Voters on Saturday overwhelmingly rejected the $31.5 million bond issue to overhaul the Robinson Independent School District junior high school.
About 1,219 voters cast ballots against the bond issue, five years after passing a $19.5 million bond to build a new intermediate school. Just 535 people voted for the bond.
Robinson ISD school board president Laura Crawford said she is shocked and disappointed by the outcome.
“I’m shocked at how big a margin it was,” she said Saturday night. “I’m disappointed that many people voted against it as a result of misinformation and misinterpreting information. Facebook was not our friend.”
Crawford said people seemed to rely on misinformation spread across social media instead of turning to legitimate sources of information, such as the bond issue website.
“It was a lot of confusion about city and school taxes. A lot of people think they’re connected,” she said. “The school tax and city tax are completely different things. The school district is not going to fix your streets, and the city is not going to build a new school.”
People stated on social media that they would not vote for the school bond because of infrastructure problems in the city, Crawford said, or they voiced opposition to the bond because Robinson ISD is paying off two other outstanding bonds, one of which expires in five years.
“If we wait five years to pay off older bonds, we’re looking at probably twice the amount to pay for construction costs. We’re looking at as much as $60 million,” Crawford said. “It’s something that’s going to have to be done.”
The school district would have used the bond funds to update its multi-building junior high campus, erected in the late 1960s, that serves students in seventh and eighth grades. The plan included significant new construction, demolition of a classroom wing and renovation and repurposing of original buildings that would remain. The bond also would have paid for expansion of the high school agricultural facility.
In 2014, the bond to replace the 50-year-old intermediate school for grades four through six passed by 19 votes, according to Tribune-Herald archives. That successful bond election came after two failed ones in 2011 and 2013.
The $31.5 million bond would have added about $303 per year in property taxes to the average home, valued at $187,095, in the Robinson ISD taxing zone, according to the bond issue website.
Robinson ISD has roughly 2,350 students, up from 2,190 in 2009, according to the Texas Education Agency.
— WACOTRIB