CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — In Beeville the nearly $63 million school bond proposal is definitely the talk of the town. Especially after someone placed a very large ad in the newspaper asking voters to turn it down.
One claims says the district never did a traffic study on the plan to combine the two elementary schools in town into one big super school.
3NEWS asked Superintendent Travis Fanning about the claims, finding him at the high school answering similar questions from students in a voting rally event.
He said two traffic studies were done.
”They did the study as architects to make sure they build a design for two lanes to come up and pick up students,” Fanning said.
The ad also claims that no renovation study was done on whether the two schools could remain open and simply updated.
”Yes we did a comprehensive study and we looked at what would be the cost of renovating both of those facilities and what they shared with us is that the cost of those two combined campuses would almost be the same amount if we were to build another campus,” he said.
Some of the students at the high school were part of the Community Advisory Committee which took a look at issues like the ones that were raised in the ad.
”We went over every single aspect that was shown on there," senior Olivia Spires said. "We have a way we are going to deal with traffic, we studied growth and we tried to make sure we were able to grow as more students come to the new school.”
3NEWS asked residents what they thought about the proposal.
Suzanne Sylvia said she voted yes.
"I think if it’s going to better for children in school and for education, I think they should have it,” Sylvia said.
Jim Johnson said he liked the idea of a new school but he still voted no.
I voted against it; I would be for it just for a new elementary school," Johnson said. "Our town can’t afford something big right now because we have no corporations or a big tax base.”
The Superintendent is hoping that if anyone has questions about the bond that they would contact him or district staff so they could get the truth out about this bond. If it passes it will be the first time that’s happened since 2008.