Hays school district asks voters to approve $968M in bonds for new schools, expansions
In March 2024 a concrete truck driver hit a Hays school district bus carrying students from Tom Green Elementary and their families on a field trip. Two people were killed, including a child in the bus that had no seatbelts. Dozens of other bus passengers were rushed to hospitals with cuts and bruises.
"At that time, the district made a plan to accelerate getting buses that had seatbelts," said Tim Savoy, the district's communication officer. Ninety percent of the district's regular buses are now equipped with seatbelts, said Savoy. If voters approve the buses requested in the bond, he said, all of the district's regular school buses will have seatbelts.
Among 13 Central Texas school districts, an American-Statesman analysis in November found that only four have bus fleets fully outfitted with seat belts while four others have at least 75% of their fleets with restraints.
More: Deadly Hays crash reveals Texas school buses lack seat belts: 'They should know better.'
The proposed bond package, which is split into five different propositions, is the biggest in the district's history, Savoy said. During the bond election in 2023, voters approved $315.7 million in bonds but they turned down the outdoor pavilions for fine arts and athletics that are included in this year's bond package.
If approved, Savoy said, the bonds this year would not raise property tax rates because the growth in the county is expected to bring in more revenue. Hays County had 292,029 residents in July 2024, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Census. The estimated population in 2020 was 241,067.
More: Hays CISD could call almost $900M bond vote to expand, build schools
More: Hays school district calls $368 million bond. Here's what district hopes to get.
"We are growing anywhere from 800 to 1,000 kids a year and that is projected to continue for the next decade or more," said Savoy. The current student population of 24,144 is expected to grow to 45,019 by 2034, according to district figures. The district, which covers 221 square miles, serves the cities of Kyle and Buda and other areas in northern Hays County.
The five bond propositions are:
Proposition A: $498.9 million is proposed for these projects:
Hays High School: Academic expansion to accommodate 2,800 students, renovation of cafeteria and other maintenance and improvement projects.
Johnson High School: New weight room and additional parking.
Lehman High School: Academic expansion to 2,800 student capacity, new all-purpose gym, kitchen addition and cafeteria renovation, new weight room
Artificial turf at all middle schools
Wallace Middle School: Running tracks to be resurfaced to maintain safety and proper playability
McCormick Middle School: Running track to be resurfaced to maintain safety, weight room and locker room additions, art room renovation, driveway expansion, utility renovation, athletic turf and track improvements, temporary portable building relocation
Simon Middle School: Academic expansion to 1,200 student capacity, weight room and locker room renovation, performing arts studio addition, art room renovation, athletic turf and track improvements
Barton, Chapa and Dahlstrom middle schools: Athletic turf and track improvements, running tracks to be resurfaced to maintain safety and proper playability
Elementary 18: Construction in northeast part of district, location to be determined.
Elementary 19: Design, location to be determined.
Hemphill, Fuentes, Kyle and Tom Green elementaries: Add classrooms and other additions to expand schools to 900-student capacity each, refresh amenities to be consistent with current elementary prototype
Maintenance: Roof maintenance and replacement at Kyle, Negley, Science Hall and Tom Green elementaries, Barton and Chapa middle schools and Hays High School. Mechanical, electrical, plumbing and life safety system replacements at Kyle, Negley, Pfluger, Science Hall and Tom Green elementaries, Barton and Chapa middle schools, Hays High School and Shelton Stadium.
Uhland Maintenance Facility: Construction of new facility
Buses: Thirty buses, including 22 for daily transport. The other eight buses are activity buses with storage compartments for equipment including band instruments.
Security: Parking lot access control buildings, districtwide re-key, wayfinding signage
Career & Technical Education: Cycle replacement of tools and equipment; addition of Fire Academy burn tower; purchase of self-contained breathing apparatus, packs and accessories
Athletics and fine arts: Cycle replacements including but not limited to uniforms, equipment and instruments
Proposition B: $396 million is proposed for comprehensive high school #4. The district has three traditional high schools with activities including band, sports and theater, and one high school for early graduation and self-paced students, The new high school will be designed for 2,800 students at Main Street and Turnersville Road in Buda and will open in 2029.
Proposition C: $6 million to expand the sub varsity stadium at the Bob Shelton Stadium. The seating capacity will be expanded to allow for a second, shared district varsity competition space to accommodate the new high school. The anticipated total capacity will be approximately 8,500 people.
Proposition D: $51.3 million for construction and equipping of four outdoor, covered and lighted athletics and fine arts educational, rehearsal and performance facilities. The facilities will be at Hays, Johnson and Lehman high schools, and comprehensive high school #4.
