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E-mail This StoryCarrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District is scrambling to find ways to pay for rising costs of fuel and to keep teacher salaries on par with other districts in the Metroplex.
“In the current school finance system the state, in their attempts to lower property taxes and replace them with alternate business taxes, created a system with not much room for increasing the amount of money available for school districts,” said Mark Hyatt, C-FB ISD’s assistant superintendent of support services. “As costs go up, the districts don’t have any place to go get additional resources. One of the more obvious situations this year is gasoline and fuel costs. There are no easy resources for addressing those increased costs.”
The district would have to call a rollback election for voters to approve an increase in taxes only if the board adopts a general fund tax rate exceeding $1.04, which the board is currently not recommending. By law, the highest tax rate districts can request of voters is $1.17. According to the current proposed budget, C-FB ISD will have a $13 million deficit for the 2008-2009 school year because the board is not asking taxpayers for an increase above $1.04.
“The board has been very conservative in the past and built up a reserve for a rainy day,” Hyatt said. “Before we ask taxpayers for a tax increase we should use money accumulated in the past.”
This rainy day fund will get the district through the next year without increasing taxes, but Hyatt painted a dire picture of where things can go after next school year.
“If current school legislation doesn’t change, if we are very conservative, if we raise taxes by the maximum allowed by current law … the district probably runs out of money in 2013,” Hyatt told the board of trustees during Thursday’s meeting.
The public will have the opportunity to hear about the budget and proposed tax rate during a public meeting, which the board unanimously approved to take place at 7 p.m. Aug. 28 at the Administration Building. Trustee Nancy Watten is concerned that not many will show up, saying more needs to be done to let voters know about the meeting.
“People will have the opportunity to see where we spend our money and that we don’t waste it,” she said.
While the district can shoulder the deficit for 2008-2009, in the following school year serious budget cuts as well as tax increases will have to be made.
“What I think the state needs to do is to somehow take into consideration the cost for teacher raises as well as general inflation and find some way for school districts to keep up with increasing costs,” Hyatt said.
Hyatt said that most reports show that the current funding for schools in Texas is inadequate compared to other states and that Texas has been historically ranked in the bottom 10 in amount spent per student.
“School finance has been a struggle for at least the last 15 years, but this is probably the worst situation we’ve ever had,” Hyatt said.
Contact Senitra Horbrook at 972-628-4074 or shorbrook@acnpapers.com. Comment on this story at scntx.com.
