Some Fort Bend Independent School District Board trustees seemed stunned after hearing next year’s proposed budget will include an $18.7 million deficit.
One of them, David Reitz, questioned the prudence of granting “non-scheduled” employees – including para-professionals, custodians, bus drivers and custodians – a raise district Chief Financial Officer Tracy Hoke said would average 2%.
“With the budget deficit we’re looking at right now – that hole is just too big,” Reitz said during a budget workshop on Monday afternoon.
He noted what Hoke and Board President Bob Broxson had detailed earlier – that the state Legislature has mandated school districts to provide raises for teachers, nurses, speech pathologists and other “scheduled” employees.
But, Reitz asked, if the state hadn’t ordered it, “would we still give the teachers a raise?”
“At the local level, I don’t think it’s fiscally prudent,” he said.
Hoke said teacher raises for the district, at an average of 2.7%, would cost FBISD about $5 million, and raises for non-scheduled employees would cost the district about half that amount.
“I have a hard time doing that,” Trustee Susan Hohnbaum said, referring to the idea of removing non-scheduled employee raises from the budget. “I don’t like that assumption that there’s a value placed over some of our employees” but not others.
“If they are not getting a raise, and we’re increasing the cost of their benefits, then I can see employees as feeling they’re in a lose-lose situation,” Trustee Marilyn Glover said.
Trustee Sonal Bhuchar indicated she wouldn’t favor raising teacher salaries and leaving others without a pay increase.
“I think we as a school board define the direction we want the school district to take,” she said. “Every staff member, from the janitorial staff to the administration, works very, very hard.”
Said Bhuchar, “I want us, Mr. President, to focus on the fact that we’re not raising the maintenance and operations (tax rate) and we’re asking to raise our debt service (tax rate) 3.5 cents, which comes in much less than we had thought…because of us being prudent with our finances.”
She referred to the fact that, in 2007 during the run-up to approval of a $428 million bond issue by FBISD residents, district officials had predicted they might need to raise the debt-service tax rate by as much as 11 cents.
“We are not facing an unsimilar plight to a lot of districts around the state,” Broxson said. “We’ve got a big challenge in front of us.”
Most certainly Factually. It was truly a tragedy that Marshall lost a great teacher- pride on the part of all parties caused that.
In terms of Reitz, I think you’ve hit that nail on the head.
Question on Monday FBISD BOT fail to give a number toaling the costs for landfill fees costing taxpayer to the Blue Ridge landfill on FM 521.
I think it would be wise if David Reitz refrained from speaking. There were some very capable individuals running in the district which he won. Reitz needs to remain silent; when he speaks, it draws attention to the mystery of how on earth did he win.
Reitz utters the phrase “fiscally prudent”. Heretofore he has voiced no concerns about being “fiscally prudent”.
Isn’t Reitz the same somebody who congratulated the Marshall administrators for firing an excellent, experienced teacher?
Actually those apartments that were just defeated were near TX99 and US90 in the SL etj and I know of others planned and allowed to move forward on the east side of SL near Mo-Cty (part in the etj of SL). Since the city does approve some of the developer agreements on the later mentioned, they could have reduced those numbers, but didn’t. I also believe it was in the news last year that the county is approaching 15-20% of all housing as high density apartments. I agree the district will need to be prepared since some of the same companies pushing them in this community are feeding off the district bonds to place schools in their neighborhoods at premium costs sucking more money out of instruction and the classrooms when we have to feed these record bond debts. Naturally, some of these same company executives show up on quite a few local campaign disclosure lists for county commissioners and city council members (as well as some trustees). It’s all just one big happy family.
Joe,
Your post made me look at the future developments of the Sugar Land area, currently there are no plans for apartment projects in Sugar Land. If they do plan them in the area, you are exactly right! This is currently happening to Katy ISD. KISD is getting apartment projects all over the area, the demand for good quality teachers and a stronger admin from campuses and the district is needed. If FBISD board would just make simple studies, they would indeed find out there are cheaper ways to increase the science scores.
We are built out here in Sugar land. That means that the apartments projects will soon be moving in. This is the standard Master Planned Development program.
The problem with this plan is that apartments do not pay property taxes for the schools on any level that remotely compares to single family housing. Our schools will soon be faced with larger number of children from apartments, who often have greater academic and social needs. If our schools are ill prepared for this reality, we as taxpayers will be unrealistically saddled with skyrocketing economic demands while our Superintendent and board fiddle while the 30 to 90 million dollar Global Science Center is built.
Teachers, students in the classroom should be the LAST to be on the chopping block during a contracting economy.
The district needs to get their priorities straight. No raise for teachers who have the important job of teaching our children. We want the best for our students but won’t get that if our teachers leave to get higher pay elsewhere. Then the district wants to spend all that money that it does not have on a Science center but not pay the teachers more.
Hold on a second, but isnt’ a mandate a mandate? And I definitely feel for our para’s, in fact my mother was a para before she retired, but does everyone see how the board plays with their words?
Now, since the state did not approve raises for para’s (which the board should have provided for years before), the board feels it is not “fiscally prudent,” to provide any. This board doesn’t want to accept responsibility for anything nor provided ethics to our community nor our employees.
In the past, raises for first year teachers has always been the case anyway. But these newbies won’t stay with the district anyway after they experience how this school district works.
Get this guys, how could the board had made such a faulty prediction in regards to growth in our community, yet require the past bond to be passed?
Finally, let us consider the “fiscally prudent” decision to provide Jenny with, I believe three raises, as one blogger noted on a previous blog.
I pray the AG does more investigating on this board. They are not serving our community at all.
I, myself, am planning to leave.