The district is working on design and phasing of projects to be funded by the $107.3 million bond approved by voters in May. In the meantime…
By: Undria Wilson
The San Marcos CISD board of trustees will hold a workshop at a date to be determined at which trustees will discuss the potential of purchasing or leasing portable buildings to provide classroom space for students in the district’s elementary schools.
Trustees discussed the issue at a meeting Monday night, at which district staff indicated current projections show SMCISD elementary schools will be dealing with capacity issues in the 2017-18 school year.
Jay Wesson, SMCISD director of facilities and construction, provided the board with cost estimates for purchasing and installing portable buildings. A double-classroom portable building would cost $145,200, according to Wesson’s estimate. A single-classroom portable would cost $103,650.
“We know the district spoke very loudly that they wanted to increase capacity, and we’re just not doing that in a very expedient way, in my view,” trustee John McGlothlin said.
Overcrowding has been an issue at Travis and Crockett Elementary school. At Travis Elementary School, district projections show the third grade is expected to be over capacity by 11 students, and fifth grade is expected to be over capacity by 10 students.
The San Marcos CISD is starting the year with five waivers, but will not know the actual projections until August.
The district says that it will work on accommodating to keep the classrooms from being oversize or bring in additional teacher aids to manage the growing classrooms. The school district has a 12 week timeline for approving the purchase and location of portables; however, a vote will not affect the 2017-2018 school year. The topic will be discussed further at the next meeting.
Dr. Keith Cunningham, Principal of Crockett elementary, was voted during the session by the board of trustees as principal of the elementary school 6-0.
After accepting the position, Cunningham expressed his vision of how Crockett Elementary will benefit under his leadership, “I view them (schools) as a bedrock of a healthy body of politic and I view my role as principal of Crockett as a servant leader to make sure Crockett is a healthy loving caring and academic vigorous place for future the of our community and for the future of our kids.”
The district presented the board with information on portables earlier this spring and indicated adding buildings at Crockett and Travis elementary schools would be difficult because of environmental factors.
“When I’m considering portables, the question of how long we’re going to be constrained with numbers impacts the manner in which I would handle a portable consideration,” McGlothlin said.
The district is working on design and phasing of projects to be funded by the $107.3 million bond approved by voters in May. According to a district timeline, construction of the new bond-funded elementary school campus—which could relieve some of the capacity issues—will not begin until summer 2018.
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These issues of "overcrowding" should have been addressed in the 2013 bond package, it is a matter of priorities. In 2013 it was more important to the trustees that we should have artificial turf on the athletic fields, including practice fields. Furthermore, the board thought that it was more urgent that we have a "student activities center" than to address the classroom situation. I suggest that we temporarily relax the 22 to 1 student to teacher ratio until we have sufficient classroom space to accommodate said ratio, thereby precluding the need to purchase portable buildings at approximately $145,000 per unit. Raising the effective tax rate is not a viable solution for the long term, we were promised that growth would "pay for itself" and this is obviously not the case.