By Kim Hilsenbeck
Speak now or forever hold your peace.
Thursday, the Hays CISD Board of Trustees will discuss the proposed operating budget and tax rate for the 2013-2014 school year. A public forum will also be held to seek input on the tax rate and budget proposals.
Though the Texas state legislature did not completely restore public school funding to pre-2011 levels, Hays CISD deputy superintendent Carter Scherff said the district is in reasonably good financial shape, at least for now.
“We can make it,” he said, “but for how long? It really depends on the outcome of the [school finance] lawsuit.”
He said the 2015 legislature will have to address the lawsuit from a funding perspective.
As a fast-growth school district, Hays CISD has to overcome the legislature’s underfunding, both in terms of not restoring the levels, as well as not keeping up with the rapid expansion. The district projected enrollment of 636 new students this fall.
However, Carter said the proposed budget of $124,451,844 this school year allows a modest raise for teachers, nurses and librarians as well as all other staff.
In addition, the district will hire approximately 31 new positions this year.
The cost per pupil for Hays CISD to educate a student is $7,257, an increase of $53 over the previous year, Scherff said.
The district still carries a substantial amount of debt, much of it from the exponential increase in student enrollment in the past decade, prompting the need for several new schools at the primary and secondary levels.
According to Scherff, Hays CISD owes $447,339,000 in debt, of which $281,400,000 is the principal amount.
But the district owes less than it did on that debt about five years ago thanks to financial maneuvers that reduced the interest on the loans. The cost for debt service on the loans decreased 9.30 percent over last school year, according to Scherff. He attributed that decrease to two factors, 1) refunding, or what’s more commonly called refinancing, of the debt and 2) that last year was a peak year in debt payments.
Scherff said, “It didn’t make economic sense to refinance in 2007-2009 because of negative arbitrage, where the interest payment is more than what’s in an escrow account to pay the interest.”
For the 2013-2014 school year, Scherff said he is not recommending a tax rate increase to the Hays CISD Board of Trustees. The current rate is $1.0400 per $100 home valuation for Maintenance and Operations (M&O) and $.04213 on Interest and Sinking (I&S), for a total effective tax rate of $1.4613.
Scherff will present the final budget and tax documents to the board at Thursday’s meeting. He said the two fund balances, M&O and I&S, are at $32,770,212 and $778,783, respectively.
He also expects Hays CISD will be highly rated by the Texas Comptroller’s Office.
The public forum will take place beginning at 6:15 p.m. at Hays High School Media and Technology Building.
