The Dallas ISD board of trustees will meet tomorrow to discuss a “Bridge Plan” that would address needs at several of its schools, including overcrowded neighborhood elementary schools Lakewood and Stonewall Jackson. The district says the soonest it could have a bond package ready for a public vote is November 2015, but “we have facilities needs in the district right now that simply cannot wait,” says Mike Koprowski, Dallas ISD’s Chief of Innovation and Transformation. Interim funding could allow construction to begin as early as this spring, the district says.
Included in the $172 million list of projects to be discussed is a $12.6 million addition at Lakewood, to open during the 2016-17 school year, that would replace the portable and modular buildings and expand the cafeteria, plus renovations to the existing campus. This is the Lakewood Elementary Expansion Fund (LEEF) project that last year raised $500,000 to “fund the architects,” money that LEEF organizers also hoped would be matched by DISD and that would tap into $5 million in federal stimulus money toward the project. LEEF sent out an email today stating that “if all goes well and the Board of Trustees moves forward with the proposals outlined in Thursday’s briefing, an action item to fund the project would be forthcoming.”
The proposed project at Stonewall is a $5.3 million 13,653-square-foot addition, including a pre-kindergarten wing, that would open during the 2016-17 school year.
Lakewood is at 155 percent capacity, and Stonewall is at 156 percent capacity.
Roughly half of the funds being discussed tomorrow would address overcrowded schools like Lakewood and Stonewall; the other half would support pre-kindergarten and school choice initiatives throughout the district. The latter category applies to two other neighborhood elementary schools — $2.5 million to turn Dan D. Rogers into a “personalized learning innovation school” and $700,000 to replace Sanger’s pre-k modulars with a wing and add modulars at the school to expand Sanger up to eighth-grade.
All of these projects could be funded without a bond program, using a “public facility corporation” and maintenance tax notes, neither of which would require a tax increase, the district says.
The full list of proposed Bridge Plan projects can be found on pages 32-37 of this document. The board will discuss the proposed projects tomorrow but won’t vote on anything until the Feb. 26 board meeting, at the earliest.
