STATE OF THE DISTRICT

DSISD staff present at Chamber luncheon

The featured presenters at this month’s Chamber of Commerce luncheon on Mar. 26 included several administrators from Dripping Springs ISD, who gave an update on the state of the district.

That included information on the upcoming bond election. The deadline to register to vote in that election is April 3.

“Early voting will run from Tuesday, April 22 to April 29, and then the big day, election day, is Saturday, May 3,” Deputy Superintendent Elaine Cogburn said.

Cogburn also talked about the upcoming community presentations that will go deeper into what is in the bond.

“On April 9, in the morning and the evening, 9:30 a.m. or 6 p.m., you can come to our Center for Learning and Leadership and we will go through all this in more detail,” Cogburn said. “We also have a very robust website for the 2025 bond outlining all these projects.”

Dr. Holly Morris-Kuentz, DSISD superintendent, said DSISD has been identified as a fast-growth district in Texas, and is currently serving about 8,700 students. There are nine campuses - one high school, two middle schools and six elementary schools - and the district covers 198 square miles.

Morris-Kuentz discussed current and projected enrollment in the district. Two elementaries and one middle school are already over capacity, but the addition of the new elementary school that will open this fall and the expansion of Sycamore Springs Middle School will help alleviate those issues. The high school is also over capacity. She said that while some people think the growth is going to slow down, there is no sign of that happening.

“If you look at our trend line, this is 2008 all the way up to present, you can see that the district follows that same trend,” Morris- Kuentz said. “Every year we have kind of that same growth pattern.”

Next, Cogburn went over financial operations, and also provided some key facts about DSISD.

“We have about 1100 employees. The latest data I could find was back in 2021, which makes us the seventh largest employer in Hays County,” Cogburn said. “We cut about 1900 payroll checks per month. That's a lot of people.”

She said the district currently maintains 1.6 million square feet of facilities, which is the equivalent of 27 football fields. The cafeterias serve 5,000 meals per day, and DSISD buses drive 4,300 miles per day.

“If you Google the distance between LA and New York, it's 2,778 miles,” Cogburn said. “So when you see school buses on the road, they're racking up lots of miles.”

Cogburn gave an overview of the district budget, which shows that almost 60% of the total operating budget goes to classrooms and instruction. The next largest area is facilities and utilities, which takes about 11% of the budget each year. She said those numbers make it very difficult to find areas to cut from the district budget.

Dr. Karen Kidd, Assistant Superintendent for Learning & Innovation, was up next. She talked to the group about student outcomes. She said DSISD students are top performers on the STAAR test for Region 13. Additionally, for the SAT and ACT, DSISD students outperform the national average in both of those assessments.

“That's kudos to our teachers, our parents and our students. They're high achieving,” Kidd said. “And we have amazing programs that are really robust to provide so many opportunities for our kids. We're going to continue to be a destination district because of these things.”

Next on the agenda was a more detailed discussion of the bond election, led by Morris- Kuentz.

“Our May 2025 bond package includes two propositions. Proposition A is 39.7 million. That includes construction of a second high school, capital improvements at two campuses with renovations, and then improvements across seven other district facilities.”

It also includes some transportation pieces, including seatbelts for buses, and some technology infrastructure.

“Proposition B is 2.6 million and that's where most of the technology is,” Morris-Kuentz said. “That's a refresh for staff devices and also for students, and interactive panels for classrooms as a replacement for projectors.”

The biggest project in the bond is high school number two. As a comprehensive high school, it's going to include athletics, fine arts and CTE programming - in short, similar offerings to Drippings Springs High School.

“What it does not include, and the question that we get most often, is a competition stadium,” Morris-Kuentz said. “Tiger stadium remains our one competition stadium for our school district.”

The campus will have a JV field and stadium, as well as a track and the other typical amenities that are required for an athletics program. The two high schools would share the competition stadium for games.

“Construction, if the bond passes, would begin next year and would continue for the next four years,” Morris-Kuentz said. “The soonest it could open would be the 2829 school year.”

Scott Berry, DSISD Chief Operating Officer, talked about capital improvements next, which touch almost every facility in the district.

“The first one is Dripping Springs High School. This campus, you may know, opened in 1996,” Berry said. “That's 29 years in operation. It's got a capacity of 2500 students, and currently we're at 2564.”

The first phase of improvements would include additional classrooms, and those would be constructed over the summer of 26 and the summer of 27. It would also address the HVAC system and lighting.

“Also a part of this is safety updates, and that includes vape detectors in the bathrooms,” Berry said.

Some of the updates are designed to segment the competition areas of the school. He said that would allow the school to have tournaments and events without spectators being able to go into the rest of the school.

Several other schools are also slated for capital improvements, as is the transportation department, which needs a new bus wash.

“Continuing with transportation, we do have buses that we use that will be retrofitted with seabelts,” Berry said. “Then we would like to purchase some new buses to replace our aging fleet and then also for growth for high school number two.”

After the presentations, the administrators took some questions from the audience, including a question about what happens if the bond doesn’t pass.

“So the question we often get is if the bond doesn't pass, how do you fit more students into the facilities you have? There are only a couple of ways to do that,” Morris-Kuentz said. “One is you have to increase class size, because you only have so many classrooms. Two is you have to add portables, but you only have so much land to do that.”

Susan Kimball, President and CEO of the Dripping Springs Chamber of Commerce closed out the information session by responding to a question from a business person about whether businesses could help promote the passing of the bond.

“It’s important that there is space for learning, so if you are led to support that, then I think it would be great,” Kimball said.

She also had advice for those who have really young kids and think this all seems very far off.

“I can assure you as one of the old ladies in the room, it goes so fast, and before you know it, we're talking about your kids in high school,” Kimball said. “It really does go fast, so just consider all that.”