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McALLEN — Facing a tight fiscal situation, McAllen ISD school board trustees will once again consider approving their 2023-24 budget Monday, a conversation that’s liable to feature some tough decisions.
Among those decisions are reassignments and a hope to lower costs through employee attrition (which have already begun), the possibility of a voter-approved tax ratification election and — essentially — deciding how much expenses can be cut without damaging the district’s operations severely.
They’re in a bit of a pickle.
The district will avoid a deficit this cycle but complete its budget process with an uncomfortably small fund balance surplus.
Texas requires school districts to maintain 75 days of operating expenses on hand in their general fund balances.
After beginning the process with a $6 million deficit, McAllen ISD is looking at a budget that gives it a few days over that requirement, about $2.2 million the board can use.
Trustees seem likely to dip into that money at least to a degree to pay for some kind of compensation increase they may approve along with their budget.
The real problem is next year’s budget.
Enrollment, from which the district derives much of its funding, appears stagnant and is predicted to continue gradually trending downward for the foreseeable future. McAllen ISD is hemmed in by other districts, some of which are seeing population growth that’s boosting enrollment numbers and filling their coffers.
That’s not happening in McAllen.
The district also describes itself as a victim of tax compression, and no one’s holding their breath for the state to ride in and approve some miraculous funding relief.
Simultaneously, surrounding districts continue to offer competitive pay leadership fears will leach employees from McAllen ISD — most of whom indicated in a survey presented last week that they feel they’re not being paid enough.
With expenses for personnel accounting for some four-fifths of McAllen ISD’s costs, the grim arithmetic that’s become apparent from a series of frustrating budget talks is that the district will have to shed employees if it has any hopes of continuing to pay the remaining ones competitively.
The conversation’s been a longtime coming. Trustees went through a similar song and dance over employee raises last year, pledging to look at the budget more proactively through the school year — though those conversations largely failed to materialize.
“When our enrollment was declining, positions should have been collapsed over the last couple of years,” Board President Debbie Crane Aliseda said Friday. “As enrollment declined, positions should have been collapsed and not filled. We should have been doing this through attrition for a couple of years now, and it hasn’t been done. Part of it is because of COVID, because we were so afraid of the achievement gap that was gonna happen in COVID, and I think that was a big part of it.
“Everyone wanted to keep every teaching person that we had on…And it worked, too, we didn’t dip, we’re still an A-rated district, our test scores didn’t drop because we had so many people.”
On Monday the board will have its seventh budget workshop, although it’s only the fourth for four new trustees elected in May. The new board has taken a decidedly hard-nosed approach to the budget. Workshops developed a sort of awkward pattern: trustees would run through myriad line item expenses, stopping to ask about what justified an expense or a position.
An administrator would step up and politely defend those expenses, and the board would move on down the list with the clear aim of trimming fat from the budget.
It’s been an uncomfortable and frustrating experience.
“This is the worst position to be in as new board members,” Trustee Erica De La Garza Lopez said Monday. “And I feel like our hands are tied. And what do we do? I mean, actions — the prior actions — have led to this, and it is the worst thing to have to go home and think about and deal with. But what else do you do?”
Monday’s talk preceded, it appears, the enactment of some of those hard choices.
The district last week reassigned about a dozen employees, which the district believes will save it some $842,000. Those employees will keep their salaries for a year, though afterward will transition to the salary of their new post, which will be a decrease in pay for at least some of them.
Attrition that does not require reassignments is happening as well. The district’s long-serving associate superintendent for instructional leadership, Bridgette Vieh, is retiring this summer. Hers was a highly visible role and she was a frequent liaison between the board and administration at meetings.
The district will not fill Vieh’s position, and the board will see the cadre of executives it deals with regularly shrink — perhaps permanently.
Crane Aliseda said the district is looking to lose at least 50 more salaries through attrition, which would save over $2 million, although those numbers may grow.
Superintendent J.A. Gonzalez brought up Monday eliminating teachers’ second planning period as a way to save millions annually.
The district could also eliminate its middle school block scheduling, which would also save money.
Eliminating either of those programs would save money, essentially, through eliminating teaching positions.
Crane Aliseda described initiatives like those and other expenses aimed at supporting teachers as part of the reason the district’s successful.
“I think that is the secret sauce as to why we are an A district and as to why we outrank schools — even in Austin, Texas — we do better than,” she said. “We’re an incredible school district even though we don’t have the same funding that they have in Austin and they have in Edinburg and they have in other places.”
It’s doubtful that trustees want to throw that big of a wrench into the delicate machinery that’s their school district unless they absolutely have to.
Crane Aliseda described other cost-savings measures — like cutting travel expenses and shaving down on overtime — as an effort to avoid something that drastic.
The board will Monday consider hiring consultant Moak Casey to perform an efficiency audit.
Some trustees have also again floated reneging on special projects — things like their financial commitments to Quinta Mazatlan and IMAS — although that step would likely lack consensus and usually only provide a one-time savings with the added downside of betraying district partners.
The UTRGV-McAllen ISD Collegiate High School, the most high profile special project with recurring expenses, is already being built.
Trustees’ other readily available option to address their finances is finding a way to bring in more revenue, likely through a voter approved tax ratification election.
The board considered calling for one after last year’s budget struggle, though they balked in the end.
“I think if it all goes for staff compensation, we’d get a lot of leverage, a lot of momentum. I think people will go to the polls. Every penny would go towards compensating staff,” Gonzalez said Monday.
Trustees will also talk about calling for an election during Monday’s budget talk.
“If we’re going to ask for it, I think we should put into motion that we’re going to be calling for a forensic audit. I think you have to,” Trustee Sam Saldivar said last week.
The board has till the end of the month to approve its budget. Crane Aliseda said she anticipates them approving it Monday.
The board did have the opportunity to do so last week, but put off the vote.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to correct the spelling of Bridgette Vieh’s last name.
