Superintendent addresses what's next for the district after $291-million bond fails

Voters said no to the Ector County ISD $291-million bond proposal and the Tax Ratification Election, which in short would’ve raised property taxes for the first time in nine years.

Roughly 7,200 people ended up casting a ballot for both the propositions, meaning only 10% of registered voters took part in the election.

For Proposition A, the School Bond, 38% voted in favor of the measure and 62% against it.

Meanwhile for Proposition B, the tax increase, 40% voted yes and 60% voted no.

Now the question is what’s next for the school district?

“We’re disappointed, but I think at the same time we’ve go to go back and say what could we have done different, what is it that we should do?” said Superintendent Tom Crowe following Tuesday nights defeat.

Crowe says there’s no plan B in place, but they’re determined to work with the community in coming up with a solution to fix the overcrowding issues they face district-wide.

“We’ve got to go to the community and say what could we do different, what do we need to do differently? What will you pass, what is it that you will accept, because we’ve enrolled 55 new students in the past week, and so it is not going to go away," said Crowe. " When we build the new schools, we’ve got to have the TRE to fund those schools, as well as make us whole financially right now.”

Crowe went on to say that they were counting on the bonds to pass in order to make much needed upgrades and improvements at campuses across the district.

“We counted on this to give raises to staff, to replace positions that we’ve cut, to give supplies and materials [and now] we’re not going to be able to do that,” Crowe explained.

The superintendent’s next step is to conduct a survey of the community to find out what voters didn’t like about the proposals. By doing this Crowe hopes to make those necessary changes and put the updated measures back on the ballot in either May or November of 2018.

To learn just how crowded the districts schools are