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Houston ISD officials are considering asking taxpayers to approve a multibillion-dollar bond in November, but Superintendent Mike Miles’ administration has yet to go through a widely used process to involve the community — and may be running short on time to do so.

With seven months to go before a potential record bond election, HISD leaders haven’t convened a community committee to offer feedback and make recommendations about what should be included in a package. 

In recent years, all of the Houston area’s largest districts have assembled a similar committee, which helps get community buy-in for spending billions of dollars on school construction projects and other expensive upgrades. HISD could face a particularly tall task in garnering support for a bond this year, given widespread community opposition to the state-appointed superintendent and school board running the district.

An HISD spokesperson told the Houston Landing that district leaders are “considering” creating a group of community members to assist in the planning process. If HISD does form a committee, it likely will be later in the process relative to other districts, which generally set up the groups roughly six to nine months before the election date. 

Miles has not confirmed that the district will go out for a bond in November, but has repeatedly said his administration is looking into the possibility.

“HISD students deserve better than the buildings they have inherited after more than a decade of neglect,” an HISD spokesperson wrote in an email to the Landing. “If and when the district moves forward with a bond election, the bond plan will address the most urgent student needs and will not raise taxes.”

When voters approve a school bond, they give districts the green light to take on debt to pay for renovating aging buildings, buying new technology and updating school security, among many other projects. Districts largely use residents’ property taxes to pay back the borrowed money and interest.

Asking residents to support a bond — and, in some cases, raising tax rates in the process — often requires winning over skeptical voters. To help make the case, districts often point to the work done by bond committees, which sometimes involve dozens of local residents.

Patricia Cabrera, a longtime Spring Branch community organizer who helped build the district’s nearly $900 million bond package as a committee member in 2017, said her group studied and advocated for the district’s most pressing needs. Cabrerra fears the clock is ticking for HISD to give families the same sense of ownership. 

“They definitely need to make an effort to pull people together,” Cabrera said. “I don't know if HISD has time.”

Overdue for upgrades

Most Texas districts pass a bond roughly every five years. But HISD’s most recent bond passed in 2012, a $1.9 billion package backed by roughly two-thirds of voters. The district aimed to hold a bond election in the late 2010s, but many voters lost faith in the district due to infighting among board members and the prospect of an imminent state takeover.

As a result, many of HISD’s buildings are breaking down, with repeated heating and cooling issues. 

While HISD families and leaders generally agree that the district needs to pass a bond, a potential November election still could prove contentious.

Voting on a bond represents one of the only remaining ways that Houston taxpayers can directly influence the district’s operations following Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath’s appointment of Miles and an unelected school board last June. 

Some HISD families and community advocates have criticized Miles’ dramatic overhaul of the district, arguing that he has ignored community voices in his decision-making process. Miles has said he’s made a few recent changes in response to community feedback — most notably, delaying the rollout of a new principal evaluation system — though he’s generally pushed forward with his preferred methods for changing district operations.

At a March school board meeting, several parents said they would shoot down any upcoming bond as a protest vote against Miles.

“We, the electorate, have the responsibility to not throw good money after bad. So, we might have to touch a sacred cow, meaning the bond,” HISD parent Stacy Anderson said at the meeting. “In my 22 years of living and being a voter in the city of Houston, I have never, ever voted against a bond. But I can tell you now, with the way that it is going, I will have to.”

HISD has not said how large any upcoming bond proposal might be, but a credit opinion issued by Moody’s investor service in late March said that the district expects a bond package between $3.5 billion and $5 billion. HISD said the estimate was based on facilities planning work from 2022 and will be updated.

Convincing the community

While all of Greater Houston’s largest districts have used a bond committee to drum up support in recent years, the make-up of committees and ultimate impact on public perception has varied.

The committees varied in size, ranging from less than a dozen members to more than 100. Some district committees met multiple times over many months, while others recorded only a few meetings. 

Willie Rainwater, who helped form and now oversees the implementation of Fort Bend Independent School District’s $1.2 billion bond passed last year, said the committee is particularly valuable when it gives residents space to be heard.

“If you get people that are just benchwarmer kind of personalities, they’re just there to say, ‘I'm on a committee,’ then it doesn’t work so well,” Rainwater said. “But I don't think anyone should be charged or be responsible to pay anything that he or she has no say in. You do something to try and seek some information from the people who are paying the bill.”

In 2012, HISD did not assemble a committee before going out for a bond election, but district officials later appointed seven community members to oversee the investments approved by voters. 

Michael G. Davis, the father of two HISD students on the district’s southwest side and owner of a Houston-based real estate firm, served on the committee. He felt HISD leaders took the group’s recommendations to heart, and that the body served as an important go-between for the district and the public as a “vehicle of transparency.”

“We were ambassadors for (the bond),” Davis said. “They needed some people that were not affiliated with HISD getting the true information, and then being able to go back to the community with accurate information.”

Asher Lehrer-Small and Miranda Dunlap cover education for the Houston Landing. They would love to hear your tips, questions and story ideas. Reach them at asher@houstonlanding.org and miranda@houstonlanding.org.

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