As school districts across San Antonio draft up budgets for the next school year, Judson ISD is freezing employee pay.
On Monday, Judson’s board voted 5-1 to keep employee wages the same for the 2026-27 school year. Trustee Lesley Lee was the lone “no” vote and Trustee Jose Macias Jr. was absent.
Keeping pay stagnant is only one of the latest moves by Judson’s leadership to fix the district’t $35 million budget deficit. In February, the board approved closing four schools at the end of the 2025-26 cycle, saving the district about $7 million.
Bigger cuts came in April, when the board approved eliminating 500 positions, which district officials say should take care of the rest of the deficit.
Interim Superintendent Robert Jaklich, who joined Judson in February, said cutting positions is the only way Judson could see a balanced budget for the next school year. Keeping pay the same across Judson could give the district more breathing room.
Jaklich wants Judson to go out for another voter-approved tax rate election (VATRE) this year, which could generate millions of additional dollars for Judson to use on its operations, including wages and salaries.
Judson voters rejected a similar effort last November, but Jaklich is optimistic they’ll change their minds this time around, given the district’s drastic steps to balance the budget.
“We can just keep with everything we have and then wait one year and let’s see how the VATRE comes out,” Jaklich said.
It’s standard practice for teacher base pay to increase for every year of experience — that will stay in place at Judson — but most school districts usually provide supplemental cost-of-living raises, stipends and retention bonuses to stay competitive in the hiring market.
And teachers across Texas received big pay bumps last year with the passage of House Bill 2, an $8.5 billion public school funding bill that mandates teacher raises based on years of experience and student enrollment.
While HB 2 was hailed as one of the largest investments in public schools by its authors, providing eligible teachers with annual raises between $2,500 and $8,000, the bill’s definition of “teacher” excluded other employees who also work with students, like nurses, librarians and counselors.
Historically, state lawmakers have included those positions when mandating pay raises. HB 2 raises will also carry over perpetually for eligible teachers.
To make up the difference, most school districts approved smaller raises for other employees, including campus-based staff, auxiliary workers and administrators. While HB 2 did have funding buckets for those areas, they were smaller and school districts weren’t required to use them for pay increases.
And at Judson, HB 2 excluded a unique group of employees: academic trainers.
Unlike academic coaches, who usually work with students who need extra help, trainers work with teachers, guiding them to be more effective. Judson has around 30 of them, and while the district isn’t actively cutting academic trainers, it isn’t hiring new ones as a cost-saving measure, eliminating posts as employees resign or move to other positions.
Like all other employees, academic trainers won’t get pay increases next year.
Unlike most campus-based staff, trainers aren’t offered any stipends, retention bonuses or incentives to stay on with the district or continued education. This pay structure became a point of contention among board members when deciding on a compensation plan for the upcoming school year.
Like most districts, Judson offers employees different stipends for holding special certifications and graduate degrees. There’s also different incentive bonuses for things like sponsoring clubs or after-school events.
Judson officials said already existing stipends would mostly stay in place, except for a couple of one-time incentives used during the 2025-26 school year.
Trustees Lee, Suzanne Kenoyer and Laura Stanford pushed to add a $1,500 stipend for academic trainers, who are required to have teaching certifications.
Lee, the only vote against Judson’s compensation plan since it didn’t include any increases for academic trainers, argued most employers pay trainers extra because they help other employees.
Board President Monica Ryan pushed back, saying the district doesn’t have a shortage of trainers necessitating a stipend. She also questioned how effective academic trainers were in improving student outcomes overall.
Judson has several academically-failing schools, and preliminary STAAR scores for 2026 show the district backsliding in some subjects and grade levels.
Offering academic training stipends would cost Judson around $50,000, but Greg Gibson, the district’s financial consultant, said board members should commit to a compensation structure without making any changes for at least a year.
Gibson works with outside school finance group Moak Casey, and was brought on a few months ago. Judson has gone without a full-time chief financial officer of its own since October of last year.
He says part of Judson’s financial problems stemmed from overstaffing and giving employees too many stipends, incentives and increases, even after budgets were adopted for the school year.
“Y’all just make budget amendment, budget amendment, budget amendment and then just like throw the [original] budget up in the air… no one can keep up,” Gibson told the board.
Board Vice President Amanda Poteet, who joined the board last May, agreed.
“I think that was a big problem that we had last year as well, we’ll just keep adding or we won’t cut anything because the VATRE is going to ‘solve’ it,” she said. “I don’t think it’s wise to start nickel and dime-ing and adding more money into the budget when we just got it balanced. It’s too new, it’s too fresh, it’s too fragile.”
Gibson agrees with Jaklich that the board should revisit compensation only after going out for a VATRE, banking on voter support to unlock millions in extra revenue for Judson.
Ultimately, the board voted 3-3 on the stipend issue, blocking additional pay for academic trainers and passing the same compensation plan as last year.
