Dallas ISD is floating a $6.2 billion bond package this May. The bulk of the request would go to building new schools and class space, plus tech upgrades and new buses. Photo courtesy of Jacob Wells via KERA.
Dallas ISD will ask voters this spring to approve the largest bond package in Texas state history.
Trustees on Thursday voted unanimously to put the $6.2 billion request on the May 2 ballot.
“I’m grateful and proud to be able to put this out to the voters,” trustee Byron Sanders said, “and I hope that they support it.”
The bulk of the bond will go toward improving and upgrading schools in the district. The package is divided into four propositions.
The nearly $6 billion Proposition A covers several areas such as modernizing, upgrading and renovating schools; building 26 new schools and creating hundreds of classrooms to replace portable spaces; and purchasing new school buses.
Trustee Lance Currie, who represents District 1, said the bond will improve classrooms.
“Our teachers deserve to walk into classrooms that give them the tools they need to educate our children,” Currie said. “They need to be able to walk in the classrooms that make them proud.”
Proposition B, for $144 million, will go toward new and upgraded technology.
Proposition C, worth $143 million, would fund the district’s current debt.
Proposition D, for $26 million, is for upgrades and renovations to aging swimming pool facilities.
Prior to the vote, trustees heard from more than a dozen community members who spoke in support of the bond.
“All students deserve safe and updated learning environments where they can imagine the brightest of futures for themselves regardless of their ZIP code,” said Dallas ISD special education teacher Mia Witt.
Education advocate and former trustee Miguel Solis called the bond an opportunity “to deliver for the people and for the children of our community.”
“The question is not whether this investment is too large, the question is whether Dallas will meet this moment with the ambition it requires, or allow it to pass,” he said.
Trustees had been working on the package since last February. They had previously considered a less costly option of $4.9 billion but ultimately rejected it.
Sanders said the process of putting together the bond combined data and boots-on-the-ground observations.
“We actually put ourself under a unique type of microscope and we gave ourself a different assessment,” he said. “And those things combined told us these are the places where we needed to make investments.”
The $6.2 billion bond would raise the average Dallas homeowner’s property taxes by $2.79 a month, or roughly $34 a year.
The district last floated a bond, for $3.7 billion, in 2020.
