Legislative Update | Lewisville ISD

September 14, 2023

Dear Legislators,

We are off to a great start to the 2023-24 school year! We welcomed over 48,000 students to our campuses and are continuing our emphasis of uniting as OneLISD community to support our students and staff. Our focus on our Recognize SomeONE campaign to have our community show their appreciation for our staff, is helping to make a difference and in spite of a teacher shortage LISD saw a decrease of 300 resignations from this year compared to last year. We know that a stable workforce minimizing teacher turnover is critical for supporting our students. Our community has worked to stay informed and be engaged, sending a total of 3,000 letters to their state representatives during the 88th Legislative Session.

I would like to invite each of you into our schools during this 2023-24 school year! If you have a specific area of interest or program you would like to visit, please let me know as we will begin to work with your teams to schedule individual visits. Send an email to our Chief of Staff at millersh@lisd.net to arrange your visit for this year.

Additionally, I would like to offer an opportunity for each of your district directors to meet with myself and our Chief Financial Officer, Paige Meloni, for a School Finance 101 Session. We have scheduled a Lunch and Learn for Thursday Oct. 5 12pm-1:30pm

We ask that you read the attached letter on the topic of the Texas Education Agency's new accountability system for Texas public schools. While Lewisville ISD believes strongly in accountability we have concerns about several key elements of this system such as the changing College and Career Readiness expectations and lack of funding to meet them, inaccurate graduation rates and more. We have penned this letter in hopes that you will pause the current changes being made to the accountability system until further study can be completed and feedback can be factored in.

We are asking the legislature to support an increase to the Basic Allotment and address the unfunded mandates placed on Texas public schools if a Legislative Special Session related to Educational Choice and Educational Savings Accounts/Vouchers is called. This action would reject diversion of taxpayer dollars to private entities who are not required to comply with Texas Education Code, ensuring transparency and accountability.

I would like to share some critical information with you regarding outcomes from the 88th Legislative session:

• Property Tax Compression:
• Thank You: We appreciate the $18 billion for a combination of property tax compression and an increase of the homestead exemption that exchanges local property taxes for state aid.
• Consideration Needed: Without an increase to the Basic Allotment, this does not provide funding for the district to mitigate the impact of inflation. LISD is facing a $48M deficit.
• Health Insurance Premiums:
• Thank You: We appreciate the $589M to mitigate health insurance premiums. This did keep premium increases less than what was projected; premiums will continue to increase year over year.
• Consideration Needed: As a school district, we contribute more than $50 per month above the $275 mandated state/local contribution - this $325 a month contribution STILL falls over $130 short of an employee-only monthly premium. The school district does not receive yearly adjustments in revenue for these increased costs.
• New Enrollment Funding:
• Thank You: We appreciate the $3.2B for funding new enrollment growth in the state. This is critical for holding us harmless for the same level of funding in the case of state-wide enrollment growth.
• Golden Penny Yield Established by State Funding Formula:
• Thank You: We appreciate the $2.4B put towards the golden penny yield.
• Consideration: Full access to all golden pennies requires going out to the voters for a Voter Approval Tax Rate Ratification Election (VATRE). LISD currently has five of the eight golden pennies. Each golden penny provides $7.9M additional funds to LISD.
• School Safety:
  
• Unfortunately, the $1.4B put towards school safety does not cover the costs of adding the armed personnel to each campus. As shared with you, previously, the cost of adding this in LISD is approximately $3M and the funding received is $1.5M. Our legislative priorities shared with all of you indicated, prior to the session, we were not receiving the funding necessary for our SRO’s or facility upgrades. Our safety and security costs are now approaching $6M.
• Instructional Materials:
• With inflationary cost increases and no new funding to cover teacher raises, piecemeal instructional materials funding of $500M and technology/IMA funding of $307M would be better to simply flow into the basic allotment increase for our spending discretion to address the challenges mentioned above.
• New Instructional Materials Allotment:
• Thank You: We appreciate the $60M for the new instructional materials allotment. This helps us continue to provide materials adopted from state approved resources.
• TEA Adding Positions to implement HB 1605 and HB 3:
• Funding allocated for TEA to add 100 positions. While in LISD, we have reduced 15% of central office budgets. Currently less than 3% of the LISD budget is spent on administration. A recent chart from McKinsey & Company noted that General and Administrative Costs (G&A) within industries can vary between 4-11%, with top performers in each industry noted as having G&A costs between 4-8%.

• Fund Balance: Board policy requires having a target fund balance of 25% (approximately 3 months) of operating expenditures, to exclude recapture. It costs roughly $45M a month to operate the district so 75 days worth of fund balance would be about $113M; having 25% or 3 months of operating expenditures would be about $142M. In order to maintain an A rating on the State financial rating system (FIRST) those guidelines require maintaining minimum general fund reserves for emergencies and cashflow management - which equates to 75 days of expenditures.
• Inflation Impact: The following chart outlines the inflation impact we are experiencing

Our Board recently called for a BOND and a VATRE Election. Over 80 % of the projects proposed in the Bond are for maintenance and life cycle repairs that are not covered in the state funding formula. All of the details related to this can be found at LISDBond.com. The VATRE was called to get voter approval for additional enrichment pennies in the state funding formula to address the impacts of inflation and to help sustain competitive pay for staff.

Lori Rapp, Ed. D.

Superintendent of Schools

Lewisville ISD