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EDINBURG — The school district here is among the rare schools districts in the Valley — and the state — that had little to no trouble getting a balanced budget
The board will also vote on a new compensation plan to include raises for their employees.
One of the main reasons for that is managing ESSER funded positions appropriately and not suffering a decrease in enrollment, a trend for many other school districts.
“We’ve been able to pay competitive wages and not suffer a decline in enrollment and not suffer through budget deficits or laying anybody off,” Edinburg Superintendent Mario Salinas said.
In a budget workshop meeting on June 10, the board and the public received a detailed breakdown of the projected revenues, expenditures, salary comparisons and compensation plans for the next school year.
In the presentation, it lists that the projected revenues for Edinburg CISD next year come close to $430 million with the general fund balance having $314 million. The projected expenditures for next year come out to a total of about $423 million. The projected takeaway is $4,946,060 million in local funds.
Salinas said with $4.9 million in available funds, the school board is working on next year’s compensation plan to give raises.
He added that departments’ budgets were cut by 10% but had no effect on campus funding or special populations.
“We are budgeted $400 million dollars, you can’t tell me we can’t find (money) for raises,” Salinas said. “We looked and we found different areas of our budget.”
The school board reviewed about nine different compensation scenarios to vote on for next school year.
“I don’t have to tell you how school districts across the state of Texas are struggling with huge budget deficits,” Salinas said. “The inflation has been historic the last few years … the other monster is declining enrollment.”
Salinas said the district isn’t gaining students but is remaining stable with their enrollment. He said last year the district peaked at 34,000 students and it has relatively stayed the same for this year.
Asked why the district hasn’t experienced a decrease in enrollment, Salinas replied, “choices.”
He mentioned some of the choices that draw students in and keep them is their full day Pre-K programs, the fine arts program, athletics and their soon-to-be newest high school with UTRGV-Edinburg CISD Collegiate High.
Salinas also added that Edinburg has larger employers such as UTRGV, the hospital systems, and the Hidalgo County Courthouse.
“We got 2,000 kids that don’t live in Edinburg but choose to come to school in Edinburg,” Salinas said.
Another reason the district was in such good shape financially was how they spent ESSER funds and how they handled positions on those funds.
ESSER is an emergency funding program designed to help address education issues arising from the COVID-19 pandemic that allocated approximately $190 billion in aid to states.
Salinas said at the district’s peak, it had right under 100 ESSER funded positions from custodians, social workers, counselors and teachers.
Working to move those positions to the general fund or through attrition, he said the district had zero position on the ESSER funds by March.
“We moved them all so that didn’t come back to haunt us,” Salinas said. “ If we have not been vigilant with that, we’d be struggling trying to balance our budget.
He added that almost $100 million of ESSER funds went to the district’s HVAC projects and maintenance.
