The KISD 2014 Bond passed on November 4th with 57% of voters approving $165.9 million to address long-term growth, improve facilities, change feeder patterns, and provide new career and technology programs. Projects will begin in summer 2015 and continue over three years. The bond will renovate existing schools and build three new schools - Timberview Middle, Ridgeview Elementary, and Keller Early Learning Center. It also allocates $32.8 million to renovate career and technology programs in line with new state legislation requiring more CTE courses. The bond aims to accommodate the district's increasing enrollment of 400 students per year through improvements and will be paid off through growth in property values over 25 years.

1. KISD 2014 Bond
Lisa Dreher
Editor-in-Chief
On November 4, the Keller Independent School District passed a $165.9 million bond, with 57 percent
of voters for and 43 percent against. The proposals intend to address the long-term growth of the district,
improve current facilities, change the feeder pattern, and provide new innovative and instructional
programs (CTE).
Projects will begin the summer of 2015 and continue over a three year period. Chief Financial Officer,
Mark Youngs, believes that despite much opposition, the bond will accommodate for the district’s
growing rate of about 400 students per year.
“What happens if we don’t do the new debt is we have to build portables, or we have to buy and rent
portables and they’re expensive to maintain,” Youngs said. “And that takes money out of the maintenance
and operations budget, so fortunately we prevailed with the 57 to 43 vote.”
Because of the $657 million in debt, the bond will be paid off mainly through growth in property value
over 25 years, because the tax rate cannot increase as it is already at the 50 cent maximum under state
law.
“I think there was a close margin [in the vote] because there is a lot of anti-debt sentiment out there, and
so those folks are very single-minded,” Youngs said. “They said ‘no new debt, live within your means.’”
The community was involved in the proposal processes and acquired information through public
meetings with Superintendent Randy Reid, who discussed the academic, structural and feeder goals.
Then, based on those meetings, about twenty various members of the public would meet with the board to
create the proposals.
“We talked with them because they are parents of our kids and business people and other folks in the
community,” Youngs said. “We just have a conversation and we just listen to each other and say what
makes the most academic sense and the most economic sense.”
The bond proposes to build three new buildings: Timberview Middle School, Ridgeview Elementary
and the Keller Early Learning Center, in total costing $74,569,000. It will also renovate existing schools
Keller High School, Indian Springs, South Keller Intermediate, Parkwood Hill Intermediate and Hillwood
Middle School.
“This bond isn’t focused just on growth like the earlier bonds, it’s focused on programmatic stuff and
also to address our aging buildings,” Youngs said.
For Keller High, $23,550,000 overall will be used for renovating the cafeteria, the administrative office
and the restrooms. The band hall and fine arts area will be added to as well. South Keller Intermediate

2. will be transformed into a Career and Technology Center instead of the district building an entirely new
facility.
In addition, a new feeder program will be implemented in 2016, but students on the current pattern will
remain until then. The program reduces the amount of split feeders, such as the divide within Willis Lane
Elementary students and Whitley Road Elementary, which caused children to attend high school with only
half of those they knew in elementary school. Youngs believes the new program will simplify the patterns
and prevent much division within the district.
“Being able to clean those up so that all of your friends in your elementary all go to the same
intermediate school [will] be a good thing, instead of losing half your friends, so that will clean up most
of the feeder pattern issues,” Youngs said.
According to project estimates on KISD’s website, the bond proposes $32,825,000 toward Career and
Technology renovations, the programmatic element of the bond. Last year, House Bill 5 passed Texas
legislation, which requires high schools to provide more CTE courses.
“Kids can graduate high school in a CTE program and go straight to work,” Youngs said. “The young
folks that are interested in cosmetology or some of the other career paths inside the CTE [wouldn’t] have
to go to college.”