Following a recommendation from the district’s Facility Advisory Committee, the Brownwood ISD Board of Trustees unanimously called a bond election for May 6. If approved, the $59,950,000 bond, made up of three propositions, will fund district-wide improvements, including but not limited to, Safety and Security Upgrades, ADA/Code Improvements, and a Multi-Purpose Indoor Student Activity Center.

A school bond is similar to a home mortgage. It is a contract to repay money borrowed over time with a fixed, tax-exempt interest rate. Bonds are approved/authorized by voters and later sold by a school district to lenders/underwriters to raise funds to pay for the costs of construction, acquisitions, renovations and/or equipment.

Young families are among those who will be most affected by the passage of the bond, and Jay Clark and Amber Lewis were two Brownwood residents who shared their reasons for supporting the proposals.

Jay Clark

When you look around at rural areas where you have strong schools, you have strong communities and Brownwood is going through a revival of sorts when you look at what’s going on downtown and with the youth sports fields, the splash pads and all the things that have been poured into the community. It’s turned things around because when I was a kid we didn’t have those things.

My wife Francie and I have three kids, they’re 5, 4, and 1, so we’re just now getting ready to enter the school system. One of the things I think about having grown up here is how important Brownwood was to my development as a person. I can still remember some of the teachers I had and still see some of the teachers I had when I was in elementary school.

When we got ready to start a family that was something we looked at really closely – is this is a community we want to raise our kids in? Are they going to invest in the different amenities that are so commonplace now? Thankfully, Brownwood did.

I drive by Woodland Heights almost every day and for the most part the exterior of the building is unchanged from when I was there in 1995. The inside has been upgraded and changed over time to meet the needs of the district. But for a lot of people, you drive by and think it’s fine but once you get in there and see a lot of the deficiencies it opens your eyes to some of the shortcomings we have.

I was in high school when they passed the last bond and that was a game changer for our school. We became a modern high school. Before that, the classrooms were the same as when my mom was in school in 60s and 70s. There were much needed upgrades and a positive impact on the school.

As a parent we all want the best for our kids. From the parent perspective to me it’s a no-brainer. Do I want the community and district to invest in the future of my kids and their safety and security and improvements at the elementary that benefit all the kids?

Our facilities, our maintenance staff, our coaches, our administration have done a phenomenal job with what they’ve been given. When I was coaching, we spent several weeks in the summer just working on facilities – painting, repairing and we were doing that all on our own. Dr. Young and Mr. Moore have done a great job trying to address some of these things over time, but there’s not enough money set aside to do large improvements and that’s the way school finance works. You can’t pay for large scale improvements out of the normal budget.

Amber Lewis

I have a freshman at Brownwood High School and a second-grader at Woodland Heights so I see it from different points of view, but the biggest pluses for me are the safety and ADA improvements.

My kid in high school, she’s a cheerleader and plays different sports. Recently during a soccer game, my grandmother, her great-grandmother, had a hard time getting up in the seats and she made the statement that she didn’t know if she could make the next game because it was so hard to get up into the stands. She went out and purchased a cane that she does not need other than to help her feel more stable within the stadium.

My second-grader, we were talking about the gym at Woodland Heights which is in the same one as when I went to school there. She talks about needing a new gym floor and how it hurts let just to lay down on it and do sit ups.

The school has done a wonderful job trying to maintain what we have but things are getting out of hand now. With my oldest, we’ve traveled to different places and our facilities are so outdated. From the gyms, to Gordon Wood, to baseball, everything is so outdated and so far beyond what you see in other towns. That makes me as a member of the community want to step up and do better for our kids and future generations.

One thing is always for certain, everyone ages and I hope my youngest daughter’s generation and future generations’ families do not have these obstacles we face today with our facilities. I don’t think the tax rate is a large amount when it comes to all the kids, parents and grandparents you could help down the road.

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The following are the propositions that will be on the May 6 ballot and you can vote for one, two, three, or none:

Proposition A, at $27,650,000, features the following district-wide projects:

• Safety and security upgrades across the district
• Renovate Snodgrass Facility
• New field house at high school (locker rooms, weight room, training room, conference room, offices, storage, laundry)
• Renovate locker rooms at high school
• Accessible seating in high school gym
• Renovate middle school locker rooms
• New gym flooring at all elementary campuses
• New intermediate school auditorium seats

Proposition B, at $16,300,000, revolves around the following improvements to Gordon Wood Stadium:

• Home bleacher addition (1,000 seats)
• ADA/code improvements (Ramp access, aisles and stairs renovated for code compliance, ADA parking)
• New lights
• New concessions/restrooms
• New press box with elevator
• New turf and track resurface

Proposition C, at $16,000,000, calls for the construction of an indoor student activity center at BHS and additional facility upgrades that will feature:

• Use by band, baseball, softball, football, soccer, PE, and others
• 80 yards of turf
• Training room, dressing rooms, storage, offices
• Tennis improvements (Remove/replace courts, new scoreboard, new lights, new bleachers, windscreen)
• Baseball/Softball improvements (renovation of baseball field with new bleachers, dugouts, backstop, canopy over batting cages); New lights for baseball and softball fields

More information on the bond can be found at BrownwoodISDBond.com or to watch a recorded presentation click HERE. 

Early voting begins Monday, April 24 and runs through Tuesday, May 2 at the Brown County Elections Office. Election Day is Saturday, May 6.

* The preceding content was approved by and sponsored by the Brownwood Pride PAC