BRYAN, Texas — Bryan ISD is asking voters to approve a $175,000,000 bond on the November ballot.
The bond includes renovations to facilities, added safety and security measures to schools and even building an additional intermediate school for the district. Staff at the intermediate level are struggling with overcrowding issues at the campuses and say the need for a new school is great.
“We didn’t really know what to expect, no one did. No one has had to really go through this before," said Maeson Turner, a fifth grade ELA and Social Studies teacher at Sam Rayburn Intermediate School.
The coronavirus pandemic has brought many challenges to schools and how teachers instruct their students, whether it be on campus or online. The pandemic also brought about smaller in-person class sizes, allowing teachers to catch a glimpse of what teaching would be like with less students.
“It was really neat to kind of see how you could engage with your students on another level," Turner said.
Turner has been teaching at Rayburn Intermediate for three years. Each year she sees the number of students at the campus continue to grow. She said the way the campuses classrooms were built, it fits a student population of around 800.
Rayburn is well above that with close to 1,200 students.
“You could see that classes get overpopulated,” Turner said.
It is not just classes that are feeling the effects of overcrowding at the intermediate level.
Administrators are having a tough time trying to keep places like hallways spacious and safe.
“We can have a large number of students traveling at one time and so we get creative with how we move about, whether that’s staggered releases or moving one way down the hallway," said Kim Guess, the assistant principal at Sam Rayburn Intermediate School.
Because of how many students attending classes on campus and the size of its cafeteria, the school previously had four different lunchtimes for fifth and sixth graders. With COVID-19 safety measures in place, there are now six different lunchtimes.
Staff believes that it works for right now, but as more students start to return to campus they will need to figure out a new plan.
“Having less children in the building to enjoy their lunch is really going to be at the forefront of everybody’s mind," Guess said.
Bryan ISD hopes adding a new intermediate school will alleviate some of the crowding issues at both Jane Long Intermediate and Rayburn Intermediate School.
“We want to see our town grow and we want to see changes and new opportunities for our kids," Guess said.
If the bond is approved, there would be no tax increase for Bryan ISD taxpayers.
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