Planning for a budget reduction for the fifth year in a row, top leaders at San Antonio Independent School District laid out their proposals for budget cuts this week.
Overall, district leaders identified $19.3 million in budget reductions, including 224 positions, most of which are already vacant positions, though roughly a quarter of the positions are filled and those could be subject to layoffs.
While the proposals could reduce SAISD’s budget deficit — about $45.9 million — by half, it would mean the loss of programs, slower response times for customer service calls and maintenance requests and even larger student-teacher ratios.
“This is not a new challenge,” said Superintendent Jaime Aquino, who’s set to retire in January of next year.
Within the past four years, SAISD has reduced its budget by $46 million; this included the elimination of 352 positions.
The budget cuts proposed on Monday would go into effect for the 2026-27 school year.
While looking for ways to cut the budget, Aquino said the district focused on eliminating positions not directly tied to student outcomes, trying to minimized disruptiveness, reducing contracted services and redirecting resources to the district’s academically struggling schools.
What budget cuts might look like
Every SAISD department head identified potential cuts for the next school year.
SAISD’s Police Department could have one the largest percentage in budget reductions by about 17.4%, cutting its current $6.1 million budget by about $1.07 million. The department would eliminate 15 vacant positions that were budgeted for a couple of years ago but were never filled.
SAISD Police Chief Johnny Reyes said the cuts would “streamline command structure, allowing for a more robust focus on community-based policing and incident prevention.”
Cutting positions in other departments, vacant or filled, would also mean longer wait times for technology repairs, IT service tickets and maintenance requests.
District leaders also proposed a slimmed down custodial department, potentially cutting 58 — 35 filled and 23 vacant— district-wide custodial positions and two campus-based custodians. Doing so would move the district’s cleanliness standards to the minimum required for most schools.
Aquino said the district would also focus on cutting ties with different consultant groups and contracting services. In the office of Human Capital Management, for example, officials proposed cutting their agreement with Teach For America, which recruits young professionals to teach in underserved classrooms.
More specific cuts in that department, leading to getting rid of five filled positions and one vacant seat, would delay onboarding of non-teacher staff and decrease personalized support for “non-routine” functions like school closure processes.
The district also adjusted student-teacher ratios, increasing the number of students per teacher by one or two students in every grade except preschool, kindergarten, first and second grade. By adjusting the ratios, the district found 51 teaching positions to cut from about 3,000 it could eliminate, saving $4.5 million.
“This is the allocation of staffing, not the class size,” Aquino, adding that the cuts are mostly in non-core subject areas and don’t directly translate to class size.
Other district-wide cuts would also reduce support for students in the Gifted and Talented program, a reduction in curricular events like chess tournaments and science fairs and closing the International Welcome Center, which assists students who are brand new to the U.S. and SAISD.
Some cuts could be felt by the larger SAISD community, outside of students and staff. The district’s communication division, one of the smaller departments, could lose 14% of $3.3 million budget. This division also includes family and community engagement, which provides services like food drives to families throughout the school year.
This year, SAISD organized eight food drives, most of them open to the community. If the communications budget cuts get approved, the district would go down to four food drives next school year.
“Every cut is painful,” Aquino said after Board Member Aaron Ramos said he was especially concerned about the cut to food drives. “I’ve been talking to the city to see if there’s a way to they can support us.”
Aquino added that he’s been speaking with the city leaders along with the SAISD Foundation to find a way to support the district’s food drives.
Board Vice President Christina Martinez, who’s been on the board nearly a decade, said SAISD has taken on more and more responsibility in caring for the community, even as public school funding hasn’t significantly increased.
“Our primary goal is to educate students… trying to get money to instruction, mental health — that’s our North Star,” Martinez said, adding that the district should keep finding ways to partner with other locally elected officials and philanthropists. “It should not be up to us to feed the city.”
Why does SAISD have a deficit?
Aquino, who’s served as a top school leader for decades across different school districts, said he’s never had to reduce a budget for five consecutive years.
But SAISD has been losing significant student enrollment in the past few years, like most school districts in large urban regions. In Texas, public school funding is tied to enrollment and attendance, meaning fewer students means fewer state dollars for districts.
SAISD’s enrollment was about 2,000 fewer than official originally predicted for the current school year. For the 2026-27 cycle, the district is projecting another 5% decrease in enrollment, most of them due to the state’s new education savings account program, which gives participating families state funds to pay for private school tuition.
At the same time, the state hasn’t significantly increased public school funding through the base amount districts receive per student. When the state has increased funding, it’s usually tied to very narrow mandates, pushing more responsibility and costs on districts.
Outside of reducing budgets and eliminating positions, SAISD has also turned to closing under-enrolled campuses. In 2023, the district went through mass rightsizing process, closing 15 campuses, and this year, SAISD will close one small, academically struggling campus on the West Side and is considering closing another campus.
“I go line item by line item and go ‘Oh my god, this is going to be devastating,” Aquino said. “Again, the state has put us in this position.”
