A fire and two accidents that set off sprinkler systems at three different schools at the end of June led the Boerne Independent School District Northwest of San Antonio to suspend their normal procurement process for large purchases in order to quickly start on repairs.
The rare emergency action, which was voted on during a meeting Monday night, suspends strict requirements laid out in Texas law for purchases made by school districts using tax dollars: to solicit bids and consider products and service providers using criteria like the vendor’s price, quality, reputation, past relationship with the district and more.
Multiple vendors also normally have to be considered to ensure the district is getting the best deal.
The North East Independent School District made headlines last year for using the same legal exemption to spend $2.5 million on an undisclosed security device. Both the Texas Education Agency and NEISD successfully asked the state attorney general to allow them to withhold almost all records related to the purchase, citing the need to keep security purchases confidential.
Tracy Ginsburg, the executive director of the Texas Association of School Business Officials (TASBO), told the San Antonio Report at the time that procurement policies are in place to ensure tax dollars are spent in an efficient way.
“The procurement requirement requires you to kind of draw up your specifications, identify what your needs are and ensure that you’re spending taxpayer dollars in the best manner possible,” she said in April 2023.
In circumstances where school districts need to use the emergency exception, the board must determine that the delay posed by competitive procurement would substantially prevent or substantially impair the conduct of classes or other school activities.
The damage in Boerne ISD rises to that level, according to board documents.
Boerne High School fire, water damage
The first incident detailed by the board resolutions occurred on June 28, when a subcontractor working on Cibolo Creek Elementary School “hit a fire sprinkler line causing severe flooding in the library.”
District officials didn’t answer questions about what the subcontractor was doing at the time of the incident, or whether they would face any consequences.
A day later, in the early morning hours of June 29, the Boerne Fire Department responded to a fire alarm at Boerne High School.
Chris Shadrock, the director of communications for the City of Boerne told the San Antonio Report that firefighters arrived at 3:42 a.m. and had the fire extinguished by 4:03 a.m.
“The preliminary investigation shows the cause of the fire was a lighting equipment box,” Shadrock said in a statement. “Damage was confined to the immediate area and some equipment nearby but there was no extension to the structure.”
The resolution, however, said the combination of the fire and the suppression system “resulted in severe fire damage and flooding (water damage) to Boerne High School, including the auditorium/stage, band hall, and adjacent hallway.”
In a third, undated, incident also requiring emergency action, a subcontractor working on Curington Elementary “failed to take steps to shut off all fire risers prior to cutting the fire sprinkler line for relocation purposes, causing flooding.”
It is unclear whether the subcontractor that mistakenly triggered the fire suppression system at Cibolo Creek was the same one that triggered the system at Curington Elementary.
The emergency meeting was not live-streamed, but will be shared in the next week, according to a district spokesperson, Bryan Benway, who declined to answer specific questions about the incidents or the suspension of the procurement process.
“We are grateful to our maintenance team, as well as safety and security team, for their quick response to assess the damage,” he said in an emailed statement. “We are also appreciative of The Boerne Fire Department for their immediate action as well.”
