Hill Elementary School’s long-awaited renovation, approved by voters just four years ago, is too expensive to complete, leaving parents and district leaders grappling with a project that now falls tens of millions of dollars short.
Hill Elementary’s stalled modernization mirrors a national spike in construction costs. However, parents say confusing explanations from district leaders have compounded their frustration after district construction heads acknowledged budgeting errors, rising costs and site challenges that have left the project about $30 million short of its estimated cost.
Construction is slated to begin this summer as part of a $2.4 billion bond approved by voters in 2022 for improvements to campuses across Austin ISD.
Although Austin ISD board members are set to vote Thursday on a construction contract for the Hill project as it prepares to move into its next phase, future work may be delayed because of funding gaps, and completing the modernization could require voters to approve more money.
Hill Elementary parent Lily McClure said she learned at an October meeting the renovation plans no longer matched what families were originally presented. She volunteered to gather feedback from families, which she shared with district leaders. Afterward, district leaders agreed to meet with community members in February to discuss concerns and explain why the plans have changed.
McClure said the modernization focuses on the school’s primary building, opened in the 1970s and home to pre-K through second grade. Instead of renovating the entire structure at once, the revised plan, she said, would modernize the building half at a time.
“It is a wonderful school community, but the facility is definitely dampening the experience of our kids because of how dated it is,” McClure said, pointing to sewage issues that have created a foul smell.
She said Hill families hope to have greater engagement with district leadership to give input on what happens next. They also want assurance that if some construction is pushed to a future bond, Hill will have priority.
Because the new plans would extend the construction timeline, she said parents are concerned about prolonged disruptions to the learning environment.
Michael Mann, executive director of construction management at Austin ISD, said in a statement that higher-than-expected construction costs drove up the price of fully modernizing Hill, in addition to new district standards for campuses that increased the planned square footage and were adopted after the bond package set the project’s cost.
Mann also said the project experienced “a significant construction cost estimating error in bond planning during the bond steering committee work, which staff acknowledged and adjusted for in subsequent budgeting and analysis.”
The bond steering committee is an advisory group which provides its recommendations to the superintendent. The district did not elaborate on exactly how the error was made.
Beyond the original $30.7 million approved by voters, Austin ISD has committed approximately $18 million from project-level contingency funds, savings from other bond projects and interest earned to keep the project moving forward. That brings the new project budget to about $48.7 million. Mann said similar funding increases have been made for other modernization projects due to unforeseen price increases.
However, the district estimates full modernization would cost approximately $78.5 million.
Mann said early planning underestimated the complexity of providing “swing space” at Hill and the site faces substantial physical and regulatory constraints that directly drive up cost and complicate construction.
“After a feasibility study, Austin ISD concluded that to stay on site during construction, a phased approach would be required due to site limitations and regulatory requirements,” Mann said in the statement.
Peter Kilgust, a registered architect and consultant with Austin’s KOW Building Consultants, said contractors have faced significant uncertainty about material costs over the past 18 months due to inflation and tariffs. He said contractors are responding by setting higher prices at the outset.
One example, Kilgust said, is metal fabrication, which now costs far more than it did two years ago due to the tariffs. That increases expenses for concrete construction, which relies heavily on steel rebar. He said projects with fixed budgets, such as bond-funded construction, are feeling the impact the most.
At an earlier January Austin ISD board meeting, Superintendent Matias Segura said many factors were unknown when the district planned and allocated funds for the 2022 bond program.
“Those things I think contributed– the complexity of the site, the misalignment in the initial budgeting, and lastly, the increase in cost of construction that created that gap,” Segura said in the meeting.
Segura told board members he recommends proceeding with the second phase of the modernization because the district has a contract with a set price. Delaying it to combine with Phase 3 could give them less for their money.
If more funds become available through surplus or other means, Segura said he would be open to using them to finish the project.
