Brassard did not see much room to trim the amount either.
Trustee Howard Trahan said there was "a good possibility" the board will accept the bond proposal at the level recommended by the committee.
"The district is in dire need of doing everything we can to get our facilities in top-notch shape," he said by telephone.
As to whether the community would support a bond issue of $440 million or more, Trahan said: "I have no idea of what the community's willing to do, but if they understand the system and where we are with regards to facilities, I'm hoping they'll support whatever we come up with."
One alternative to a single all-or-nothing vote would be dividing the package into more than one proposition, an approach that has brought success in some other districts. Though one committee member, Randy Fluke, argued for a tiered approach at the last committee meeting, most members stood behind a single package as the only way to meet needs throughout the district.
"That's the way we vote in Beaumont," said the Rev. Oveal Walker at last week's meeting. "When we get what we want, we're not coming back to give you what you need."
In Port Arthur, the district tried and failed to get voter approval for an $89 million bond issue in 2003. When voters were presented with three propositions totaling $110 million a year later, they supported all of them.
"You have to know your community," said Port Arthur school board President Willie Mae Elmore. For Port Arthur, the varying propositions made sense.
"Some people might say, 'We want to focus on elementary education,'" Elmore said by telephone. "You try to fix it to give people a chance where if they didn't want it, they might could vote on two parts but not the other."
Elmore added the lack of a high school in the 2003 proposal likely was a factor in its defeat.
Galveston Independent School District has a track record similar to Port Arthur: a failed $35 million bond issue in 2002 followed by a three-proposition bond issue in 2003 with all three parts of the $69.45 million package passing, according to Texas Bond Review Board records.
Other districts have managed to pass bond issues much larger than the $443 million package before Beaumont trustees.
Houston ISD passed a $678 million package in 1998, an $808.6 million package in 2002 and could vote in November on an $805 million package. Trustees are scheduled to decide this week whether to call the election.
Did the district consider breaking the work into several smaller propositions?
"That's what we did," Houston ISD Press Secretary Terry Abbott said by telephone. "Ours has always been planned as a three-phase program ... By the time we finish, should the voters be good enough to give us that support, we will have spent about $2.3 billion in a decade rebuilding schools and building new ones."
Getting voter support in the district of 200,000-plus students came by using outside experts to determine what work was needed and spending time explaining the needs to the community, Abbott said.
"What we've found is the public wants good schools just as bad as the school district officials want them," Abbott said. "It's a matter of making sure the public has the right information to make a decision."
Big bond issues also have been successful in Frisco ISD, a growing district near Dallas that two years ago was about the same size as Beaumont ISD, around 20,000 students. This year, district officials expect to start classes with more than 27,000 students.
Frisco voters passed a $798 million bond issue in 2006. That was preceded by $478 million in 2003, $298 million in 2000 and $118 million in 1998.
The district's growth of 20 percent to 30 percent a year and demographic projections of future growth have helped the district win voter approval, said Richard Wilkinson, assistant superintendent for facilities and finance.
"The good thing is we were able to show some historical information where we've grown like the demographer had anticipated and projected," Wilkinson said by telephone. "We've done what we said we were going to do in the previous bonds. It shows we've been good stewards with the district's money."
The only thing growing faster than student enrollment in Frisco is assessed property value, Wilkinson said, so in some cases bond sales did not result in property tax increases. Even when tax increases have been necessary, voters have been willing to support the bonds.
"Basically, to not move forward with that bond program is saying you moved to this fast-growing community and you're choosing portables over new schools," Wilkinson said. "So for us, we could say let's do the entire proposition. We think all of it's equally important.
"But for a different district with a different situation, there may be some things you need to separate. And if you're concerned about a particular item, you wouldn't want that to keep the entire bond from passing," he said.
In Beaumont, Nantz said he has mixed feelings about whether to send voters a single package or several propositions. He said he can see arguments on both sides.
12:10 a.m.
$443M too much to ask? BISD tries to figure what voters will OK
Updated 08/05/2007 12:36:08 AM CDT
BEAUMONT - How big is too big?
That's the question before Beaumont school trustees as they start to grapple with a proposal from the Community Bond Advisory Committee for about $443 million in new construction and renovations.
Trustees will meet at 6 p.m. Monday and Tuesday to consider how the proposal should be presented to the public and whether it can be trimmed. They have until Sept. 5 to call a bond election to place the issue before voters Nov. 6 as planned
"I think every time you add increments of money, whether you go from 100 to 200 or 300, you're going to lose voters," said trustee William Nantz. "The question is where do you lose too many to pass it? I don't think anybody knows that."
If the package is broken into sections, the question becomes how to do that in a way that every part of the district gets something, Nantz said by telephone.
Trustee Janice Brassard said she does not believe breaking the package into pieces would be a good idea, but would like to explain to voters the order in which projects will be tackled.
Either way, the final number will remain a challenge. Like sale prices at Wal-Mart, $399 million might be more psychologically acceptable than $400 million, Nantz said. But it might not be realistic.
"It's hard. I think the number's kind of a moving target," Nantz said. "I think we have a top number ... But, for me to sit here and say I'd like to get to $399 million, I don't know. I don't know if we can get $40 million out of it. That's two elementary schools.
"It has been so long since we really have had an opportunity to bring these schools up to where they need to be," Brassard said by telephone. "I'm not sure there can be a lot more cut out for what we need."
The need becomes even greater with Eastman Chemical moving in and the spin-off companies it is expected to attract, Brassard said.
"We're going to need our schools to be in such shape that people would love to live in Beaumont, Texas, rather than in one of the bedroom communities," she said.
bgallaspy@beaumontenterprise.com(409) 880-0726