State Funding for Education
In 2023-2024, Pflugerville ISD and many other school districts projected a funding shortage due to legislative inaction during the 88th State Legislative Session, declining enrollment, and declining attendance.
School districts are funded primarily through local property taxes, with some additional funding from the State of Texas, depending on multiple factors. The Texas Education Agency calculates a district’s state funding by estimating how much local tax revenue the district should collect based on local property values.
Due to a rapid increase in local property values, PfISD is now a "recapture" district and, as a result, is forced to send money back to the State of Texas.
The district sent $17 million of its taxpayer dollars to the State of Texas last year.
The funding loss has forced the district to make hard budgeting decisions over the past several years. We have decreased staff budgets and positions every year for the past three years. We have decreased student programs. Although we did not implement this, district officials have contemplated closing campuses and consolidating campuses to save on operations expenses. We have also looked at implementing student fees for extra-curricular activities. These are not actions the district administration or Board of Trustees wanted to do. But even with these budget cuts, the funding gaps left by our State Legislature have left us with a $2.9 budget deficit for 2023-2024.
For these reasons, PfISD went to its voters asking for additional local tax money through a Voter-Approval Tax Rate Election (VATRE) on November 7, 2024.
The VATRE was approved by voters and provided the district with $10.7 million in funds which were primarily used for teacher and staff raises. However, this amount will not continue in future years.
Legislation Impacting Public School Finance
School Financial News in Texas
Public schools across the state are struggling. Stagnant state funding, inflationary double-digit price increases, and new legislative mandates are forcing districts to adopt deficit budgets and cut programs and staff.
Yet some are claiming otherwise and pushing a false narrative about school funding with the goal of undermining public education to ultimately divert public tax dollars to private voucher schemes.
It’s important to set the record straight. Here’s a look at some of the biggest myths around school funding and the facts that underscore how much Texas public school students and teachers are being shortchanged.
School districts across the state are bracing for substantial budget cuts and layoffs as they plan for the upcoming school year. The cripplingly insufficient financial support and politicization of state government funds has led to a decline of education and the elimination of critical resources for students.
There has been no increase in education funding from the state since 2019, leaving school districts forced to operate on a pre-pandemic established budget, according to Fox 4 News.“It’s a totally different world, but we’re still expected to operate on 2019 dollars,” Tracy Johnson, Keller ISD superintendent, told Fox 4 News.
Requests for more funding have also been blocked from the latest legislative session after the state failed to pass a school voucher bill — also known as the school choice bill that would have provided financial aid for private school students, pulled from taxpayer money.
Richardson ISD voted to move forward with a consolidation plan that will close some school campuses.
The district needs to make big budget cuts, and it will impact several elementary schools.
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.
FOX 4 has learned Fort Worth ISD is cutting 133 jobs to make up for a budget deficit.
The district says 129 of the 133 jobs that were cut were funded through COVID relief dollars.
That's money districts across North Texas are now no longer receiving.
"It's a shame they had to get to this place of cutting positions," said Steven Poole, the executive director of the United Educator's Association.
The United Educator's Association represents 26,000 public school employees in 43 North Texas school districts.
Like Fort Worth ISD, he said a lot of districts are in a budget crunch this year.
"A lot of districts try to manage their staff by cutting positions if someone retires or resigns and just not filling that position. Fort Worth was the first one to jump out there with true layoffs," said Poole.
Fort Worth ISD provided us with the resolution that outlines which jobs were cut.
The 133 jobs primarily funded through COVID relief funds are from the division of technology, assessment data analysts, freshman success coaches and leadership academy network instructional specialists.
"They eliminated entire classifications of positions so that's hard to eliminate those through retirements and resignations, but they're were big cuts," said Poole. "These are real people with real families and bills to pay."
Poole says Fort Worth ISD and many other districts in North Texas are facing a perfect storm.
"Federal COVID relief funds are going away, student enrollment is declining, and the state has not stepped up for the additional funding for school finance," he said.
Fort Worth Superintendent Dr. Angelica Ramsey spoke to those issues Tuesday.
"They are still tying those dollars to vouchers, and it’s hurting the children of Texas. So I implore every single one of the legislators and our governor to please think of the children of Texas, and have a 5th session, and give public school districts their money," she said.
Fort Worth ISD is also facing a significant decline in enrollment.
Poole says districts also need to do more to attract families back to public schools.
"This should be a wake-up call to the leaders of Fort Worth ISD that we are going to have to do something different," said Poole. "Parents are making other choices than Fort Worth public schools. We need better instruction, we need better student achievement and we need better academic and athletic offerings, so these parents are making Fort Worth ISD their first choice."
Employees will have their jobs through the end of the school year.
The district still needs to hire 200 teachers.
Fort Worth ISD will hold a job fair on March 5 to help affected employees explore other open jobs in the district.