School districts in Central Texas face budget season, face possible staff and program cuts

Schools in Central Texas will need to tighten their belts and prepare for possible staff and program cuts, officials told Austin area school boards last month as they begin preparing their financial plans for the 2024-25 school year.

Texas school districts, many of which were already facing budget deficits this year, had hoped for an influx of state money from the 2023 legislative session, but lawmakers didn't pass meaningful increases to public education spending, such as raising the per-student state allocation to keep up with inflation or boosting teacher pay, leaving school administrators to crunch numbers to minimize expenditures. Texas schools are facing the lowest inflation-adjusted state and local funding since 2020, according to an American-Statesman analysis.

The analysis of Texas education financial data for the past decade revealed that state and local school funding has not kept up with education costs and increasing demands. State and local education funding, adjusted for inflation, reached a peak during the 2019-20 school year and has since declined, though actual state and local allocations per student have steadily increased since 2014.

Many school districts, such as the Austin district, beginning their initial budget discussions for the upcoming school year are bracing for deficits.

Austin school leaders expect to make cuts of some sort, though specifics haven't been laid out, district leaders told the school board during a Feb. 22 meeting.

“We'll have to make cuts corresponding to any proposed budget increase,” Superintendent Matias Segura said.

Though lawmakers last year did pass about $7.4 billion in new state money for schools, districts are facing additional costs this year, AISD Chief Financial Officer Eduardo Ramos said.

More: Analysis: Texas schools facing lowest inflation-adjusted state, local funding since 2020

For example, the state approved about $1.4 billion in new funding allocated specifically for school safety, but lawmakers also passed a law requiring an armed security guard or employee on every campus.

The law brought in about $30,000 more in state money for each of Austin's campuses, Ramos said, but “we all know a police officer costs more than $30,000. It was basically, for us, an unfunded mandate.”

The Austin district this year took on a $52 million budget deficit but has been able to cut it back to about $31 million, according to the district.

More: As districts, parents seek better education outcomes, Texas lawmakers weigh school choice

Every school district in Texas is in the same boat, said Manor district Superintendent Robert Sormani.

The district, east of Austin, is considering making cuts by moving prekindergarten to other buildings and shuttering the current campus, freezing hiring for some positions and rerouting its buses to save on driving positions and fuel, he said.

“Do you want me to cut here or here? Because no matter where you go, people are going to be upset about it,” Sormani said.

'We're just going to have to make painful decisions'

Many school administrators place blame for their budget shortfalls on state lawmakers.

Despite bipartisan support last year to invest more money in schools — especially for teacher pay raises — proposed education spending boosts became embroiled in a polarizing fight over school choice, a program that would use state money to pay for private school tuition.

Any new money the state allocated to schools didn’t go far enough to make up for rising operating costs, said Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers.

“Not one damn dime of that money went into the pockets of our educators,” Capo said.

That funding crunch could have disastrous effects on teacher retention, a problem many districts are grappling with, he said.

About 69% of teachers have considered leaving their job in the past year, but 72.2% agree higher pay or changes to their workload could persuade them to stay, according to a recently released survey from Texas AFT.

Of the teachers who took the survey, 44.9% ranked salary as their top workplace issue.

The funding crunch is a crisis, Capo said. Since 2020, many districts have relied on the slow roll of COVID-19 pandemic-era federal money to fill the gaps between inflationary costs and income, but those funds have largely run out, he said.

This year, district officials are facing the realization that no funding help is coming, Sormani said.

"You try to spread out the cuts and the pain over time with the hopes that something will change in the economic situation," Sormani said. "At some point, you just have to say, 'It's not coming,' so we're just going to have to make painful decisions that nobody wants to make and, quite frankly, our communities don't want to make."

Most districts finalize their budgets for the next school year over the summer.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin area school districts prepare for budget season, expecting cuts