Baseball and softball fields at the high schools will also receive face lifts, including turf and new press boxes. The Rockwall High School gymnasium bleachers will also be enlarged to accommodate a larger student body.
$500,000 will be spent on a concrete marching surface for the RHS Yellowjacket Band. The lot will also be used for overflow parking at community events.
A new Safety and Security Department, implemented in the district over the last five years, will receive $5,403,000 for better security cameras, access controls such as badges and passcodes, shatter-proof glass, and internal radio systems for every campus to ensure communication regardless of weather conditions or cell service.
Other capital projects will include:
Architectural/Accessibility Upgrades: $6,661,000
Electrical Systems Upgrades: $2,237,700
Flooring Upgrades: $2,006,374
Kitchen Equipment Upgrades: $2,965,100
Mechanical Systems Upgrade: $1,570,700
Roofing Systems Upgrade: $6,058,018
Bailey said these maintenance updates were necessary at campuses all over the district, citing Rockwall High as an example.
“The restrooms at Rockwall High School have not been renovated since that building opened,” Bailey said.
Bailey also mentioned additional parking and traffic circulation in the Pullen Elementary and Cain Middle School area, along with power generators that would provide temporary lighting and maintain freezers full of cafeteria food in the event of an outage.
Lesli Johnson, President of RISD Education Foundation, served on the Bond Planning Committee. She said the budgetary decisions were essentially unanimous.
“There was a little bit of controversy in 2007 over some of the facilities that were part of that bond,” Johnson said. “I really can honestly say there was nothing controversial in our discussions. To get 60 people to agree on anything is impressive, but there was nothing that we had any conflict about.”
Johnson said she believes the Bond is essential to further improving the district’s educational standards.
“As good as our school district is, there is still inequality in our facilities. You can see that firsthand when you visit Dobbs and you visit the new Stevenson.”
Bailey said in order for the 2015 Bond to become a reality, residents will see a tax increase for the first time in seven years. However, he and the committee designed the taxes to rise incrementally.
“We didn’t want our citizens to get hit with a tax increase all in year one,” Bailey said. “We were trying to incrementally increase taxes over time.”
Bailey said he feels that the benefits from the 2015 Bond will be well worth the price.
“I’ve never known a great community that had failing schools,” Bailey said. “You’ve got to have great schools when you have a great community, they both are very tied together. No one likes for taxes to go up, but if we want quality schools to be able to provide for our families, it takes money to do that.”
Story and photos by Julie Anne White, Blue Ribbon News reporter.
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