The Comptroller has come up with the Financial Allocation Study for Texas (FAST) for school district tracking. It assigns a rating based on how districts spend their money and how this spending translates into student achievement. The link is at: http://www.fastexas.org/. Is this data being used by Hays CISD when it determines what to cut?
When available revenue goes up, as it has done at a crisp pace for over a dozen years, Hays has increased spending to match the new revenue level, and then some. Accordingly, as revenue goes down, Hays is required to decrease spending or take the difference out of savings. The current plan for Hays seems to do a little of both.
The district would have more revenue available for instruction but it has a bloated Central Office, bloated campus administration and unrealistic student to teacher ratios combined with grossly underutilized schools. Pfluger, Tobias, Blanco Vista, Buda Elementary and Elm Grove are seriously underutilized. Simon, the largest and most costly middle school in HCISD history is under enrolled. Each school closing would save $750,000-$1,000,000 annually.
Debt of over $579 million in principal and interest debt outstanding, almost $40,000 per student, results in annual debt service payments of over $1,600 per student annually and even this is not enough. You see, we’ve back loaded the payments by financing the majority of the last bonds for 30 years with interest only payments for 22 years! Carpenter cost six times what Elm Grove cost. We have one of the highest debts in Texas per student and it is way over twice as high as the average for all fast growth districts in Texas.
Despite record spending increases, the FAST program rates Hays spending index as “average”. Our math progress is especially troubling at 39 percent. When comparing to peer districts sorted by the composite progress score, Hays is fifth lowest out of 42 districts being bested by San Marcos, Pflugerville, Georgetown and Judson locally. Therefore, one has to question the validity of all this increased spending that is driving away the middle class.
Education is Everybody’s Business
Bryce Bales
