Coppell Chronicle Vol. 5, No. 2
School That May Close Will be Refreshed • District Has Concerns About Credit Rating • Trustees Deny Petition to Shift Boundaries • City Will Appeal Ruling in Sales Tax Suit
Greetings and salutations to all of this newsletter’s newest paid subscribers. Thirty people have joined the ranks of our community’s most-informed residents since last Sunday.
School That May Close Will be Refreshed
Town Center Elementary School may stay open for many more years, or it may be the next campus that Coppell ISD shutters. Either way, it will be refreshed this summer.
On Monday, the Board of Trustees took a series of votes related to projects included in the $321.5 million bond package that voters approved in 2023. The first project on Monday’s agenda was a refresh of Town Center Elementary. A memo from Sid Grant, the district’s interim Chief Operations Officer, said the refresh would include the following:
New door hardware and locks for all classrooms and exterior doors
Weatherproof building exteriors
Interior improvements (flooring, wall coverings, LED lighting)
Fire alarm system replacement
Public address and clock system replacement
Art room kiln
Anyone who’s been paying attention to Coppell ISD’s budget discussions and enrollment projections knows that another elementary school may be closed. Presumably, the members of the district’s Bond Oversight Committee pay more attention than the average Coppell ISD resident.
Although the members of that committee have no authority to make decisions on bond projects, they recently debated whether all projects should proceed. They took a straw poll during their Feb. 10 meeting, Grant told the trustees; some committee members were in favor of pausing one or more bond projects, others were not, and some abstained from weighing in.
(The Board of Trustees had similar discussions last year. See “Bond Projects on Hold Until Closure Decision” in Vol. 4, No. 17, and “Bond Projects to Resume in New Order” in Vol. 4, No. 40.)
Grant said the committee members who were in favor of pausing didn’t have all the facts, and he wanted to ensure the trustees did. Grant said pulling a project off the table, after plans have been designed and bids have been submitted, may make contractors wary of working with the district. He also said a refresh will help maintain the building’s value, which would be important even if it’s repurposed by the district or put on the market.
Trustee Jobby Mathew is a member of the Bond Oversight Committee. Although he missed the meeting with the straw poll, he talked to others who attended and was told some committee members were concerned that refreshing a campus would imply that it was not in danger of closing.
As he has in previous board meetings, Superintendent Brad Hunt tried to disavow everyone of that notion on Monday. He pointed to Pinkerton Elementary School, which will close after this semester despite getting a new playground and new roof funded by the 2023 bond package.
“Those kids deserve to have a new playground like everyone else, and the roof protects the asset,” Hunt said. “We don’t know what’s gonna happen at Pinkerton, so we don’t need a leaky roof while it’s sitting empty — or it may not even be sitting empty” if the district repurposes the building.
The trustees in attendance all agreed with that philosophy. This is a sampling of their comments during Monday’s discussion:
Mathew: “It’s not going to be something that we’re just, like, throwing money away. It’s something that we probably could repurpose for other things.”
Anthony Hill: “I see it as an investment, not just an expenditure of dollars.”
David Caviness: “It’s still an asset of the district that we can use for something else, and for the most part, the things we’re doing just enhance that usability and the flexibility.”
Trustee Nichole Bentley asked when Town Center had previously been refreshed. Grant said some aspects of the school had been updated over the years, but he said many features are original to when it opened in 1994, including the lighting, the laminate on the walls, and the fire alarm system.
Although no decisions have been made about Town Center’s future, Bentley said its location was a key factor: “If it was in a different location, I would maybe be more inclined to pause, but given where the location is, this campus gives us a lot of flexibility that some of our other locations don’t.”
The trustees then took a series of 6-0 votes (with Manish Sethi being absent) on seven bond projects with a combined price tag of more than $14.3 million. Although the Town Center refresh was first on the agenda, I’ve listed the projects in order of their dollar amounts:
Guaranteed maximum price from Core Construction for the interior refresh of Denton Creek Elementary: $3,723,852
Guaranteed maximum price from Core Construction for the interior refresh of Town Center Elementary: $3,510,423
Bid from School Specialty to replace furniture at Denton Creek, Town Center, and Valley Ranch elementaries: $2,380,547
Guaranteed maximum price from Core Construction for phase one of the interior refresh of Coppell Middle School North: $1,883,770
Bid from Hellas Construction for turf replacement and track resurfacing at Coppell Middle School North: $1,285,865
Bid from Hellas Construction for indoor turf replacement at Coppell High School: $781,915
Bid from One Source Building Services for miscellaneous projects across the district, including resurfacing of walking tracks at elementaries, safety fencing additions, and concrete and sidewalk additions: $750,000
District Has Concerns About Credit Rating
Before Coppell ISD trustees voted to spend bond dollars on Monday, they voted to generate bond dollars.
The board approved an issuance of $70 million worth of bonds, which went on sale Wednesday. This was the second issuance related to the 2023 bond package; the district sold $74 million worth of bonds in July of that year. Chief Financial Officer Diana Sircar estimated there will be two more issuances over the next three years.