SAN ANTONIO – The second time was a charm for East Central ISD on Saturday as voters handily approved a scaled-back $309 million bond to build a new high school and two elementary schools.
It was a welcome reversal for ECISD officials who, six months earlier, watched a flood of presidential elections voters shoot down four separate ballot propositions. The original package included $360 million worth of bonds for schools and athletic facilities, as well as tax rate increase to cover security costs and staff salaries.
At least 25,500 district voters cast a ballot on each of the propositions — none of which got more than 47.4% approval.
In the face of that defeat, the growing district scrapped the request for more operating funds and called “time out” in the athletic facility renovation plans. Instead, it focused on selling voters solely on the three new schools — whose price tag it also cut by a few million dollars.
With a lower projected hit to property taxes — an extra $157 per year for a typical homeowner instead of $387 — and a much lower election turnout — just 4,300 ballots cast — the measure got 66% approval.
As more and more housing developments spring up on former farmland, the district says the schools are necessary to try to stay ahead of a population boom.
“It’s pressing. We have five campuses that will be over capacity by 2028,” said ECISD spokesman Brandon Oliver.
Both Oliver and Cassandra Barron, an ECISD parent who served on an advisory committee, see the simplicity of the May ballot as the biggest reason for its success.
“It was straightforward. You’re not having ‘(prop) A, B, C, D.’ There was no athletics. It was just two elementary schools, high school. I think it was just a lot easier for people to focus on just that,” Barron said.
Mary Flores, who has four children between pre-kindergarten and 9th grade, said she went from voting against the bond in November to voting for it this past weekend.
Asked about what changed her mind, Flores said “I guess just hearing what my kids are saying about it being, there’s a lot of fights because it’s overcrowding, and it’s congestion in the hallways. It makes them hard to getting to and from class.”
It won’t be the district’s last bond election. Oliver pointed out the athletic facility renovations that voters shot down are still needed, and voters’ refusal to ratify the maintenance and operations tax rate means the district has a larger deficit than expected.
And even with the three newly approved schools, the district expects it will have to ask voters for funds to build even more.
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