Northwest ISD leader blames new state requirement for failed bond propositions

FORT WORTH, Texas - One of the fastest-growing school districts in Texas is concerned about keeping up with growth after four bond propositions and a tax rate proposal failed by large margins.

The district blames a new state requirement to label the propositions as a tax increase.

Many Texas school districts take issue with the new state requirement to label bond propositions as a tax increase because they believe it is confusing.  

Their argument is that in many cases, like in Northwest ISD, school districts would not need to increase the tax rate to pay for the bonds.                 

Northwest ISD Superintendent Dr. Ryder Warren is going back to the drawing board after voters soundly defeated plans for a $986 million bond package to build seven new schools.

“It puts us more than a year behind growth,” he said. “It’s extremely disappointing because we are very proud of our growth.”

Dr. Warren said without the schools, the district will have to take steps it wanted to avoid.

“The schools are approaching capacity,” he said. “We’ll have to place portables and or look at changing attendance boundaries.”

Voters rejected stadium and recreational facility upgrades by the largest margins, followed by the school construction prop.

Dr. Warren believes the new requirement by the state to label the measures as tax increases was misleading to voters since the tax rate would stay the same. The debt payments, he says, would be paid through revenue from growth in the district. 

“It is a matter of do we believe in local control or do we not?” he said. “To me that is the legislature stepping in and controlling the ballot itself.”

A separate measure would have increased the district's maintenance and operations tax rate that mainly pays for staff salaries by four pennies.

Dr. Warren says that was necessary because of funding lost through tax rate limits passed by the state legislature.