Published: September 02, 2008 10:22 am         

District to dip into reserves to pay for teacher, staff raises

By Libby Cluett
lcluett@mineralwellsindex.com

Despite facing an anticipated $256,000 deficit for the 2008-09 budget, Mineral Wells ISD is in the same boat as a number of public school districts opting to dip into reserves to offer teachers and support staff a pay hike.

At Thursday night’s special school board meeting to present and approve the proposed budget and tax rate, MWISD Superintendent Dr. Ronny Collins told trustees the proposed employee stipend is “not a lot, but it lets them know we’re trying.”

A statement appearing in the Aug. 3 edition of the Stephenville Empire-Tribute did not sit well with Collins and perhaps contributed some impetus toward the hike.

A series of articles focused on SISD’s attempt to justify adopting a rate above the state mandated level of $1.04 for maintenance and operations. Doing this would automatically trigger a “rollback election” so voters could decide on the proposed rate to offer teachers pay raises. The Empire-Tribune stated, “In fact, when looking at a list of 17 districts across the region, Stephenville is at the bottom, with only teachers in the Brownwood and Mineral Wells ISDs being paid less.”

The SISD school board ultimately opted against the rollback election, after public outcry, and instead chose to fund the raises out of their “savings” or fund balance. Numerous public school districts across the state have made similar decisions, including MWISD.

Collins told board members at Thursday’s budget hearing that he, Chief Financial Officer Paul Hearn and the board’s budget committee worked through a chopping session to bring what looked like an $800,000 deficit for 2008-09 down to zero. Once at zero, he said they started “to look at the situation and do something for teachers.”

“I don’t like being named as an example,” he said alluding to the article on SISD.

“When you don’t have money, it’s hard to do anything. I’ve talked to several districts in the area and they are in the same situation,” he said.

Collins explained that the committee decided to “accept a deficit” in order to apply a 1 percent increase for teachers and 3 percent increase for support staff.

“Teachers are all getting a STEP increase [a variable raise, based on years of service]. This [hike] is in addition to that,” said Collins.

“If you only gave 1 percent, the lower-paid people would only see [about] $10 per month. Some staff in maintenance and transportation are not on the STEP scale,” he added.

“We have money in our fund balance to cover [the expected $256,000 deficit], so we’re not in the hole,” Collins said.

Collins explained to the board that MWISD would give the increase as a lump sum as a stipend at the end of the fall semester.

“We had to do something for our teachers and paraprofessionals,” MWISD School Board President David Bullock later told the Index. “The inflation rate is 4.28 percent,” he said, adding that this figure essentially erases the $2,000 pay raise approved in the 2006 Texas Legislative session.


Cutting the budget

A figurative storm is approaching school districts. If Thursday’s Mineral Wells ISD board meeting to adopt the budget and tax rate was any indication, it’s already here.

“Our income is tied to numbers from 2006,” said Collins. “The problem comes from expenses continuing to go up. A lot of things we have no control over,” he said, citing utilities, fuel and state-defined teacher salaries and STEP raises.

With the 2008-09 budget comes a severe belt-tightening for MWISD and school districts throughout the state, mostly attributable to House Bill 1, which came out of a special session in the 2006 State Legislature.

Collins and the budget committee went through the initial 2008-09 budget. Trimmings came in the following areas:

• Eliminating and absorbing duties of retired teachers and administrators – including three administrative positions – and delegating different responsibilities to different people. One was the DREAM Academy principal position, which Collins said Jimmie Yancey and Bobbye Estes would oversee.

• Reconfiguring salaries budgeted for longtime teachers who retired and were replaced by newer teachers.

• Backing out raises that were already figured in the budget. Collins said they couldn’t consider raises until the budget was balanced.

• Having departments cut supply budgets across the board by 5.5 percent.

• Backing out an accounting “pass through” fund of $147,000, which dealt with teacher retirement, but was never realized by the district.

“All departments heads had to come in and tell where they could cut,” Bullock. explained. “There’s always things you can cut – you have to allow time. We’ll have to look at it as [Collins] goes through the next year – every aspect of the budget needs to be examined throughout the year.”

“If there are areas where we need to cut, he’s going to cut them. We have to; we owe that to the taxpayers,” he added.

Bullock said that should come from locking in cheaper electric rates and eventually through the energy savings initiative.


What’s next?

Collins reminded board members Thursday evening that the State Legislature meets in January. “Something’s got to give,” he said regarding the state-mandated tax freeze.

“It’s time for the state to step in and pony up their share for the schools,” added Bullock.

“The state is sitting on an enormous heap of money in reserve and people are taxed to death – paying more with skyrocketing property values,” he said.

“Even property-rich districts are adopting deficit budgets because of rising energy, transportation and staffing costs,” he added. “We lost teachers this past year because they commuted from other places and could not afford to drive here. When you don’t make much money and have to spend $3,000-$4,000 a year to commute to work, [teachers are] willing to take a lower-paying job somewhere else.”

Bullock said the district would have preferred doing more for teachers and that dipping slightly into the deficit for teacher salaries is not a big problem this year. But he said it would be if the State Legislature does not address the issue soon.

On Friday, he sent letters to Sen. Craig Estes and Rep. Jim Keffer expressing his concern over the state funding system.

“By capping the tax rate at $1.04 per $100 valuation, districts are forced to either call tax increase elections, or in most cases adopt a deficit budget,” Bullock noted in his letter.