Parent at Bay City ISD board meeting demands answers about $24 million in loans, 313 payments

Rebecca McCaslet, a Bay City ISD taxpayer, district employee and the wife of the superintendent, used the meeting's public comment period to ask the board to explain recent district financing decisions and to name dollar amounts she said affect staffing and salaries. "This debt impacts staffing, salaries, and resources," McCaslet said. She told the board the district has "$24,000,000 in combined loans, not bonds," and asked why the board had not put major expenditures to a public bond election as other districts do.

McCaslet pressed the board president for four specifics: whether loans over $6,000,000 were approved during the president's tenure; why the board approved releases against potential teacher raises; how much the district received from the "313 agreements"; and why payments from those agreements were not used to repay loans that she said are affecting staff salaries. She said she expects the board president to answer in public records and on social media and closed by saying, "The taxpayers, staff, and parents of Bay City deserve to know this truth."

Board members did not answer those questions during the public comment period shown in the transcript. The agenda moved on to Lone Star Governance (LSG) items and later to executive session; the transcript does not record a public reply from the board president to McCaslet during the open meeting.

McCaslet said answers can be independently checked via recorded meetings and public records requests.

Officials at the meeting later discussed budget workshop material and other agenda items but the transcript does not show a direct board response to the four questions McCaslet raised.