It’s early in the process, but the Brownsboro Independent School District is making all the right moves in determining whether to set a tax election in 2010 to finance improvements to at least four campuses.

It hired Texas School Planning Inc. as its consultant, is scheduling meetings to build consensus, readily providing information to the Statesman on the project, and is forming a committee of community stakeholders to study potential plans for construction and renovations.

The president of Texas School Planning, Dr. Arnold Oates, has toured the district’s campuses and knows Brownsboro Elementary, Chandler Elementary, Brownsboro Junior High, and Brownsboro High each has their own problems and safety concerns. Certainly, parents, educators, and others are also familiar with the issues.

The newspaper since August has published several stories on the challenges facing these schools and the district’s efforts to plan for projected growth over the next two decades. So we won’t lay out the exhausting details here.

But both elementary schools are outdated and cramped, students at the junior high must attend classes on three properties, and the athletic facilities at the high school are woefully inadequate. The most pressing issue at all of the schools, though, is enrollment. They’re at capacity, and the district is growing 3 percent each year.

Like Oates, we have toured these schools and talked to their principals. We’ve seen the classrooms, portable buildings, libraries, and cafeterias. And while educators have done an admirable job keeping working with the resources they have, they won’t be able to sustain those efforts much longer. They’re simply running out of time.

Clearly, the district should have had the foresight years ago to plan for such a scenario. Instead, it added a portable building here, expanded a building there, moved students and teachers around.

And it worked - until they ran out of space.

Now, the district is in a tough position. It knows something must be done before the situation worsens, but the problem is it won’t be able to solve every problem immediately.

Even if voters approve a tax election next year, it won’t provide enough revenue, for example, to build two elementary schools, renovate the junior high, and build a new high school.

Oates tells us that construction could take up to three years. If that is the case, work must begin immediately following the election. Short-term, it doesn’t matter that all the work can’t be done at the same time; the district must do something now.

That's because while schools are being built and renovated, more portable buildings will have to be added to already-crowded campuses as enrollment districtwide increases.

Officials aren’t quite into the financial-evaluation phase of this deal, so we can’t yet support or oppose that part of any possible bond proposal.

But we do endorse the district’s efforts to make improvements through a tax election, without which the work would not be possible. And we ask voters to support them as well.

The Brownsboro Independent School District is a good one, run by good people and competent officials.

It understands the time to act is now, that the situation is real and that good communities thrive on good schools. It needs your help.

As for the Statesman, we’ll continue to support the district, especially when it works to provide better campuses and educational opportunities for students, faculty, educators, and parents.

And we look forward to the district’s growth over the next several years.