PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 23
By Abigail Allen Editor & Publisher
The Tioga ISD school board called a $26,305,000 bond election on Feb. 14, set for the May 4 ballot.
In making the motion, trustee Dugan Rainey explained the board’s rationale for the election, which would give the district the room to restructure the remaining debt for the high school. “We can only pay certain bills out of certain buckets,” he said. “Our payment has been coming out of the wrong bucket, so in order to operate the school as a business correctly, we need to ask for that amount.”
He added that the board will sell bonds for portions of that total as the “value will allow.”
“We can move smaller increments and move that money from one side to the other and operate the business correctly,” Rainey said.
The two sides are the general fund, which has been paying for the debt remaining for the high school facility, and the debt service fund, which can pay down voter-approved bond debt.
Having the debt draw from the incorrect bucket directly contributed to the district’s F ratings on its Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas grades released in the last three years, Rainey said at the regular meeting Monday.
The contract with the Grayson County Election Administration for the special election for the bond as well as the contested race between incumbent Dallas Slay and challenger Patty Wheeler will cost $3,575.
That contract was approved at the regular meeting Monday.
During the Monday meeting, the board also discussed dates for town hall meetings regarding the bond information, with April 4 discussed as the date for the first meeting and May 1 for the second.
“We’re going to try to do a little bit of everything, I think, to try to get the word out on what it all involves,” Superintendent Josh Ballinger said.
Also at the meeting, Ballinger gave an update regarding the comptroller’s values for Tioga ISD, telling the board and the public that the values matched the certified values used to project the district’s tax revenues.
“Ours checked out, and that’s a good thing,” he said.
Using community and staff feedback, the board selected the school calendar that has a mixture of fourday and five-day weeks, with the first day of school set for Aug. 27 and the last day as June 6, 2025.
“Wish we would have gotten more responses out of the community—143— but it was pretty well two out of three wanted the calendar that ends on June 6,” Ballinger said. “Staff— I wish we would have gotten more response out of staff—was only 38 that responded out of 97. … The edge went to the same calendar.”
Early in the meeting, he also mentioned the help of Jimmy Anderson, Jared McGill and Gary Burchett on their volunteer work in the closed wing of the elementary school campus, and he said Spectrum Heat and Air is handling the first round of filter changes at no cost to the district.
“Our goal would be to keep moving forward on it, see where we’re at and make a decision as quickly as possible on moving kids back in there,” Ballinger said.
Following the board’s executive session, the board took action to extend the contracts by a year of Athletic Director Zach Birdwell, Secondary Principal Keith Kirkland and Elementary Principal Jana Hansen into the 2025-26 school year.
Ballinger’s contract was also extended by two years to last through the 2025-26 school year.
During his campus update, Kirkland mentioned that 21 of 28 FCCLA teams advanced to the state level.
“Those things are not classification based,” he said, meaning they compete against schools of various sizes.
