The school board was on its way to considering a $1.6 billion bond package focused on maintenance and improvements to security, technology, the arts and athletics, when Superintendent Douglas Killian announced at the Feb. 5 work session that it would have to be postponed until November 2026. Due to the Republican and Democratic primary elections that are coming up in March demanding substantial staffing, equipment and logistical resources, and the potential for runoffs later in the spring, Harris County said it would not be feasible to help the district with a May vote.

“We got notified about two weeks ago that Harris County elections could not support running our election if we called for a May 2 election,” Killian said. “So with that, I have to tell the Long Range Planning Committee, who were working their tails off to make sure you had options, that the May one is off the table.”

These significant scheduling conflicts will set back the timeline of the bond and cause the board to have to reorganize their priorities, possibly changing the amount of money that they initially had set and causing groups such as the Long-Ranging Planning Committee (LRPC) to reconvene on the decisions they had almost unanimously agreed upon.

“Once I received the update from Mr. Matt Morgan and Dr. Killian, I immediately understood the reasoning behind the delay. My initial reaction was that the postponement could actually be beneficial for our committee,” Co-Chair of the LRPC Anya Lucas said. “It provides additional time to educate the Cy-Fair community about the components of the proposed bond and its long-term value to our schools and neighborhoods.”

This bond specifically would have expected to last around six years. The categories of the bond that was going to be put into different propositions, which were categorized as priority one and priority two. Priority one included items that were going to reach “end of life” in about one to three years, such as an HVAC, heating and air conditioning system. With priority two, they still have about three to six years left on their useful life.

“And so that’s the difference between priority one and two. It’s more like phase one and phase two than it is really about priorities, because we had already eliminated all the things that were just wants and just looked at needs,” Killian said.

For those that don’t know how a bond works, Killian summarized it in three parts:

“Basically, we put bonds out, issue debt and then we tax to pay that debt back over the useful life of the item that we’re buying,” Killian said. “We don’t want to extend the bond out past its useful life because then we’re paying on something we don’t even use anymore.”

The Long-Range Planning Committee was a group of people from the community that prioritized what they thought was most important for the district to pass forward. Two main issues were discussed surrounding this bond: tax rates going up and the bond being divided into multiple propositions.

“In 2019, the law changed and they changed it to where it has to be broken out. Certain things have to be broken out in separate propositions,” Chief Financial Officer Karen Smith said. “They basically did that because I think they wanted to be sure that you were being transparent.”

This meant the bond would have been divided into the general proposition, and then a separate one each for athletics, natatoriums and instructional/infrastructure-related technology. While $1.6 billion sounded like a lot of money to some of the community members, the district asserted that this would not increase the tax rate, just elongate the process of paying off the district’s debt, because previous packages are almost paid off.

“If y’all recommend that we go forward, it will have to go to the school board and then the school board will vote whether to call an election or not,” Smith said. “So a lot of times people’s biggest concern is will the taxes go up. And like I said, the tax rate will not go up.”

However, there is now a larger issue at hand with the new knowledge that Harris County cannot support the election for this bond. At the Feb. 5 board session, Lucas gave a presentation explaining all of the content that the committee had discussed and its final recommendations. She’s been volunteering since her daughter was in kindergarten.

“Through the years I got involved at the administration level of volunteering and I was on the 2019 bond committee,” Lucas said. “I learned a lot through that process and I really enjoyed it and I felt like I had a good grasp of just understanding how to read the numbers, what does that mean, versus what are the needs of our district, and do they meet all the needs of the district?”

Six years later, the previous chairman asked her to be his co-lead and she happily agreed. But now, after holding monthly meetings since September 2025, the bond has been potentially pushed to November, a decision that will likely bring changes to the priorities and the bond itself.

CFISD Police Chief Eric Mendez hopes that the community will agree with the committee’s plan to put out a bond to prevent further delays on the district’s infrastructure that desperately needs an update.

“I would hope that our community understands that this is a need and this isn’t a want. It’s not a Christmas wish list, right? This is not something that we’re just looking to do,” Mendez said. “This is something we need to do.”

CFISD is the third largest school district in Texas and in the top 25 across the United States of America. With those numbers, the main thing that Lucas wants the community to keep in mind going forward is the sheer size of the district and how much it takes to keep this district running effectively. Lucas is optimistic that the LRPC will be able to present an updated recommendation to the Board of Trustees by August 2026 to provide sufficient time for the board to review and make a decision before the general election on Nov. 3.

“At the end of the day, we are trying to provide the best educational environment for our students, and also the best work environment for all of the teachers and the administration too because they are vital, they’re delivering the education,” Lucas said. “We view the additional time as an opportunity to better inform and engage the Cy-Fair community about what the bond includes and how it will benefit every student, school and neighborhood across the district.”