If you thought your school district was the only one with money troubles, think again. Many districts in Central Texas are struggling due to a combination of factors: The base level of per student funding hasn’t kept up with inflation, federal pandemic relief for schools is ending, and the Texas Legislature is requiring districts to do more without providing enough funding to cover the extra expenses.
KUT News surveyed 22 school districts in Hays, Williamson and Travis counties about their budgets for the 2024-25 school year. Only three reported balanced budgets for the fiscal year — Jarrell ISD, Round Rock ISD and Thrall ISD.
Round Rock ISD made roughly $30 million in spending cuts to get there. When the school board voted on the proposal last month, RRISD Board President Amber Feller Landrum said she was “thrilled” about the balanced budget, but that it was a painful process.
"There are so many more things that I want to do with this budget," she said. "Our teachers desperately need more money."
The budget includes a 1% raise for staff; some will get an additional 1% if the district enrolls enough students.
While Round Rock has a balanced budget, the largest school district in the region has at least a $41 million deficit — despite making $29 million in spending cuts. Austin ISD eliminated 60 positions within the district’s central administrative office. And, unless the school board calls an election in November to increase the tax rate and voters approve it, the deficit will grow to $78 million.
A roundup of school budgets
This map provides information about whether a school district has or anticipates a budget deficit and how large it is. It also shows whether a district offered raises for the 2024-25 school year and whether it eliminated positions to reduce costs.
Steps districts are taking to reduce costs
While most Central Texas school districts are dipping into their savings to cover expenses, many have still had to make cuts to keep their deficits from getting too large. Below are steps three districts have taken to keep costs down.
Hays CISD 'reshuffles' staff
Like so many other districts in Central Texas, Hays CISD Superintendent Eric Wright said, the combination of inflation and stagnant per-student funding is taking a toll. So, in the face of a multimillion-dollar budget deficit, the district is taking a number of steps to cut costs — including making staffing changes.
"Although our school district is adding around 1,100 new students per year, we chose not to add any new administrative positions or staffing at the Central Office level," he said.
Wright said Hays CISD reassigned some administrative staff to other jobs they were qualified for and cut some vacant positions.
The district is also moving about 30 instructional coaches — who work with teachers — back to the classroom as teachers themselves. Wright said the move will save the district money and also put "dynamic teachers back in the classroom."
He said the affected coaches will still have 10 days per school year to provide professional development to teachers.
The district also found some other personnel savings at the campus level by promoting some assistant principals to fill open principal positions.
Reshuffling staff and other cost-saving strategies helped the district reduce its projected deficit from about $16 million to $6.2 million by the time the Hays CISD school board adopted the budget last month.
"We think we can, with these cuts, balance the budget by next year and still provide all of the high-quality services that our community has come to expect," Wright said.
Altogether, Wright said the district saved about $2.3 million by reassigning instructional coaches to the classroom and about $3 million by cutting and reshuffling administrative positions.
Christina Courson, the district's chief human resources officer, said managing to cut spending without laying people off is a big win. She said she remembers when the district was forced to let many employees go in 2011.
“I thought for sure we would be back in a 2011 mode and having to have some very difficult conversations about losing employees, not through attrition, but through tough choices,” she said.
Manor ISD delays opening of new school
Manor ISD Superintendent Robert Sormani stands outside an elementary school that is so new it practically sparkles under the punishingly bright sun. Inside shiny cement hallways lead to an untouched gym with walls that open into a cafeteria and a school library illuminated with natural light. Outside the library is a colorful play area.
“The play area has got some nice shade so the little ones don’t burn themselves in the Texas heat,” he said.
The district had originally planned to open Wildhorse Elementary in time for the 2024-25 school year. But opening a school is expensive, Sormani said, and Manor ISD is starting out the new fiscal year with a nearly $21 million deficit.
“It’s nearly $1.2 million year over year of new operating costs every time you open an elementary school of this size,” he said.
Voters approved a school bond in 2019 that included building the new school. But the thing about bond dollars is they can be used only for capital projects, like construction; they can’t be used to pay teachers more, for example.
Sormani, who became superintendent in May 2023, said the district hasn’t seen the enrollment growth it expected to when the bond was developed five years ago. The combination of lower-than-projected enrollment and largely stagnant state funding, he said, made opening the elementary school untenable.
“It’s unfortunate we’re in a situation where districts don’t have the funding," he said. "We’re having to make these choices where we can’t open a school like Wildhorse Elementary School."
Sormani anticipates the campus will open in the next three to five years. In the meantime, the district does plan to make use of the campus.
“We are going to use it for some of our other programs so that the building won’t be empty,” he said. “You don’t want the building just to sit here.”
Part of the school will be used for the Manor ISD Child Development Center. The district’s alternative high school will also relocate to a wing of the building.
“So, I’m glad they get a chance to experience this at least," he said.
While the district will save over $1 million by holding off on opening Wildhorse Elementary, it's looking for other ways to reduce its deficit over the next fiscal year. One option the school board is considering is a tax rate election in November to help reduce the deficit to about $18 million and offer higher raises.
Sormani said the district is looking for more ways to keep down costs — from replacing technology devices only when they’re dead to potentially increasing class sizes.
“We’ve talked about perhaps in the future, we’re going to have to raise class sizes in certain places,” he said. “We’ve been trying to hold firm on not doing that quite yet but I think that’s something, like other districts, we’re going to have to consider.”
Georgetown ISD cuts department budgets
Georgetown ISD’s chief financial officer, Jennifer Hanna, told KUT her team has had to “get a little bit creative” this budget cycle.
The district, which is located in one of the nation’s fastest growing cities, is starting out its new fiscal year with a $4.5 million budget deficit.
Hanna said the district has made spending cuts in several areas to reduce costs, including reducing departmental budgets by around 5%.
“We’ve been cutting those budgets super lean. We’ve asked everyone to scale back,” she said. “We went for a 5% decrease in our departmental budgets, and then we came back again and asked our department managers to look at them and see if they couldn’t squeeze just a little bit more.”
To ensure the continuation and expansion of certain programs, Hanna said, the district is turning to community partnerships and grants for funding.
Georgetown High School's drone program, for example, was first launched in 2020 using grant funds from the Georgetown ISD Educational Foundation. It gives high school students the opportunity to earn a remote pilot certification from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
In March, the district learned the program had been selected as one of 12 nationwide recipients of the FAA’s Aircraft Pilots Aviation Workforce Development Grant. It was awarded $462,000 to expand its curriculum and professional development opportunities.
“We’re all thrilled. We got goosebumps when we heard the news that we had received the grant,” said Robert Thomas, one of the program’s instructors. “What we intend to do with that money is grow the program and move in new directions that we haven’t been able to serve yet because there wasn’t funding.”
Thomas said the grant will not only allow the program to serve more students, but also explore new topics.
“We’re gonna start moving into more autonomous drone programming, so you’re actually programming the flight pattern for the drone. We’re gonna start doing some ground-penetrating radar and lidar type of work that is for surveying and topography mapping,” he said. “And that’ll expose more kids to different career fields that are available out there in the world.”
Thomas said a Georgetown community member stepped in to help write and submit the grant application.
“It wouldn’t have happened without her,” he said.
