Budget Updates

For the next school year, we are facing a budget deficit of more than $9.4 million if nothing changes. This number will fluctuate slightly with inflation, enrollment, attendance, legislative action, and measures the District takes to find savings. 

School districts in Texas are funded primarily by a combination of local property taxes and state revenue. The state has established a funding formula that determines how much a school district is entitled to, based on a number of factors like average daily attendance and needs of the students. First, revenue collected from property taxes is used to meet a district’s funding entitlement – the amount of funding the state has determined each school district should receive. If a district is unable to generate all of its funding via local property taxes, the state will provide additional funding. If a district generates more than its funding entitlement due to high local property tax collection, the excess revenue will be kept by the state for redistribution to other districts. This is known as Recapture. (Source) Districts also receive a small portion of funding from the federal government. 

There are a number of factors affecting our budget that are outside of our control:

• An outdated state funding formula that has not been changed since 2019, despite record inflation which has increased the cost of everything from from fuel, to insurance, to supplies.
• Underfunded mandates from the state: the state requires that we provide things like special education programs, safety measures, teacher raises, and technology for our students, but does not provide the funding for us to do so. We have little flexibility in these areas, and if the state fully funded those programs they mandate, our budget deficit would be resolved.
• School funding based on average daily attendance vs enrollment. Texas is one of only six states which funds public K-12 schools based on actual student attendance rather than enrollment. We must plan for educating the number of students enrolled, but we only receive funding based on average daily attendance.

Bottom line, the cost of educating our students has increased significantly, while funding has remained stagnant. We need the State of Texas to use their record surplus to fully fund our schools.

We have taken a number of efficiency measures, including:

• Cuts at our administrative offices totaling $4.7 million (after cutting $4 million the year before)
• Staffing efficiencies to offset declining enrollment totaling $11.9 million
• Moving to shared staffing models in certain areas, saving nearly $3 million
• Eliminating program redesign positions, saving $5.4 million

These savings helped us find a savings of approximately $27.3 million and balance the budget in the current school year.