After numerous public hearings since November 2022 regarding the upcoming fiscal year’s budget and proposed tax rate, Coppell ISD Board of Trustees consent to adopting the proposed 2023-24 fiscal year budget for general, food and debt service funds at Monday’s meeting.
A final public hearing regarding the budget and tax items’s approval took place prior to the meeting, leaving it to consideration during the meeting.
CISD chief financial officer Diana Sircar presented a breakdown of the proposed budgeted expenditures and revenues of the general operating funds for the upcoming fiscal year. Compared to the 2022-23 amended budget, the local revenues reveal a decrease of $21,071,842 due to a reduction in tax collections based on the lowering of the maintenance and operations tax rate.
For the expenditures, there has been an increase of $10,089,976 in salaries and benefits towards CISD teachers compared to last year. Sircar explains that this raise in expenditures is accompanied by the discussed priority of recruiting teachers and maintaining a quality staff.
Sircar also addressed the issue of CISD elementary schools experiencing surplus capacity, or low enrollment, and current projected future budgets concerning elementary schools have a deficit, highlighting an incomplete use of resources by the district.
“The flattening of student enrollment in elementary schools needs to be addressed as we look at future budgets,” Sircar said. “We need to continue to encourage our elected officials to generate bills to allow the spending of those budgeted funds to address these issues.”
Sircar also went over the tax rates for the 2023-24 school year. The proposed tax rate for maintenance and operations is $0.8022 and for the interest and sinking tax rate it is $0.2513, amounting into a total tax rate of $1.0535, which is a decrease of $0.1638 from last year’s total tax rate.
Trustee Nichole Bentley thinks although the tax rate is lower, people are still paying more in taxes as the state controls public school entitlement dollars.
“As an elected official, my concern with how the entitlement is going is that we are going to be counting more and more on our elected officials in Austin to be giving us the money that has been collected in our own district that we are not getting to use,” Bentley said. “We are doing everything we can to support kids and to lower the city’s tax rates.”
The board also reviewed Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund updates presented by the director of federal and state programs which was presented by Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief fund.
While discussing the ESSER grant funding and expenditures, the new prospect of permanent substitutes came up.
CISD assistant superintendent Kristen Eichel explains that due to the increasing number of people willing to be substitutes in the district, CISD is planning to create a new program to have permanent substitutes in each campus. The permanent substitute would be at schools for three days a week, so if a substitute is ever needed, there is one present.
“I love how this might feed into our teacher pipeline,” trustee Leigh Walker said. “We get some of our most amazing teachers who begin as substitutes, and that just seems like a really cool connection.”
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