Pilot Point ISD Superintendent Dr. Shannon Fuller shared the reason the board called a $295 million bond election for the May 2 ballot at the PointBank Business Breakfast on Feb. 25.
One of the issues she touched on is that the high amount is a growth bond that will be dependent on growth in the tax base to sell the bonds.
“This is considered a growth bond, and what that means is we don’t have the capacity yet to sell all the bonds,” Fuller said. “You can’t, as a school district, sell bonds unless you have the capacity, meaning you have to be able to have … the tax base to be able to support that.”
Such a bond typically needs to be used in a 10-year period, she added, and selling portions of the bond would happen as the values allow.
“One of the things that we heard loud and clear from the committee was, ‘Don’t keep coming to us every two to three years for a bond,’” Fuller said.
Pilot Point is looking at the moderate projection from the demographic study by School District Solutions as well as the model of surrounding districts—Celina, Aubrey and Sanger—for the growth it anticipates.
“We want to make sure that as we are going towards the future, that we manage the growth, the growth doesn’t manage us,” Fuller said.
PointBank CEO Raymond David Sr., who served on the bond committee, spoke up in support of the bond during the breakfast in Pilot Point.
“[When] Aubrey passed a $385 million bond, … they had no capacity,” he said. “They did not have that capacity in their taxes to be able to utilize that $385 million at the time they passed it, but I can tell you today that they have just about used [all of that now].”
Provided the growth holds, David said, the bond will be necessary.
“This may seem like a lot of money, but before you know it, you’re going to need to be using that,” David said. “… You can’t see those bonds until you have the capacity to repay those bonds.”
The study from School District Solutions estimates that PPISD could grow from where it is now, 1,758, to 2,430 students in 2031, then 4,275 by ‘35-36.
She also showed the map of active developments and projected developments to illustrate that estimated growth.
“Based on that, it’s over 29,000 single-family lots that are planned,” Fuller said.
The district used the functional capacity measurement in the demographics study to guide its plan for the proposed campuses, Fuller added.
“That means the spaces are used in the way that they were created to be used,” she said. “So, when you start to outgrow buildings, we have to start to get creative with spaces.”
She shared the projections of when the campuses will outgrow their functional capacity through to where the buildings would be at or over full capacity, where safety becomes a major concern.
“For the elementary, we start hitting functional capacity next year,” Fuller said. “… In the next two to three years, functional capacity in the elementary school starts to get tight.”
The middle school would hit the same around the 2029-30 timeframe and the high school in 2031-32.
She added that the Early Childhood Center’s population fluctuates based on demand for the child care side.
“It depends on how many kids register,” Fuller said. “… While we have a little bit of space, it is very quickly becoming full.”
In 2021, the Pilot Point ISD voters approved a $38.4 million bond, with which the district purchased land for future school sites, including the Foutch Road property that is slated to be a high school site.
Phase 1 of that new high school is part of the May bond package, which would cost $192.6 million.
“The new high school would be projected to be open in 2029,” Fuller said. “It would be up to about 1,000, 1,100 students in Phase 1. It would be built in two phases. … Phase 2 would be included in a future bond.”
In Phase 1 would be Career and Technical Education spaces to expand those pathways on campus instead of forcing the district to bus their students to Denton for those offerings.
“We would love for them to be able to have them here, and for them to stay here with us,” Fuller said.
If the new high school is built, the current one would be retrofitted to become the middle school campus.
“It is a middle-schoolsized school,” she said.
A new elementary school would be added to the district if the May 2 bond passes, which would have a $76.5 million price tag.
The school shuffling would help alleviate crowding until the second elementary could be built, Fuller said.
There are no engineered plans yet for either school because that work would be paid for with the May bond.
“We have not hired an architect,” Fuller said.
The remaining $25.9 million would go into the existing district facilities including “updates to middle school spaces to serve intermediate students;” “plumbing and electrical upgrades;” “classroom and common area refreshes;” and “addressing aging facilities,” according to the bond website.
Pilot Point ISD voters can go to pilotpointisdbond.com for additional details about the proposed bond and the projects it would fund.
A calculator is also embedded onto the website at pilotpointisdbond. com/financials, where voters can enter their exact home value to find out what the individual financial impact is for them that shows a side-by-side comparison of the current rate and the rate if the bond were to pass.
