Austin public schools have been underfunded for years, but now the issue is a full-blown crisis.
Austin ISD officials have said that is why they are calling for a tax rate increase election on the November ballot.
District officials say they were forced to cut the budget this year because of a lack of funding from the state. So now the district is asking local taxpayers to pay a higher rate on property taxes to raise property taxes so the district can collect more funding to pay its bills. If passed, the district pledges to “give more than 60 percent of employees a raise.” There are concerns that without the inflow of extra funding, more budget cuts will have to be made to AISD’s budget.
The first concern is the school district doesn’t know if it will be passed and cannot plan a budget without that information, so what will change within the schools is currently unavailable. There is still a chance that this tax rate election will not pass and AISD will not get additional funding.
Austin ISD school board trustee Lynn Boswell said possible cuts could include reducing teacher planning time for high school teachers, eliminating non-essential positions like librarians, and selling the district’s headquarters building. This worries teachers and students because if teachers are overworked their quality of teaching may falter.
However, because this is an election, nothing is confirmed yet. We interviewed Michael Herbin, the current Akins principal, to which he told us that “the difference it would mean to Akins high school if it passes, or if it doesn’t pass, I don’t know.”
The AISD budget usually has a draft around February so current changes or issues will be discussed then. This time gap hopefully gives the school a chance to adequately plan for how this election will affect our spending. If the extra money is given, it allows AISD to decide where that money goes and how it will affect spending as a whole.
The other concern relates to the money that the school would get from this election and how it will be utilized. A percentage of all money raised will be sent to the state, so even if this passes Austin ISD won’t be able to use all of it.
This reduction in the money Austin ISD receives from its taxpayers is known as “recapture.” This system requires the state to take what it considers to be excess revenue from property-wealthy districts and send it to those with low property values. The concern that some are having is that AISD wouldn’t be receiving all of this money.
Many Austin school officials and taxpayers have said that the “recapture” system penalizes Austin ISD taxpayers unfairly as their tax dollars are not having the full impact on improving their local schools as much as they could without it.
Kevin Foster, Austin ISD School Board Vice President, said that a successful (tax rate election) would generate about $171 million in new revenue for Austin ISD. Of that $171 million, the district would keep only $41 million. The counterargument is that with the current funding situation, any additional money will keep the proposed budget cuts from hurting students and teachers even more than they already have this year.
Ken Zarifis, president of the local Education Austin educator union, said there is no other good option at the moment than to support the proposed tax rate increase. said
“There’s no other option when you have a state that refuses to invest in public education,” he said.
The Austin Council of Parent Teacher Associations hosted a Student Journalism Conference at the Capitol in September in which student journalists heard presentations from experts on school finance and policymakers.
Boswell said she understands it can be frustrating for Austin taxpayers to want to approve a tax increase knowing that Austin ISD already sends more recapture funds back to the state than any other district. This is why she and members of the Austin PTAs often go to the Capital to advocate for more school funding from the state so school boards can pass local tax rate cuts.
Senior Symi Valenzuela, president of the Akins Student Council, said she hopes school funding can be increased for Akins because students and the campus as a whole have a lot of needs that are not being addressed.
“Compared to a lot of schools around us, we’re heavily underfunded,” she said.
The future of funding is in the hands of the voters, Herbin himself notes how “ the right to vote is one of the most important rights that we have”. He explains that we fought for the right to vote and you should take advantage of the choice.
Alan Brooks, an English teacher and union steward for Education Austin at Akins, said the “consequences for AISD will be dire” if the tax rate election fails. However, he said that Austin voters have a history of supporting bond issues and tax rate elections in the past.
Brooks said Education Austin is “vehemently opposed” to getting rid of teachers’ planning periods. The last time this was proposed, they won the fight to keep planning periods.
“Losing planning periods would be very bad for teachers and students since we use that time to plan lessons, meet with other teachers, grade assessments, make copies, and create curriculum,” he said “Teachers already do a lot of unpaid work at home, and this would exacerbate that considerably.