Proposition E: $16.2 million for technology. This would replace old network campus data switches; provide uninterruptible power supplies for campuses; provide voltage regulation and stable power for expensive network equipment and replace phone systems at all campuses because the manufacturer no longer supports the current phone system. It also would provide non-brand specific tablets, computers and laptops for student use at campuses; replace old, outdated or broken school campus sound systems; replace outdated district printshop machines and provide new copiers to save money instead of leasing them.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: What voters get if they approve $968M bond package for Hays schools
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
13 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Going to therapy while the world is on fire
'I'm doing well,' I answer in a semireflexive way. The kids are thriving, summer is here, vacation is coming soon. Yet my answer does not capture the full picture. 'Well, I mean apart from the fact that terrible things are happening all around and that the world feels on the brink of collapse.' Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up A car ablaze in Sweida, Syria, following clashes between Bedouin and Druze factions on July 14. Getty Images/Getty Advertisement One of my patients doesn't wait for me to ask how he is doing as we start an early morning session. 'I can't do therapy today,' he says. I listen, curious. 'There's just too much dissonance. Not sure I can really go into the details of what's happening in my life when the world seems to be crumbling all around.' I've heard many versions of this expressed in therapy over the past several months, a hesitation about feeling entitled to a 50-minute therapy session. (I received consent from my patients to reference their stories anonymously.) 'Your life matters,' I say. 'Yes, big things are happening, but this doesn't mean your life doesn't have significance.' My words feel flimsy, perhaps because I'm only partially convinced of them myself. My patient knocks them down in the next three seconds. 'Yeah, well, you're a therapist, so of course you are going to say that.' Advertisement Sometimes I need a good little kick of radical honesty in a session to sharpen my focus. 'Many people are talking about this very question in therapy,' I say. I tell him that I'm thinking about this question, too. He tells me about hypernormalization, a term introduced by the Russian-born American anthropologist Alexei Yurchak to describe the way in which people carried on with life pretending everything was normal in the 1970s Soviet Union despite the systemic failure of government and institutions. I listen in silent agreement. My patient tells me he is grateful for having just gotten a good job offer, but his happiness is tempered by his awareness of what is happening in the country and the world. Some of his friends want to leave the country. 'What do I do?' he asks. 'Should I escape to Europe? Focus on my job? Amass wealth and buy a house? Fight? How do I fight?' A Ukrainian firefighter worked to extinguish a fire following Russian drone strikes on houses in Odesa, on July 11. OLEKSANDR GIMANOV/AFP via Getty Images We end the session without having gotten into the dynamics of the romantic relationship he had wanted to talk about. I remember learning in grad school about the late American psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner's biopsychosocial model, which holds that human development is influenced by multiple interconnected systems in a person's environment. An illustration showing a stick-figure individual at the center of several concentric circles: family and close friends first, with community and school one ring out, and politics, government, religion, and culture circling the whole. I imagine the stick figure — my patient or me — becoming uncentered, floating across the lines that are themselves wobbly. Advertisement Therapy feels like this: destabilized. Can we truly shut out the outside world and carry on with day-to-day therapy work when the world keeps smashing into us? What weight do our individual lives carry? Some patients wonder at the self-indulgence of paying good money to talk about relationships, health, families, careers, kids, pets. These perennial questions for the practice of therapy have resurfaced with a new urgency over the past several months. For other patients, the political world has become of immediate relevance to their day-to-day lives. Depression, anxiety, anger, dissociation, and fear are heightened for many. Scientist and doctor patients whose research funding has been cut question their life's direction. Other patients talk about deportation; yet others are fearful of losing food stamps and housing benefits. A woman with a severe trauma history, whose government-subsidized housing has provided her with a sense of safety she had never felt, tells me she has a suicide plan if her benefits get taken away. She is not joking. A colleague mentions a patient with a history of delusions who is terrified when he sees black SUVs pull up in front of his building. The presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in his neighborhood now gives his delusions a grounding in reality. The line that separates anxiety from paranoia has shifted. Smoke and fire rose to the sky following an Israeli army bombardment in the northern Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel on July 10. Leo Correa/Associated Press And then there are many patients who, like me, feel enraged and powerless, consumed and wanting to escape. Meanwhile, life on the street in my neighborhood looks eerily normal: People get coffee, kids play while parents chat at the playground, runners run, and, of course, people go to their weekly therapy