The Judson Independent School District board of trustees voted late Tuesday night to approve a 1% raise for teachers, librarians, counselors and nurses. The board also moved to reclassify several employee positions and reinstate programs previously stripped out of next year’s budget.
At the same time, they made an unusual move to approve “disaster pennies,” or the levying of extra tax dollars allowed by the state under extreme circumstances.
With the raise and other moves, board members acted against the advice of district administration in a long and at times tense board meeting, where they made several motions for changes not first presented by the district administration.
That level of granular movement by board members is not common, especially in the final stages of the budgeting process.
“I want to say this the most delicate and appropriate way,” Judson Superintendent Milton ‘Rob’ Fields said during the meeting. “The job of the board is to vote on the budget for the functions, not how we spend the money. This is a level that you typically don’t get involved in.”
He continued: “You just vote on the functions, and then we determine how the money needs to be spent based on our subject matter expertise.”
The last-minute move increases the district’s budget deficit from $33 million up to $35 million, although the final number is yet to be determined according to district officials.
Disaster pennies
Also at Tuesday’s meeting, the district activated the “disaster pennies” approach to raising more money through extra tax dollars in extreme need.
Doing so, the district cited a May severe storm and disaster declaration in a resolution voted on Tuesday adopting the pennies, which will bring in about $12 million. To offset the impact on the taxpayer, the district proposed a reduction in its Interest and Sinking Tax Rate, which provides funds for payments on the debt that finances a district’s facilities according to the Texas Education Agency.
District officials floated the idea at a June 6 board meeting, where board members including Trustee Monica Ryan, questioned the strategy.
Ryan pointed out that no major storm damage occurred at any of Judson’s campuses, adding that the deficit was instead related to decreasing enrollment and other factors.
District officials said the plan was legally sound, however, adding that some resources were used in relation to the disaster, including extra manpower sent out to check campuses after the severe storms.
Ryan also noted that the reduction in I&S rate, would require the district to spend more on debt service in the future.
The trustee was not on the dais when the vote was passed by the rest of the board Tuesday.
Last-minute changes
The last-minute raises and other budget adjustments come as districts across the region grapple with increasingly difficult fiscal outlooks due to limited state funding, declining enrollment and low attendance — key in a state where average daily attendance translates into funding.
With the raise, the district remains among the top-paying districts in the city, which it achieved last year with a 4.5% raise as it sought to compete for limited staff.
Trustee Laura Stanford recommended the raise after hearing from teachers that they would forego a stipend for a raise. The plan will cost an estimated $380,000 on top of the district’s projected $33 million deficit.
The board voted 5-2 in favor of the raise with trustees Stephanie Faulkner and Jennifer Rodriguez voting against the raise and trustees Ryan, Suzanne Kenoyer, Laura Stanford, Debra Eaton and José A. Macias voting for the raise.
The disaster penny vote will reduce the deficit to closer to $20 million, part of a broader short-term approach to tackling the deficit. Fields called the move “an efficiency.” The extra taxes will only be available for one year.
Other area districts, like North East ISD, approved stipends instead of raises, saving the district money on contributions to employee retirement accounts.
Judson ISD officials had recommended a $500 one-time stipend instead of a raise, which the district will still provide to non-teaching staff.
Employee reclassification
The board also bumped up pay for several positions as part of a reclassification process, as recommended by the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB).
Job classifications determine a pay range for each job, with reclassifications occurring periodically due to changes in job duties, a need to improve internal pay equity with similar jobs, or a change in competitive market rates, according to another district’s TASB compensation plan.
The board initially voted not to reclassify positions, later voting to reclassify a limited number of positions that were hard-to-fill, including strength and conditioning coordinators and the police chief, among others.
But Ryan argued Tuesday that was unfair, and left other positions such as special systems administrators making thousands of dollars under market rate.
The issue arose after a series of terse exchanges between Ryan and board president Kenoyer, who said the decision not to reclassify the employees was made in closed session when Ryan wasn’t present.
“Is there a reason these … [positions] were deemed … not valuable enough to the district to put them up at market median?” Ryan asked during that discussion.
After some back-and-forth, board members voted 4-3 to reclassify the employees at an estimated cost of about $50,000. Fields said the actual cost could change after the district completes calculations.
Trustees Ryan, Macias, Eaton and Stanford voted for the measure, while Kenoyer, Faulkner and Rodriguez voted no.
Board members also voted to keep Communities in Schools, a dropout prevention program, at several schools after initially moving to cut ties with the organization to save money.
Macias made the motion after learning from the district that the organization offered services at five campuses for $160,000, a steep discount from their previous rate.
After hours of discussion that also included adding stipends for other employees and the possibility of offering voluntarily shorter contracts to some employees, Fields said the board would eventually need to stick to the decisions that they already made.
“We made some tough decisions, the decisions are only going to get tougher,” he said. “And as we do that, we’re going to … have to make the hard call and stick by that.”
Fields also said the conversations Tuesday night were “déjà vu” from last year, adding that the deficit will rise when the amendments approved by the board are tallied up.
“I’m trying to make sure that we get all that on record right now, so when we bring back these amendments later on, and you see the deficit start to rise from where it was supposed to be $33 [million] to now it’s up to $35 [million], this is where it came from.”
