While many students are getting ready to head back to the classroom, some Texas public school districts are getting ready to adopt next years school budget — if they haven’t done so already.
But district leaders are having to make some tough decisions again this year to combat rising inflation costs and less funding sources.
Jill Bottelbergghe is Connally ISD's Superintendent and said, “many of us are already adopting a deficit budget without even getting pay raises.”
“Unfortunately the situation with school finance right now is pretty much tying our hands," she added.
This is causing some school districts to tighten their 2025/2026 budget and cut back on aspects like building repairs, filling positions and even cutting back on some student programs like mental health programs.
“We were paying for ninety of our students as far as to receive counseling and therapy through Klara’s while they were here at school," Bottelbergghe said. "We had to cut that in half.”
While there’s many factors that continue causing school budget shortfalls, superintendents keep going back to the state’s basic allotment per student not keeping up with inflation.
“The very basic is $6,160. The last time that was voted into effect was in 2019," Temple ISD Superintendent Dr. Bobby Ott said. "So effectively we have gone, going into around five years, five and a half years and there's been no additional increase to basic allotment.”
Dr. Ott said some of the numbers he’s seen supports an additional $900-1,000 per student increase which would take the basic state allotment to around $7,000 per student.
With inflation in mind, here’s a glimpse at what some districts are facing:
Some districts are seeing fuel costs increase by 55%, a 140% increase in insurance costs, health insurance costs up by 13% and a 34% increase in food services costs.
Now some districts are taking action and plan to head to Austin hoping for change.
They want state lawmakers to adjust funding for inflation. They also want to increase the basic student allotment and changing funding formulas based on student enrollment instead of student attendance.
Dr. Malinda Golden is Belton ISD's Superintendent.
“We will be developing our legislative priorities going into this next legislative session, really hearing the perspective of our community in those legislative priorities and so we’ll be reaching out to our representatives." she said. "We’ll be going to the capitol and talking about those priorities.”
