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McALLEN — The district held a town hall meeting on Oct. 28 and presented information on the state of its school buildings, which are in need of repairs or expansions, in preparation for a possible $335 million bond that officials say won’t increase a tax rate.

The McAllen school district partnered up with MGT, an education facilities consultant, on systematically looking at each building’s age, infrastructure and other areas. The report also collected feedback from the district’s Facilities Forecast Advisory Committee, which is made up of school officials, parents and community members.

The report presented at UTRGV McAllen ISD Collegiate Academy is about 160 slides long and goes over the methodology from MGT, a demographics overview, enrollment projections, schools capacity and utilization, and, most importantly, the district-wide conditions overview with specific findings and the cost summary.

The report also had a polling summary that detailed responses from the Facilities Forecast Advisory Committee such as their priorities, what they thought about the schools they toured and what improvements they would want to see.

McAllen ISD Superintendent René Gutiérrez started the town hall by stating the last time a bond was approved was 20 years ago which the district is about to pay off.

“This is a good thing for us, that we are going to be debt free from previous bonds,” Gutiérrez said. “And now it provides us an opportunity into looking at a bond, looking at our facilities, and look to see if we can borrow money so that we can improve a lot of our schools. … We’ve been just keeping up with it on a year-to-year basis, based on our own budget, but that’s not enough.”

Each category such as Capacity and Utilization gives each school a certain percentage on if they are in the green or red in each area.

For Capacity and Utilization, kindergarten through fifth grade schools have an overall grade of 77.14% which is just below the 80% to 95% threshold of adequate space.

Overall for the district, the percentage is 87.27% but there are a few schools in the red such as McAllen High at 120.06%, Morris Middle School at 136.24% and two elementary schools above 110%.

Joining the Facilities Forecast Advisory Committee for a visit of Morris Middle School, it is apparent that the facility is in need of an expansion.

Doing the most with what they can, the school earned an A rating last year by the Texas Education Agency accountability report and excels in academics and sports.

Taking a look around campus, Morris Middle School has a plethora of portable classrooms outside that are heavily used for all grade levels. Problems arise with internet connection and when it rains, students have to withstand the elements and flooding around the areas.

The other main part of the report is the facilities assessments which include building condition, education suitability, technology readiness, grounds condition. All of those factors are combined into a score for the building.

The average score for the building conditions in the district came out at 75.39 which is labeled as fair. Some schools ranked between 60-69, labeled as poor, but none were marked below 60 as unsatisfactory.

Technology readiness is a high point in the report for the district, with an average score for the district being 93.25.

The combined scores are separated in averages for each school level with elementary having 77.21, middle school at 75.63 and high school average at 73.67.

At the end of the report, MGT gave recommendations on what to do and what should be a priority in each of the categories such as replacing portables with permanent classroom wings at several schools like Morris Middle School, modernizing campuses with roofing HVAC, electrical and ADA upgrades.

One part included the possibility of new construction, expansion, and how much that would approximately cost the district.

At Morris Middle School, replacing portable classrooms would take about 19,000 square feet and cost about $10.68 million.

School Board President Aaron Rivera said at the meeting it was a lot of information to take in and the trustee’s first time viewing the detailed report and is ready to take on the process in figuring out the needs for the district.

“A lot of things are centralized on the fact that our buildings are deteriorating,” he said. “We need to be able to make those changes in the buildings. It’s going to provide a more conducive learning environment for the children. A lot of the changes, unfortunately, probably will not be cosmetic. It’s tough to do that now with the rising cost of everything that’s going on, materials and whatnot, but at least to have our children and our staff in a safe and secure place, I think, is a top priority.”

Rivera added it’s important for the community to become involved in the process to see where their children are going to school and how it can be improved.

“I walked through some of the schools, and they haven’t changed since I was there and that’s years ago,” he said. “I think every parent would agree that we want to send our children to newer schools or newer facilities.”

To read the full report and detailed information on each McAllen ISD campus, visit the Facilities Forecast Advisory Committee website, which includes the 163-slide report.

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