MIDLAND, Texas — We are only a few weeks away from early voting, and on the ballot is Midland ISD’s $1.4 billion school bond.
As the school district continues to educate the community on the facts of the bond, a tour of Midland High School was done Wednesday night.
The tour revealed that there are challenges to education that are presented with the way the facilities are constructed. Parts of Midland High are 20 years old from the 2002 bond, but other parts are much older.
If the hallways at MHS could talk, they would have a lot to say.
95 years old is the age of some of Midland High’s campus.
“The education 90 years ago is much different than it is now, and so some of the challenges -- the older parts of our building have very few plugs versus most of the education is technology-based and technology-driven now – and so, we’re just trying to give our kids a 21st century education and so some of the older parts of the building make that difficult," said Dr. Jennifer Seybert, the principal of Midland High School.
Dr. Seybert was also the tour guide.
“It’s just eye-opening some of our facilities and how old they are – how narrow our hallways are, how small some of our classrooms are – and that’s just because it was built almost 100 years ago," Dr. Seybert said. "So, the thought of the spaces then and now is just much different, so most people are just – it’s enlightening – it’s like ‘wow, they didn’t know what was behind the walls at Midland High.’”
Midland ISD Superintendent Dr. Stephanie Howard knows there is also an impact outside of education.
“The mechanical-electrical-plumbing and facilities of this age of course is expensive to renovate, but then it’s also expensive to maintain older facilities," Dr. Howard said.
Capacity is a challenge as well for the current campus.
“Every 48 minutes at Midland High, students are leaving for different courses – they’re headed to Midland College or the ATC or Cogdell, for athletics they’re going to "The Boneyard" and Memorial – so Midland High is just very busy all the time," Dr. Seybert said.
That reality would be altered with the passage of this school bond.
“What would change is the amount of travel, the amount of places students would have to go if we had a new Midland High," Dr. Seybert said. "It would be students come to school and they stay at school all day and they get all of their classes here, versus just the constant movement.”
If the school bond passes, the future of Midland High is uncertain as Midland Freshman High School would actually become a middle school.
Legacy High School would become a middle school as well. If you want to tour that campus, Midland ISD is hosting a tour of those facilities on Monday, Oct. 9 at 6:00 p.m. starting in the library.