Next fall, the Eanes community will vote on a bond that will fund renovations for every school in the district, with the most serious changes taking place at Westlake. The bond is planned to cost north of $800,000,000 and construction is expected to finish in 2033.
In May, Eanes’ Long-Range Facilities Planning Committee released blueprints for the rebuilding of the high school from the ground up. The redesign would add three parking garages, an indoor practice facility for football, a band practice field and a food court.
“I think there’s always a look to modernize and make sure infrastructure is as solid as possible to give the kids the best experience,” Principal Steven Ramsey said. “There’s little, subtle things that students are unaware of, there’s original pipe, there’s original plumbing in this building… Our classrooms are actually not the TEA [Texas Education Agency] standards for size anymore.”
Because some of the infrastructure is from 1969, Ramsey thinks a deconstruction and rebuilding of Westlake is necessary. But it’s not only the facilities’ antiquity that are cause for a bond, safety is also a factor in the desire to tear down and rebuild the school.
“A school this size is supposed to have four to six outside doors,” Ramsey said. “We have over 80.”
Bonds are like district-wide loans, where the district withdraws money that is paid back over a long period of time. However, this bond would not allow the district to raise the salaries of teachers or administrators. Bond money can only be used to upgrade or rebuild facilities, it cannot be used to add to the Maintenance and Operations budget, which is where teacher salaries come from.
“This bond feels too expensive to not raise property taxes, and that’s going to turn a lot of voters off,” senior Baird Richert said.
Eanes ISD Board President Kim McMath stressed that it was by no means certain that the bond would cause an increase in taxes, just that it was a possibility.
“If we look at a strategic bond like this, then there could be a requirement that we educate the community that should they vote on this bond, their taxes could be raised,” McMath said.
McMath said that the bond would save tax payers money in the long run because Eanes currently spends almost 20% of its budget on maintaining decrepit facilities that require constant repair, whereas more modern equipment wouldn’t demand nearly as much service.
This, in theory, could also help Eanes alleviate their budget deficit as these maintenance costs come out of the state-funded Maintenance & Operations budget. The budget that Eanes currently has a $10 million shortfall in, according to McMath. And if new facilities were to be constructed then Eanes could cut maintenance costs and get closer to a balanced budget.
“We’ve had to patch up things on a regular basis,” McMath said. “From a taxpayer standpoint, that’s not as efficient because we’re trying to just put a band aid on a problem that maybe we could look at holistically by upgrading our facilities. When you do something like this, it’s really for the next 50 to 60 years.”
Some students also expressed confusion at the lack of classrooms displayed on the blueprints. Facilities failing to meet education standards was the catalyst for this bond, yet in only one place on the blueprints are new core-subject classrooms highlighted.
“This blueprint doesn’t look like our facilities are deficient for learning, it looks like they’re deficient for athletics,” senior Adam Gravelle said. “Hopefully they release a more in-depth blueprint soon, because right now it’s kind of hard to tell what’s going on outside of the athletics and band stuff.”
The bond, similar to bonds of years past, will be split up into three parts of varying degrees of necessity. The bond will be voted on by all Eanes residents in fall 2026 and each prop needs a 50% majority to pass.
