Just days apart, two polls related to Houston ISD’s proposed $4.4 billion school bond forecast clashing results, with a new survey released Tuesday suggesting voters might reject the record-breaking package.
The latest survey, released Tuesday by the Texas American Federation of Teachers, shows just over half of 736 likely voters surveyed said they would vote against the proposal for billions in campus, technology and security upgrades. About 30 percent of likely voters surveyed said they would support the bond, while nearly 20 percent said they were undecided or would not vote on the proposal.
Leaders of the Houston Federation of Teachers, a local affiliate of the Texas AFT union, have vocally opposed the bond, though the poll was conducted by Z to A Research, a public opinion research company catered to Democratic campaigns and causes.
The results arrive five days after Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research released a poll showing nearly three-quarters of about 1,900 HISD residents would back a school bond package that does not raise property tax rates. That survey did not ask respondents whether they would support HISD’s exact proposal, which had not been finalized at the time of the poll. The district’s $4.4 billion plan does not include a property tax rate increase.
related to education
HISD voters want to rebuild schools, new poll shows. Will they back a $4.4 billion proposal?
by Asher Lehrer-Small / Staff Writer
If passed, HISD’s proposal would be the largest school bond package in Texas history. It would fund rebuilding campuses, fixing faulty air systems, upgrading school security and other improvements.
Voters in each Texas school district decide whether to approve bonds, which allow the district to finance infrastructure and technology investments. Districts pay for the costs with property tax revenue.
HISD spokesperson Jose Irizarry responded to the results of the Tuesday poll by emphasizing that the district’s proposal would not raise tax rates, despite legally required language that says “this is a tax increase.” People participating in the Texas AFT poll read the exact wording of the bond proposal on the ballot, which includes the “tax increase” phrase.
Two different approaches
The wide gap between the two polls’ findings may stem from some key differences in the structure of the surveys, including question wording, sample size and methodology.
The Texas AFT poll asked directly about HISD’s current bond proposal, while the Rice survey asked more broadly about support for a school bond that does not raise property taxes.
“Question wording is everything,” Z to A Research Founder Nancy Zdunkewicz said. “People behave differently when they have the actual ballot language in front of them.”
Additionally, the Rice poll questioned more than double the number of residents compared to the Texas AFT poll. Rice targeted all adult residents of HISD, while the Texas AFT surveyed likely voters, a group that skews slightly older and whiter than the full district population.
HISD’s bond election has become a key point of contention in the state’s largest district, pitting a widely acknowledged need to upgrade aging school facilities against the community’s frayed trust in its state-appointed board and superintendent, Mike Miles, who were appointed June 2023 amid academic sanctions against HISD.
Bond supporters say HISD is long overdue for billions of dollars in upgrades, because the district has gone 12 years since its last successful bond vote, primarily due to voter frustration with the district’s leadership. Large districts typically pass a bond roughly every five years.
However, critics like the HFT argue the city can’t trust Miles to responsibly invest billions of dollars in taxpayer money.
“After a year of mismanaging district affairs and decimating the trust parents and educators had in the district, Mike Miles is asking our community to shoulder the burden of the largest school bond proposal in the history of Texas,” HFT President Jackie Anderson said in a press release. “Houston families can’t afford to make this investment until we have steady, trusted, and accountable elected leaders running the district once more.”
Despite the union’s stance, Zdunkewicz said the Tuesday poll was carefully crafted to eliminate potential bias, with an “equal number of strongly worded arguments for and against” the bond. The polling company found participants through text messages and targeted online ads that did not mention HISD or the bond, Zdunkewicz said.
Asher Lehrer-Small covers Houston ISD for the Landing. Reach him at asher@houstonlanding.org.
Related
Republish our articles for free, online or in print.