The Austin Independent School District Board of Trustees approved a $954 million budget for Fiscal Year 2024-25 earlier this month. Here’s what you need to know.
The District Is in a Deficit.
The district will spend more than it has going into the new school year. While Austin taxpayers forked over $1.69 billion for the 2024-25 fiscal year, the district can’t touch $821 million of that, thanks to the state’s recapture program. The recapture program takes tax dollars from districts with high property values like AISD, and redistributes the money to districts with lower property values.
After paying the state, AISD will be in a $78 million deficit going into the new fiscal year, which starts July 1.
The Deficit Could Shrink.
The approved budget is already $29 million less than it was previously proposed to be — AISD accomplished that by cutting 60 staff positions (or didn’t fill vacancies) in the central office's administration, cutting its third-party contract budget by $4.8 million and its overtime pay budget by $4.1 million.
But it could really all come down to the voters.
The school board has until Aug. 19 to decide whether to ask voters to approve a property tax increase in November. If they do, and if voters approve the increase, the deficit would shrink to $41 million. The tax hike would also allow the district to pay some of its more experienced employees a market rate adjustment and and give some employees categorized as "classified staff" a $0.25 hourly increase.
The new tax rate would be $0.9287 per $100 of taxable value, which means a house worth $563,000 would be bumped up to an extra $35 a month.
If the property tax is not approved, active, regular full-time employees would receive a one-time payment of $500 and staff workers would receive $250, the district said.
