With a total budget of $384,932,641, about 60 percent is going for instruction at Ector County ISD and 10 percent for maintenance.
This includes across-the-board raises for the district’s 4,200 employees.
The 2021-22 budget was $352,511,770. The tax rate is anticipated to remain the same at $1.17792 per $100 valuation.
Texas school boards are legally required to approve three separate budgets: the general fund budget which is projected to be $338,720,000; debt service, which is projected at $27,547,576; and the school nutrition budget at $18,115,065.
All are balanced budgets.
The general fund includes the compensation plan approved by the ECISD Board of Trustees in May.
- Starting teacher salaries increased to $58,750. In 2017-18, ECISD’s starting teacher salary was $44,500.
- Everyone on the teacher pay scale will get a minimum increase of $2,000.
- A 4% general pay increase at midpoint for hourly employees (campus-based and central office).
- 3% (of midpoint) pay increase for all professional employees (campus-based and central office.
- Raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour (this is up from $10 an hour two years ago).
- The pay increases come at a cost of approximately $9.3 million to the district’s budget.
The expenditure per pupil is budgeted at $6,025 up from $5,751 in 2021-22. Expenditures per pupil can be higher, depending on whether students are special needs, bilingual, economically disadvantaged, at risk of dropping out of school, gifted and talented or career and technical education students.
Ottmers said students in career and technical education can be funded at up to $10,000 per student because of the cost of the equipment they’re trained on.
“We get extra money, but we also have to prove that we spend it in those areas, so it’s not just free for all,” Ottmers said. “The $6,025 is for the basic educating.”
Funding follows students who transfer into ECISD.
Some 33,500 students are expected to attend ECISD schools in the fall, including the UTPB STEM Academy, which partnered with ECISD.
The cost to educate a child in all the different functions is not just instruction. It’s a variety of things such as transportation, food service, administration, sports fields and maintenance.
The maintenance and operations tax this year is just under $1 and debt service is just under 18 cents.
“Those two rates are different, but the total is the same …,” Ottmers said.
In May, Texas voters approved a state constitutional amendment raising the homestead exemption from $25,000 to $40,000.
Proposition 1, a property tax limit reduction for elderly and disabled residents, also passed in May.
It supported “amending the state constitution to authorize the legislature to reduce the property tax limit for school maintenance and operations taxes imposed on the homesteads of elderly or disabled residents to reflect any tax rate reduction enacted by law from the preceding tax year,” according to Ballotpedia.
A number of companies are expected to come in that have obtained, or are in the process of trying to get, an appraised value limitation under Chapter 313.
The Comptroller’s website says “an appraised value limitation is an agreement in which a taxpayer agrees to build or install property and create jobs in exchange for a 10-year limitation on the taxable property value for school district maintenance and operations tax … purposes.”
“The minimum limitation value varies by school district,” the site said.
“When their 10-year time period runs out and those billions of dollars go on our tax rolls, unless the law changes, that will throw us into recapture at that point,” Ottmers said.
Chapter 313’s are due to expire at the end of September, but the Comptroller’s office wants applications in by June 30.
The 313’s should provide revenue to address learning needs and continue programs that were started with federal COVID funds, she said.
The district also expects more students to come back, which would bring in more state revenue.
Certified property values should be coming in July.
Ottmers said many students who were not in school this past year were in the prekindergarten and kindergarten age range.