appointments. Advertisement I ask my own therapist, 'Is it strange for me to talk to you about my own little life in the context of the world? What are you telling your patients? What should I be telling mine?' I see in her eyes that she knows what I'm talking about. She is asking similar questions. She tells me about a book she is reading about the power of defiance. Sounds good, I tell her, as I put it in my online cart. Not a typical therapist move. We are out of mainstream therapy water. Both as therapist and patient, I wonder how much my individual story has weight and consequence in the context of a breaking social order. Is there a risk that I am becoming complicit with this break if I carry on talking about relationships and family and summer plans in my therapy as if nothing else were going on? And what if I don't feel like talking about politics in therapy? Or what if I need to shut out the world so I can focus on what's happening in my smaller sphere? I reflect on what I had said to my patient, about his life continuing to matter. It hits me on my bike ride home along the river after my therapy appointment, alongside the people sitting by the water taking in the afternoon sun. Our lives matter. The fact of an administration that seeks to crush individual voices, and in particular dissenting ones, urges us to stay aware of ourselves. Many skills developed in therapy are important not just to individual well-being and personal growth; they are tools to support coping and, if we want them to be, can be vehicles for political change and resistance. These tools and vehicles include self-exploration, curiosity, reflection, questioning of previously held assumptions and what we thought were given truths, taking risks, tolerating distress, managing uncomfortable emotional states, appreciating one's unique identity, questioning fear, building on one's strengths, and exploring possibilities for change. At a time when difference and diversity in being and critical thought are in peril, now more than ever is the time to bolster those very qualities. Advertisement
Business Insider
an hour ago
- Business Insider
Geopolitical Turmoil Spurs ConocoPhillips Stock (COP) Bulls
While upstream hydrocarbon giant ConocoPhillips (COP) represents a vital cog within the U.S. energy ecosystem, its underlying oil and gas exploration and production business has been gradually losing market favor in light of clean and renewable solutions. Since the start of this year, COP stock has declined by 5%, while over the past 52 weeks, it has fallen approximately 18%. Elevate Your Investing Strategy: Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence. Make smarter investment decisions with TipRanks' Smart Investor Picks, delivered to your inbox every week. Nevertheless, some changes could be in store. Since early June, COP stock has been steadily moving northward. Naturally, the upward trend can be linked to escalating tensions in the Middle East, which have raised serious concerns about the stability of global oil supply chains. However, ConocoPhillips has also benefited from a much more productive catalyst — strong support from President Donald Trump. Throughout the campaign trail, Trump has repeatedly championed the hydrocarbon industry, particularly oil and gas. Therefore, when he signed the 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act,' the move came as no surprise to anyone paying even remote attention to American politics. Essentially, the new law rolls back much of the environmentally forward policies of the Biden and Obama administrations. Cynically, the paradigm-shifting decision should help boost ConocoPhillips' relevance. Given that Trump will be in power for the next three years, long-term investors, including myself, have a justification for being Bullish on COP stock. Importantly, taking advantage of the current price action will require the use of COP stock options and a slightly unconventional approach to ascertaining the probability of near-term prices. Laying the Foundation of Applied Game Theory While it's important to understand the color and context of an investment prospect, for options traders, such narratives don't address the two key components necessary for an adequate thesis: magnitude projection (y-axis) and time frame (x-axis). Since all options eventually expire, it's not enough to be directionally confident; there must also be temporal integration. Let's be practical: most market participants turn to financial publications not simply for general interest, but to gain clear, actionable insights—specifically, identifying promising opportunities and understanding the appropriate timing to act on them. Effectively addressing both elements often goes beyond traditional fundamental or technical analysis. In my view, this is where applied game theory becomes valuable, offering a structured, evidence-based framework to help determine not just what decisions to make, but when to make them. However, one metric that creates confusion is the share price. As a continuous signal, the share price of any security is unbounded, meaning that it can theoretically go anywhere (with the apparent exception of negative prices). Such kinesis presents significant challenges for comparative studies, rendering statistical analysis extremely difficult, if not impossible. A more forward-thinking approach involves compressing price discovery into market breadth, specifically, tracking sequences of accumulation and distribution sessions. Market breadth addresses the fundamental question: By the end of the day, was the market a net buyer or a net seller? By distilling data down to its core drivers, we can more effectively spot recurring patterns and the key moments when they begin to shift. Putting Theory into Practice with COP Stock Utilizing the above methodology for COP stock across 10-week intervals gives us the