posted Aug. 8 -

Beeville school trustees want to give employees a 3 percent pay raise this coming school year, but taxpayers will have to approve the idea first.

The proposed increase will cost some $660,000 and will have to be financed through a tax rate increase of 6 cents.

If trustees adopt the budget they reviewed Thursday, residents who live within BISD will vote on the proposed tax rate increase in November.

In the past, school trustees could raise the tax rate by up to 8 cents per $100 value to finance pay raises and other expenses without voter approval and without triggering a “rollback election” that would allow voters to repeal the tax rate increase.

However, the Legislature changed the law last year to require school districts to seek public approval for any tax rate increases.

BISD and other school districts are allowed by the state to seek a tax rate increase of up to 13 cents per $100 value.

A one-cent increase in the tax rate generates $150,000; therefore, a 6-cent increase would raise some $900,000, $660,000 of which would go to salaries. The remainder would be spent on the accompanying benefits and insurance.

Mulling pay raises

Beeville ISD Superintendent Dr. John Hardwick Jr. said the school district could offer a 2 percent pay raise to employees and still have a balanced budget going into the 2008-09 school year.

The 2 percent increase would require a 5-cent tax rate increase, which also would require voter approval.

But Hardwick said most school districts across the state offer employees an average pay increase of 3 percent when they offer pay hikes.

“I feel like a 3 percent increase allows us to remain competitive with other school districts,” he explained to the board during Thursday’s budget workshop. “Three percent is the industry norm to reach out and attract new teachers and retain the teachers they already have.”

As superintendent, Hardwick will not be eligible for the pay increase.

Lean budget already

Even if voters approve the proposed tax rate increase, trustees will still need to trim the budget by an additional $73,000 to make ends meet this coming school year.

“We’ve already made some significant cuts,” he told the board.

Those cuts include $36,000 in coaches’ stipends, $107,000 to replace outdated computers used by staff, and $10,500 in food costs.

“This may be our last meal,” said Trustee Viola Salazar, as she dined on a submarine sandwich provided by the school district during lunchtime budget workshops.

“I can bring a sack lunch,” Trustee Tom Beasley replied.

Other cuts include:

• Four employees — a counselor, custodian, dyslexia teacher and employee at the Learning Resource Center — for a savings of $186,215.

• $109,000 budgeted for extra fuel. The district will pay for the extra fuel by not buying a new school bus as planned. That bus was to cost an estimated $80,000. “Basically we’re cutting a bus to buy the fuel to keep the other buses we already have running,” explained Trustee John Fish.

• $40,000 planned for student workers.

• $52,716 earmarked for a Spanish teacher at the high school.

• $50,000 for districtwide maintenance.

• $18,682 in staff travel expenses.

• $40,668 from the transportation budget.

• $75,000 from the electricity budget.

The proposed cuts totaled $425,844.

If approved by the board, the cuts would bring the proposed 2008-09 budget to $24,710,780.

Budget planners expect the district to receive $24,710,780 in revenue this coming school year without employee pay raises.

“We’re looking at everything we can find to cut to get us by,” Hardwick assured the board.

Will the public agree?

Trustees said they were worried the public may not be willing to foot the bill for a pay raise after they were asked last spring to pay for district-wide improvements.

“They just approved a bond issue and now we’re asking them to approve a tax rate increase,” said Trustee Matt Huie.

He said he favored a 3 percent pay increase over a 2 percent increase because he feared the board would have to have another tax rate hike next year in order to boost salaries again.

If approved by voters, taxpayers will pay $1.10 to BISD for every $100 worth of property they own.

The district presently levies a tax rate of $1.04 per $100 value.

That means the owner of a $100,000 home could expect to pay an additional $60 in property taxes to the school district next year and the years following before exemptions because salary increases, unlike bonuses, cannot be cut.

Huie said he didn’t want to keep going back to taxpayers year after year.

Huie’s colleagues on the board apparently agreed with him and approved Hardwick’s recommendation to finance a 3 percent pay raise with a tax rate increase.

The board will hold a public hearing on the proposed budget and tax rate increase on Tuesday, Aug. 26. The public hearing will begin at 5:30 p.m. and the board meeting will begin at 6 p.m.

If the board adopts the budget and proposed tax rate increase, voters will be able to cast ballots on the issue during the November general election.

If voters reject the pay raise increase in November, the school district may have to make steeper cuts elsewhere, Hardwick said.

Harder times ahead

Hardwick warned trustees that as hard as it is to ask taxpayers for a tax rate increase this year — on top of a bond issue election passed last spring — they could expect to make even more difficult decisions next year and the years after.

He said the board could expect to cut educational programs and consolidate or close more campuses.

BISD cannot expect state funding to make up the difference, Hardwick said. That’s because the state allocates more funding for school districts that are growing, he noted.

School districts with declining enrollment, such as BISD, receive less state funding.

“Unless a school district is growing by at least 5 percent annually, they’re probably circling the drain,” he said. “And BISD is not only not growing by 5 percent, we’re losing students.”

He said BISD is a small 4A school and even closer to a large 3A school district yet offers a wide variety of extracurricular programs.

“We have a lot of extracurricular programs for a district our size,” he told the board.

Cutting programs reduces labor costs, which make up 80 percent of the budget.

Fish agrees that employee cuts, distasteful as they may be, may well be in BISD’s future.

“Next year we will have to make cuts in our programs,” said Fish, who served on the budget subcommittee that recommended the cuts reviewed by the board Thursday.

Board President Nick Cardenas warned trustees to expect a backlash from voters who will want to know why they are asking taxpayers to finance a pay increase instead of doing something to increase enrollment.

Cardenas posed the question to Hardwick and his staff.

“Have we asked families, ‘Why are you leaving? Why are you going?’”

He worried that the enrollment decline will worsen if and when St. Mary’s Academy Charter School begins offering high school programs.

“A small community like Beeville can’t afford two high schools,” Beasley said.

Hardwick said the whole region is experiencing enrollment decline, and he expects it to continue.

Because the enrollment decline affects state appropriations, BISD students are “undervalued,” he said.

Beasley said some school districts receive as much as $8,000 per pupil per year while BISD receives roughly $4,400 per pupil per year.

Hardwick said the board may also consider offering longtime employees retirement incentives to cut labor costs in the years to come.

Replacing employees who have 25-30 years under their belts with lesser paid employees with only 10 years experience will help the district save on employee costs, he explained.