At first glance, items on the Brownwood ISD school board agenda seemed routine, but discussion quickly turned to concerns about the Texas state budget and the impact it may have on public schools.
The agenda items were to approve bids to replace the roof and HVAC system on part of the East Elementary campus. After an initial motion and second to approve the bid to replace the roof, discussion quickly turned to the state budget and not knowing the extent that legislators will cut public school funding.
“Considering the current budgetary crisis, do we have the option to postpone spending that amount of money,” asked school board trustee Tim Jacobs.
School officials said that the vote to approve the roof replacement and HVAC which would cost an estimated $134,000 could be postponed, but the submitted bids expire after 30 days. Another concern expressed was timing of the project. Work on these projects would have to be done during the early summer months when the campus is vacant, and much of a delay would make it impossible to finish before August when teachers would be back at school.
Officials said that although the roof and HVAC systems are functional at this time, they are old and are the only ones campus-wide that have not been replaced yet.
“The roof is probably in better shape than the HVAC system,” said Deputy Superintendent Kevin Gabaree. “We have had a lot of maintenance issues with the HVAC system that causes a lot of frustrations, and we were hoping to repair them both at the same time.”
Brownwood ISD Superintendent Reece Blincoe suggested postponing the vote until sometime in early May to enable them to gather more information about the extent of the upcoming budget cuts.
“I understand the concern, but at the same time I think it will be pretty hard to do without a roof or air conditioner and heating at East Elementary,” said School Board Trustee Nesa Morelock. “If we didn’t replace those now while we can afford them, if the situation got worse as far as financial situation, if we had a real issue we would be in a bind as far as taking care of a roof and we know what a roof problem can do to a school.”
“On the other side, it (the roof) is functional at this point and if it came down to a loss of personnel that would be valuable to the students as opposed to the roof, I want to wait and see,” said Jacobs.
East Elementary Principal Nanda Wilbourn expressed concern that many employees at the campus have been looking forward to the repairs on the school.
“I don’t want to see anyone not have money for a job,” said Wilbourn “I have been dangling that carrot in front of my teachers all year because it has been told to me that we would have air conditioning. I know we did not foresee what was going to happen, but I am just asking you to really consider that. “
After batting the issue back and forth, the school board voted by majority to table the repair issue for now and to have a special called meeting before the 30 day bid expires, probably by May 2nd. Blincoe said that by waiting a few weeks, the board will likely have a better understanding of what cuts are coming and how big of an impact they will have on the district.
“It looks like it is going to boil down to three choices; cuts, asking taxpayers for a tax raise, or living out of fund balance,” said Blincoe regarding the overall impact of proposed budget cuts. “Literally that would be our three choices.”