following demand profile: In the trailing two months, COP stock has printed a 4-6-U sequence: four up weeks, six down weeks, with a positive trajectory across the 10-week period. It's a rare sequence, having only materialized nine times since January 2019. Much of its unusual nature centers on the balance of distributive sessions being greater than accumulative, yet the overall trajectory is positive. What's really intriguing, though, is that in six cases of the 4-6-U flashing, the following week's price action resulted in upside, with a median return of 4.71%. During the three times that COP stock fell, the median loss was 3.37%. Armed with a higher probability of success and a greater performance magnitude, options traders are theoretically incentivized to consider bidding on this particular hand. Formalizing COP's Market Sequences It's worth pointing out that if the market were truly random, analyzing the above demand sequences wouldn't matter: the probabilities should coalesce around 50%. Yet that's not what's happening at all. Some hands — if we want to use gambling terms — clearly favor the bettor over others. My thesis, then, is that the 4-6-U sequence is an intriguing idea to consider given that its chance of upside is nearly 67%. In contrast, the baseline probability (for a one-week-long position) is only 52.05% — that's game theory in action. With this in mind, aggressive traders may want to consider the 95/97 bull call spread expiring on August 1st. This transaction involves buying the $95 call and simultaneously selling the $97 call, for a net debit paid of $97 (the maximum possible loss). Should COP stock rise through the short strike price of $97 at expiration, the maximum reward is $103, a payout of over 106%. Is ConocoPhillips a Buy, Sell, or Hold? Turning to Wall Street, COP stock carries a Strong Buy consensus rating based on 15 Buys, two Holds, and zero Sell ratings over the past three months. The average COP stock price target is $114.71, implying almost 24% upside potential over the coming year. Betting on COP Stock's Potential Rise the Smart Way While energy investors may appreciate the Trump administration's support of ConocoPhillips and the broader hydrocarbon ecosystem, this narrative alone doesn't really provide actionable insights for options traders, who require a multi-dimensional working thesis. To address this dilemma, we can apply the principles of game theory, identifying patterns and probabilistic projections for a more innovative near-term Bullish approach.
an hour ago
Canada's Couche-Tard drops offer to buy Japanese 7-Eleven convenience stores
TOKYO -- Canadian retail chain Alimentation Couche-Tard is dropping its proposal to acquire Seven & i Holdings Co., the Japanese operator of the 7-Eleven convenience store chain, citing frustration in ongoing negotiations that showed 'a lack of constructive engagement.' The 7-Eleven parent company rejected an offer last year, but Couche-Tard, which runs the global Circle K chain, was still interested and tried to coax a deal with the Japanese chain known here as 'conbini.' In a letter dated July 16 and sent to the Seven & i board, Couche-Tard stressed it had made a good offer earlier this year in a proposal of 2,600 yen ($17.50) per ordinary share in cash, which it said represented a 47.6% premium to the stock price. The initial offer, made last year, was for 2,200 yen ($14.86) per share in cash. In the letter, sent to media Thursday and signed by its two top executives, including founder Alain Bouchard, Couche-Tard expressed exasperation at the response it was getting from Seven & i despite repeated attempts at dialogue. 'We have been very patient and respectful throughout this process, beginning with our meeting on July 23, 2024,' the letter said. 'You have engaged in a calculated campaign of obfuscation and delay, to the great detriment of 7 & i and its shareholders. We believe this approach reinforces our concerns about your approach to governance. Based on this persistent lack of good faith engagement, we are withdrawing our proposal.' Couche-Tard, which runs nearly 17,000 stores in more than 30 countries and territories, including the U.S., said the documents it got lacked key information, executives were no-shows at meetings, and the meetings it did have ended up being 'readouts' of statements, not frank discussions. Seven & i acknowledged the dropped offer Thursday and said it considered talks 'in good faith and constructively.' 'We remain fully committed to our standalone value creation plan, which we have been pursing in parallel, and to unlocking the value of our businesses, including our North American convenience store business. Our plan is concrete and actionable,' it said in a statement. Some analysts say Seven & i management has not fully leveraged the business' global potential or delivered enough value to shareholders, and could use better marketing, although its bottom line is unlikely to be affected by U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff policies. The 7-Eleven franchise, which spans more than 85,000 stores in Japan, the U.S. and Europe, has a new chief executive, Stephen Hayes Dacus, the first foreigner tapped to head 7-Eleven. Dacus, an American whose mother is Japanese, has promised a leaner business by focusing on the supply chain and tailoring shop offerings to various regions. For the first quarter of this fiscal year, Seven & i reported a doubling in profits to 49 billion yen ($330 million), mainly due to previously announced sales of property and equipment at its Ito-Yokado Co. retail chain. Quarterly sales held up, as a favorable exchange rate helped some overseas earnings, according to the Tokyo-based chain. The seemingly omnipresent 7-Eleven chain speckles the streets of Japan, offering everything from stationery items and rice balls to hot coffee and utility bill payments.
