Brittany Kelley
KYLE — Hays CISD’s chief financial officer Deborah Ottmers gave a presentation of the district’s financial integrity rating system of Texas (FIRST) at the Oct. 20 board of trustees meeting, along with an efficiency audit.
According to Ottmers, FIRST was developed by the Texas Education Agency more than 20 years ago and requires districts to receive a report each year, along with a public hearing held Oct. 20.
“First, we’re going to start with the state ratings. Based on [20]23-24, there were 1,018 and these are public school districts [since] the charter schools have a separate rating,” explained Ottmers. “So, of the 1,018 school districts, 20 failed and almost 1,000 passed, 998 [did].”
Hays CISD received a B above standard achievement, with 86 other districts, which is below the previous A superior achievement that had been awarded in previous years. This is because days cash on hand was insufficient, revenues did not exceed expenditures or cash on hand, debt requirements outpaced property value and the fund balance decreased rapidly. The CFO stated that the district was aware that this would be the case, since the district was having to spend more, due to inflation, without increasing its revenue. Ottmers estimated that the district will stay in this position for another two to three years.
Next, Kent Willis of Patilo Brown and Hill presented the efficiency audit for the district.
“I want to point that out from the get-go that we’re looking at the last audited financial statements because the current year audit is not complete; that’s normal for an efficiency audit. You’ll also see reference to the prior FIRST rating because we’re looking at one year older data for this efficiency audit,” Willis said.
According to Willis, the purpose of an efficiency audit is to present information to the public to make a decision on whether or not they vote on a tax rate increase for the district. Additionally, he said that the district was not required to do an audit this year, since it had an exemption, but leaders chose to be transparent about its findings.
Willis stated that to do an audit, peer districts that are similar to Hays CISD — not necessarily its neighbors, but instead based it on enrollment, labor market and other statistics — are chosen and information is gathered about them from TEA, prior audit reports, state averages, etc. and then, it is presented to the board.
According to Willis, the demographic of students Hays CISD has costs more to educate, as certain populations, such as special education or economically disadvantaged students, require experts and professionals to be hired to ensure that they are able to be successful academically. This is one aspect that differs from the district’s peers.
He also explained that the number of students, as well as the cost of living in the area, has led Hays CISD to pay higher than the state average for teacher salary, but less than its peers.
“As we see here, 45.8% of the general fund's revenue are property taxes. That is pretty normal for school districts to be about half and half; however, that revenue per student is lower than your peer districts and the state average for Hays, for your tax dollars and the general fund per student, is lower than the comparisons,” said Willis.
Despite the revenue per student being lower, the cost to educate one student in the district is approximately $11,490, which is higher than the peers. Hays CISD instructional spending is also at 57.2%, which is more than the peer districts.
“For every school district I’m looking at this year, I’ve seen similar trends in Texas,” he said. “Smaller districts tend to have a little better budgets at the moment, but the medians and larger districts are really struggling … You guys appear, from our standpoint, to be making as much use of those additional dollars [from federal, local grant and state grant resources] as possible, which is good.”
“I really want to re-emphasize that this wasn’t required before the [tax rate] election and that we’re a district that believes in transparency. We chose to do this because we believe it builds public trust and it’s really important that we are transparent about our financial situation,” said trustee Johnny Flores, who also stated that the district is below average in its staff turnover rate. “We are an employee-friendly district and teachers want to stay and plant roots here in Hays County.”
Trustee Geoff Seibel explained that this audit allows the public to know that the district is doing the best it can compared to its peers.
Following the public hearing at the Oct. 20 meeting, the board voted 5-0 to accept the efficiency audit at its Oct. 27 meeting. Trustees Byron Severance and Vanessa Petrea were not in attendance. To listen to the presentations, visit bit.ly/4qnv5Oz.
