SMCISD Board approves $4.3 million for Miller Middle School athletic facility renovations

The San Marcos Consolidated ISD Board of Trustees approved spending $4.3 million for renovations for Miller Middle School’s athletic facilities.

The board voted 4-2 during Monday’s regular meeting with Board President Clementine Cantu and Trustee Dr. Mari Salmi as the dissenting votes. The approved funds would go toward four renovations at Miller Middle School — Renovation of existing gyms, renovations of existing locker rooms, athletic additions and athletic addition structural pond.

“I think that the facilities in these terms are inequitable between the two [middle schools],” Trustee Anne Halsey said. “I think there are things we can do to make them better. I think especially as we see Miller continue to grow, we need to be ready for that capacity. I’ll also say that I was approached by several parents and community members who’ve attended functions at Miller and noticed these discrepancies and were also dismayed that the board would agree to undertake a building project (central office building) for over $9 million that benefits only adults in the district, not students directly, that there are no classrooms in that space, while we were not going to undertake the project that will directly benefit students at Miller.”

San Marcos CISD Chief of Operations Bernie Sandoval provided a comparison of athletic facilities at both middle schools prior to the action item.

Sandoval’s presentation showed that Miller Middle School and Goodnight Middle School both have a gym capacity of 630 on their respective home sides. Goodnight, however, has visitor capacity at 437, while Miller Middle School has none.

Small gym capacity at Goodnight is 166 and 89 at Miller. Football bleacher capacity is 587 at Miller and 713 at Goodnight.

The practice and playing square footage in the large gym is 7,187 at Miller Middle School and 11,628 at Goodnight Middle School. The practice and playing square footage in the small gym is 6,624 at Goodnight and 5,346 at Miller. Boys locker room square footage is 2,808 at Miller and 1,953 at Goodnight. Girls locker room square footage at Miller is 2,808 and 2,646 at Goodnight.

Signage and scoreboards are similar at each gym and stadium, according to Sandoval’s presentation. Goodnight Middle School has speakers and an intercom at the gym and field, while Miller Middle School has none at these facilities.

Miller has 218 athletes participating in volleyball, football and cross country, while Goodnight has 185 athletes in those three sports.

Sandoval also highlighted the four renovations not included in 2017 bond, which includes all four approved by the board during Monday’s meeting: ​​Renovation of existing gyms, renovations of existing locker rooms, athletic additions and athletic addition structural pond. The cost at the time would have been $4.314,000 but the board decided not to add the alternate projects to the bond.

Halsey said after the board chose not to include the additional renovations at Miller Middle School as a part of the 2017 bond, she believed a smaller project would take place.

“Y’all made the decision not to move forward with these alternates because of funds,” Sandoval said. “What we were going to do is we were going to get alternate 1A this year. With the supplemental bond funds, we were talking about getting this done but then what happened was we had a lot of safety things that we had to address as a district in light of what’s happened in Uvalde.”

Halsey asked if these projects weren’t being completed because of the safety concerns the district had to address, stating that she believed the lack of speakers and an intercom at the Miller Middle School facilities poised safety concerns.

“We would love to do everything all over the district, it just becomes a matter of funds and what’s available,” Sandoval said. “We’re planning to have some money left over, if we can get speakers in the gyms and at the field, we’ll certainly do that. I just don’t know that we’re going to be able to do it within these bond funds, right? Redo the gyms like we want to do. As far as any kind of additions, that’ll have to be a future bond.”

Later in the meeting, Halsey made the motion to approve an allocation of $4.3 million for the four renovations. Sandoval clarified that the estimated cost for the renovations was calculated in 2017 and would likely be higher.

“Well, we could allocate $4.3 [million] and send you back to figure out what could be done for that amount of money now,” Halsey said.

Dr. Mari Salmi asked SMCISD Chief Financial Officer Densie Gonzalez Garcia about the district’s current fund balance. Garcia pointed out that the district has a projected ending fund balance of $35,110,909 and the three month operating expenses are at -$29,316,783, leaving an unassigned fund balance of $5,794,126.

Garcia also stated that the district’s estimated recapture amount of $6.6 million owed to the state isn’t reflected in the budget.

Following the vote, Cantu said she was against the renovation project because she’s worried about the fund balance.

“I’m worried about returning money to the state,” Cantu said. “Because I would like to see both campuses, having worked at a middle school 16 years, I would like both campuses to be equal but still it’s a hard thing when we’re looking at our budget and looking at our fund balance.”

Salmi added that she was concerned that the district hasn’t looked holistically at both campuses.

“We haven’t evaluated any other of the specific kinds of facility inequalities,” Salmi said. “So, specifically allocating the majority of our unallocated funds to athletics only seems hasty.”

Board Vice President Miguel Arredondo said he was surprised the motion passed, later adding that the district should evaluate all of its facilities.

“Again, I will echo my sentiment at previous meetings that I do think that based off Dr. Salmi’s comments, and Mrs Halsey’s and President Cantu’s that there needs to be a more robust pre-K-12 assessment of ISD facilities,” Arredondo said. “Taking into account, not only the lessons that we learned over the pandemic in that maybe not everybody needs office space or square footage to accomplish their job and that maybe employees are better situated to be with students in hallways, etc. But similarly, we’ve seen how career and technical and vocational classes are more important than ever as our economy changes and so again as the ISD responds to the lessons learned through the pandemic, what does that look like holistically as an organization across all 13 of our campuses is something that I’d be very interested in.”

The board of trustees next regular meeting takes place Monday, Nov. 14 at San Marcos High School — 2601 Rattler Road — inside the criminal justice classroom at 6 p.m. To view Monday’s meeting visit: https://www.youtube.com/c/SanMarcosConsolidatedISD.