The Pharr-San Juan-Alamo Board of Trustees learned during a committee meeting Wednesday that a prospective $25 million budget deficit for the 2022-23 school year had been reduced to some $8.1 million through financial belt-tightening and increased revenue.
Largely the result of declining enrollment, that original deficit figure and the specter of hitting a “financial cliff” had trustees noticeably concerned at a preliminary budget workshop earlier this month.
Things were looking markedly sunnier Wednesday.
“I’m very optimistic — not cautiously — but very optimistic in the upcoming school year for a lot of reasons,” Trustee Jesus “Jesse” Vela said. “We’re gonna make a really strong effort to recruit the 3-, 4-, 5-year-olds, which constitutes half of the students we are missing.
Chief Financial Officer Rebecca Gonzales told trustees federal ESSER monies should pay for the majority of the $8 million deficit, a number she says may go down some.
The district made the most headway in reducing that deficit — $10.27 million — in increased revenues from enrollment and attendance.
“When we did our preliminary revenues in June, we were using attendance estimates,” district spokesperson Claudia Lemus-Campos wrote in an email to The Monitor. “Our district participates in an attendance program that provides additional funding when students increase their attendance participation in the extended day/year program. We are also expecting funding for adding 30 instructional days to the school year calendar.”
The district is also expecting to save $6.5 million by closing vacancies that have been vacant for more than six months. It expects to save another $6.5 million regarding construction projects.
“We reduced our transfer or allocation from the general fund to the construction fund,” Lemus-Campos wrote, noting the district did not stop any specific construction projects. “Future projects may be delayed since we are transferring less funds to the construction fund.”
The district is also expecting to save another $1 million in title one and workers compensation spending respectively.
The board could make a decision on the budget as soon as Monday.
So far the budget includes a 2% increase for employees, five additional police officers, seven additional bus drivers and a 3.5% increase to health insurance cost.
Wednesday’s meeting indicated there may be some discussion about employee compensation before the budget is put to bed.
Trustees Cynthia Gutierrez and Carlos Villegas, who make up a vocal minority on the board, said they’d been contacted by unions about their perspective on pay increases.
“If I’ve got money to spend, although in a bare-bone budget, I’m gonna spend it on employees,” Villegas said. “Especially right now when we don’t have the stability of enrollment and we don’t know if there’s a need to build new things.
