The halls are hot and sticky, the bathroom stalls don’t have locks, and in the parking lot there is not enough space for all the cars. These are just a few of the problems that Bowie has going on, and AISD has a plan to fix them.

The AISD school board approved a bond worth over $1 billion for Austin area schools. The money will go towards building new schools as well as remodeling and renovations on older schools. The fate of the bond rests in the hands of the Austin community when they visit the polls on Nov. 7.

A huge selling point is that the new bond will not raise  taxes.

“The great thing about that is that the district has a way that they can do it with no tax increase, which is just with the way they’re gonna structure it, the way they’re gonna sell those bonds, and manage those funds,” principal Mark Robinson said. “I think that it’s important for our community to realize that because a lot of times when they hear a bond election, they think that means a tax increase.”

The school board is working towards a long-term plan for Bowie.

“So we’re not saying we should of done this and we should of done that, lets look at everything and see what our mission for the campus looks like. What do you want in 20 years, not just tomorrow,” AISD superintendent Dr. Paul Cruz said.

The biggest area of growth for Bowie on the proposed plan is on the campus master plan; it is also the highest dollar amount for the Bowie bond budget. About $91,030,000 will be dedicated to Bowie.

“A Campus Master Plan is really an approach to understand how this school is going to be improved over a period of time,” AISD consultant and Bowie alumni Matais Segura said. “How will those changes will be incorporated, how this will change over time if we need to expand athletics or improve fine arts. We can’t pay for all this up front but this prioritizes things on a campus by campus bases.”

The Bowie campus has a lot of projects that would happen if the bond is proposed, the first thing to be done would be the design of the upgrades and from there construction will begin.

“We spent a lot of time up front with the design almost immediately once the bond passes, so that being said there are still some delay into the ultimate delivery of the project,” Segura said.

If the bond is passed Bowie will receive a new sports facility as well as a fine arts extension and a two story parking garage over some of the existing parking lot.

“I think that the parking garage would allow more cars to park closer to the school, but would create more congestion around the school and make it harder to beat rush hour,”  senior Brian an Garcia said.

As Bowie is working towards these big changes one thing that is very important to the school board is doing things right and not making short-term changes.

“We’re trying to get away from band-aids, in the past it was spending money on things that were issues right then and there,” Segura said. “Let’s not spend money on these small little projects, let’s figure out where the best value for the district was and let’s improve a school significantly so that it performs better for the students.”

AISD took two scores of every school they reviewed. One was the Faculty Condition Assessment (FCA), that grades the physical condition of the school. As well as an Educational Sustainability Assessment (ESA), which grades the educational performance of the school. Bowie is number eleven on the bond list, which means that out of all the schools in AISD, Bowie is 11th in the line of the greatest need and critical improvement.

“We used a worst first approach looking at all available data and said based on everything we have in front of us that these are the projects that we believe are most the critical at this point,” Segura said.

Some students are worried that the school is focusing on the wrong things when it comes to potential changes that are being made.

“I think that if the bond goes into effect there should be a greater emphasis on the faculty, inconsistent A/C units and the fading interior of the school,” Garcia said.

If the bond is passed there is no set date for the start of physical construction, but the school would begin to make arrangements for the changes to come.

“Just because you don’t see cranes and shovels being turned doesn’t mean that there isn’t a tremendous amount of work that’s happening,” Segura said.

Bowie is 30 years old and has had very little remodel, or renovation since it opened, and many people are beginning to notice the changes that need to be made.

“I think people at Bowie recognize that the school opened 1988 and hasn’t really changed a whole lot physically, except for the wear and tear over time, like things stop working like air conditioning and plumbing and that kind of stuff and we need to get those things fixed,” Robinson said.