Georgetown ISD seeks $649.5M bond for new schools, facility upgrades, equipment

The Georgetown school district is asking voters to approve a $649.5 million bond proposal to help pay for construction projects meant to ease school overcrowding in the rapidly growing community.

If voters pass the bond package May 4, the money would pave the way for a new elementary school, middle school and high school at the 13,000-student district. The money will also be used to upgrade aging buildings.

Some facilities in the district, like Jack Frost Elementary School, at 711 Lakeway Drive, don’t have enough space for the expanding student population, Principal Megan Chambley said.

On a recent overcast Wednesday, Chambley strolled through the bright, cheerful halls of the compact elementary campus. She stepped into a fifth grade classroom where students crowd around their group tables scribbling on worksheets.

By now, the fifth graders are months away from entering middle school, and there’s little room for the older children to move between tables in the classroom.

There just isn’t a lot of room left in the building to grow, and no collaborative spaces for students, Chambley said.

Voter's guide: What's on my ballot in May 4 election for Travis, Hays, Bastrop and Williamson counties?

“Kids can’t come out to the hallway and work together,” Chambley said. “They just don’t have the space to come and lay out on the floor.”

The Georgetown district has proposed four bond propositions, the largest of which would deliver $597.5 million for campus construction, upgrades, school bus purchases, land acquisition and safety updates.

This larger piece of the package — Proposition A — would pay for new elementary, middle and high school campuses and would reconfigure Benold Middle School as a new facility for Frost Elementary students. Benold was replaced with the district’s 2021 bond package and construction on the new campus is nearly done.

The three other propositions in the bond package would fund technology upgrades, fine arts facility updates and improvements to athletic infrastructure.

The bond proposals are necessary for the district to get ahead of projected growth, said Superintendent Devin Padavil.

Demographers predict the district will gain 6,000 students over the next 10 years, he said.

“There is no amount of rezoning schools that we could do that could accommodate for the record-setting growth that we are seeing,” Padavil said.

The district also wants to avoid simply adding portable buildings on campuses, which is contrary to community feedback, he said. Larger schools just create scheduling issues, he said.

“The cafeteria, the hallways, the library, the gym can't sustain that many kids,” Padavil said. “You can't pack that many kids in the cafeteria for lunch. Then you just run into a logistical or operational problem with, ‘How do we do school?’”

School and classroom sizes can also affect students’ academic experience, he said.

“As a school becomes larger than the building is built for, it becomes harder for the administrators, the counselors and even the teachers to really know the students and create personalized experiences and learning,” Padavil said.

The district grew by 13.5% in five years — from 11,508 students in the 2017-18 school year to 13,063 in the 2022-23 year, according to Texas Education Agency data.

With a 14.4% growth rate, the city of Georgetown was the fastest growing U.S. city of over 50,000 people from July 2021 to 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

If the bond is approved, the district would begin security upgrades immediately and start school construction in the fall, Padavil said.

Early voting ends Tuesday. Election day is May 4.

Georgetown ISD's $649.5 million school bond

• Proposition A: $597.47 million for new elementary, middle and high schools; school security; land acquisition for school facilities; reconfigure middle school for Frost Elementary School; and school bus purchases.

• Proposition B: $20.33 million for districtwide school technology.

• Proposition C: $27.85 million for a performing arts facility at East View High School, upgrades for facilities at Georgetown High School and equipment.

• Proposition D: $3.86 million for track repairs at Georgetown High School, and for field house and locker room expansion at East View High School.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Election 2024: Georgetown ISD seeks $649.5M bond for schools, upgrades