Northside Independent School District is entering its new school year planning to spend roughly $1 billion, which would mean a $38 million budget deficit.
The district’s board of trustees approved the 2025-26 budget on Tuesday, after months of budget talks and negotiations over how much funding could be expected under House Bill 2, the $8.5 billion public school funding bill passed by state lawmakers in May.
Under HB 2, the district is set to receive roughly $59.2 million, but the state mandates that nearly half of those funds be used for teacher pay increases. The district is also on the hook for nearly $4 million, the cost of implementing raises under the teacher retention allotment.
The rest of the money is sectioned off to pay for non-teacher raises and to implement other state mandates.
While the budget shortfall continues to challenge most school districts in Texas, this year’s deficit is “substantially better” than last year, said Megan Bradley, deputy superintendent for business and finance at NISD.
The budget deficit for the 2024-25 school year was more than double — $83.9 million.
NISD serves about 98,500 students making it the largest in the city. The district used several measures to cut the budget deficit last school year such as adopting larger class sizes, cutting department budgets and reorganizing fine arts programs to be more “efficient.”
Not wanting to leave staff who weren’t covered under the teacher retention allotment behind, NISD trustees also approved raises for early-career teachers, campus support staff and auxiliary employees.
This year’s compensation plan includes 2% raises for campus positions, including teachers with less than three years of experience, counselors, nurses, librarians and other other education professionals. This raise would be covered through the staff retention allotment, which districts are not allowed to use for administrative pay increases.
NISD still plans to give administrators pay raises from the district’s general fund and an allotment for basic costs from the state meant to cover utilities and regular maintenance costs, though it’s unclear how much.
“Strong administration and leadership is equally important to a strong classroom teacher,” NISD superintendent John Craft said when first discussing compensation back in July.
Hourly, auxiliary staff and paraprofessionals will get a 4% raise. Overall the district will spend $30.4 million on raises for teachers who qualify for HB 2’s teacher retention allotment and about $10.7 million on campus support and auxiliary staff.
Board president Karla Duran said she was especially proud the compensation plan includes the 4% auxiliary raise, which is paid through the allotment for basic costs.
“I want all our employees to know that they are valued,” Duran told the Report in July.
In perhaps one of the first measurable outcomes of NISD’s compensation plan, the district reported fewer teacher and police officer vacancies than usual at the start of the school year.
NISD had 116 teaching vacancies before the first day of school on August. 13, compared to 145 at the start of the 2024-25 school year.
While the district has usually seen 30-50 police officer vacancies in recent years, there are currently only 13 officer vacancies, said Craft.
