Alamo Colleges District officials are holding their last board meeting before summer break on Saturday, June 14, and unveiling an initial chronology for projects related to the $987 million bond approved by voters this May.
Part of the presentation to the board of trustees and the community includes the planned issuance of funds to cover the 20 construction projects, which include 15 new or renovated facilities at existing campuses as well as new locations of Alamo Colleges buildings.
The most expensive project that will be funded with this bond is a $95 million building for the School of Nursing and Health Professions to be located in the Medical Center.
This new building will expand the capacity of San Antonio College’s nursing program, which is nearing its 60th year anniversary and is currently housed in the Nursing and Allied Health Complex on the downtown campus.
The program currently accommodates about 500 students per year, and this expansion is expected to double the number of available seats, said SAC President Francisco Solis in a recent interview.
“It will also allow us to align programs from LVN (Licensed Vocational Nurse), to RN (Registered Nurse), to BSN (Bachelors of Science in Nursing),” Solis said. “It makes sense that our students could go through and matriculate right to the BSN programs.”
While the board has not yet voted on any items related to the start of these construction projects, the upcoming meeting agenda proposes a timeline for the issuance of funds for these projects.
The nearly $1 billion bond will be broken down into five tranches, or installments, issued over the next five years. These are intended to break up the debt in portions that will be spent within a reasonable amount of time to meet federal requirements, Alamo Colleges officials said.
“This 2025 Capital program has extensive projects that will take a number of years to fully complete and therefore we leverage the tranches to fund the projects close to the time of their start and provide taxpayer savings on incurred interest expense,” explained Alamo Colleges spokesperson Denise Blaz in an email.
The first installment is the largest at $223 million and is expected to be issued in August 2025.
The next step, which will happen between October and November of this year, includes selecting which Capital Improvement Projects will be prioritized based on the size and timing of these installments.
The board will eventually approve how these projects are grouped within each tranche, Blaz said, ahead of a potential construction starting date between September and December of 2026.
While it’s too early to delineate how quickly students will have access to new facilities and expanded programs, this bond was presented to the community as a way to facilitate growth in the areas of engineering, emerging technologies, health care, transportation and more.
The board meeting is open to the public and starts at 8:30 a.m. Saturday at the Alamo Colleges District boardroom located at 2222 N. Alamo St.
The San Antonio Report partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
