The Ector County ISD Board of Trustees on Tuesday approved $349,223,000 in expenditures for the 2024-25 school year.
That’s a deficit of $12 million. Without cuts, the deficit would be $24 million.
For 2023-24, expenditures came to $345,648,500 and the revenue and other sources was $334,253,451. The net expected decrease to the fund balance was $13,920,049, but the actual anticipated decrease is about $2.5 million now, Chief Financial Officer Deborah Ottmers said.
There were 106 days of fund balance in ’23-24 and there are 91 days in 2024-25 with the current budget.
“We feel very comfortable about this budget and we’ll continue working on saving wherever we can,” Ottmers told trustees.
The board also is required to approve the School Nutrition and debt service budgets. The School Nutrition budget is balanced at $20,277,315 and debt service is $46,249,195.
The general fund is based on current appraisal district estimates for Ector County, current school finance laws, expected enrollment of 33,500 students, and a projected attendance rate of 88%, the board recap said.
Projected expenses are slightly more than $349 million, creating a deficit of almost $12 million. The largest expense by object is employee payroll (78%). The largest expenditure by function is Instruction (57%).
As discussed in previous meetings, the recap said, concern over funding for public education for this year and next year made Trustees hesitant to add raises to an already tight budget. Instead, trustees approved a one-time retention incentive of approximately 3% for full-time employees who return to ECISD for the 2024-25 school year. It will come at a cost of about $6 million.
Remaining federal ESSER 3 federal funds will help allow ECISD to do this for its employees by freeing up fund balance for this incentive. The incentive will be about the size of a typical raise — the average teacher will see about $1,950 and the
average hourly employee will see about $930; the minimum any employee would get is $500. This incentive will be paid in the fall, and some part-time employees are not eligible for it, the recap said.
ESSER stands for Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief.
The tax rate will be considered in September. It is proposed to be $1.014, which is the same as last year.
The board also heard bond updates and approved having the architecture firm Parkhill design a new cafeteria at Austin Elementary School as the structure was possibly destabilized by seismic activity, District Operations Executive Director Sam Magallan said.
The estimated cost at this point is $1.7 million and is covered by insurance.
The board approved Robert Trejo as executive director of accountability and school improvement and Veronica Reyes as an executive director of leadership.
Currently Trejo is the principal at Clint High School. He has 17 years of experience in education from teaching to curriculum and instruction specialist to a decade of campus leadership. He holds a bachelor’s and a master’s in math and is very knowledgeable about the accountability system.
Reyes is joining ECISD from El Paso ISD where she has served as the executive director of specialized learning
services since 2022. She has 11 years of administrative experience in middle school and high school and in multiple school districts, including three years as a principal and four years as a Bilingual Director.
The projected attendance rate is 88 percent for next year and it was at 92 percent for this year.
Superintendent Scott Muri said Chief of Schools Keeley Boyer and her team are addressing an attendance improvement plan.
COVID affected attendance and it’s a nationwide problem, Muri said.
Muri said the board will see the attendance improvement plan in August.
The board approved trustee Dawn Miller as a delegate to the Texas Association of School Boards and Robert Thayer as an alternate.
The Student Code of Conduct and revisions to the Student Handbook were approved. Boyer said there were no changes to the code of conduct for next year and very few changes to the fees.
The board also approved using part of Travis Elementary School for child care.
See the full recap here.
