LISD Legislative Update

March 2025

With appreciation,

The TEA latest annual report states that schools, on average, receive $10,800 per student, which includes Tier I funds, Tier II funds, and other funds including TRS on-behalf, which cannot be spent on students. In the presentation video and slides linked below, Dr. Rapp breaks down how calculating an average funding per student depicts an inaccurate representation of how much funding our district actually receives to educate a student in LISD. The use of an average assumes that each Tier 1 allotment can be used on every student and that is not the case, which means calculating an average is inappropriate.

WATCH VIDEO PRESENTATION

We respectfully request that the committee consider that Basic Allotment increases must be viewed differently for districts with declining enrollment from year to year. There are over half of the districts in Texas (approximately 500) that are experiencing enrollment declines.

HB 2 currently includes an increase to the basic allotment of $220 from $6,160 per student to $6,380. Declining enrollment districts are losing revenue each year which means the projected loss in revenue must be subtracted from the projected increase from the Basic Allotment.

• Lewisville ISD is projecting a decrease of 1,473 students for the 2025-26 school year from our snapshot enrollment in 2024-25. This loss of 1,473 students at our average funding of $9,829 per student would be a reduction in funding of $14.5 million from FY 25 to FY 26.
  
• While a $220 increase to the basic allotment would generate $13 million for the 2025-26 school year once you subtract $14.5M our district would actually realize $1.5M less in funding and would not be able to meet the proposed 40% required spend on salary increases.
  

It is important to note, that while we have referenced above a $9,829 average per student that Lewisville ISD received for 2023-24 school year, we are referencing this average since TEA uses averages to try and indicate there is more funding per student than the basic allotment. The misleading aspect of using averages is that this assumes the per student average amount can be used to educate all of our more than 47,000 students.

• The average amount is a majority of specialized allotments/funding that may only be used to educate a special population of students. The amount of money per student received for special education and CTE is much higher than the basic allotment so when you average all of these allotments together it inflates what it looks like districts have available to spend on all students.
• For example, the district received $12,506 per student to educate our special education students and $14,428 per student for CTE students. These funds cannot be spent on every child in the school district but when calculated as part of an average it makes it appear as though they can be spent on every child and that districts are receiving more than the Basic Allotment for every student. Unless every student qualifies for every specialized allotment received (which no student would) the information from TEA providing the legislature with an average amount per student is misleading and most importantly not accurate.

We urge the Education Committee to consider a declining enrollment allotment for districts in Texas, similar to how fast growth districts receive a fast growth allotment. The fact is that revenue is decreasing faster than a district can decrease their costs because the decline in enrollment is spread out across the district - meaning it takes time before staffing reductions can be realized and with inflationary costs the electricity and insurance bills along with facilities, safety and security and other costs are not able to be reduced at the pace of which revenue is being lost. HB 2 does include funding for the ADA decline that would allow funding based on an ADA floor of 95% of the prior year ADA, subject to an appropriations cap of $50 million per year. For a district that is experiencing significant enrollment decline such as Lewisville ISD, an appropriations cap of $50 million per year for all impacted districts would leave very little funding to help offset our funding loss because of declining enrollment.

Exacerbating this situation is the fact that Texas is only one of six states to fund schools based on attendance and not on enrollment. The TEA Annual Report for 2024 stated that schools received $10,800 on average per student in total M&O for 2023-24. Lewisville ISD received an average of $9,829 per student, which was $971 per student less than the state average. Our average daily attendance for that year was 45,235 so we were underfunded by $43.9 million when compared to the state average.

Additionally, recapture districts make up a significant percentage of the declining enrollment districts in Texas, so not only is revenue being lost but recapture payments often go up as property taxes increase but student enrollment decreases. This means recapture districts with declining enrollment are doubly hit with revenue losses. Currently, 28 states provide protections for school districts experiencing enrollment declines.

We also urge the committee to increase the Basic Allotment to address rising costs due to inflation that school districts are facing. The Basic Allotment should be increased by $1,340 to address inflation and provide competitive pay for teachers, classroom aides, bus drivers, child nutrition workers, counselors, special education staff, etc. Since the Basic Allotment was last increased in 2019, the district’s property insurance has increased by $4.2 million, electricity has increased by $3.2 million, appraisal district costs have increased by $1.6 million and fuel has increased by $1.3 million for a total increase of $10.3 million from the district’s operating budget.

To ensure our students receive the high-quality education they deserve, we urge the legislature to:

• Significantly increase the basic allotment to address inflationary costs
  
• Revise the ADA decline funding to remove the insufficient $50 million cap, and to make it more responsive to districts with large declines.
  
• Fully fund special allotments to cover the actual costs of providing these services.

Reductions in administration costs:

• As enrollment has declined central office reductions have been on-going.

• Since 2019, 136 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) Central Office Positions have been closed down.

• The enrollment decline is around 6.05% and the central office FTE decline is approximately 6.6%

• Additions in positions over the last several years have been in the areas of Special Education, Counselors, VLA, and Safety and Security.

• LISD is at the lowest administrative ratio allowed by the TEA FIRST Financial Rating Indicator on this category

• General Administration represents only 2% of the LISD Budget.

Reductions impacting schools, students and staff:

• Capping costs spent on substitutes which mean our teachers have to cover classes when we cannot pay to put a substitute teacher in a class room

• Middle school schedule changes that have resulted in a reduction of 45 minutes of planning and preparation time that our core content teachers have had.

• Middle school schedule changes reducing language arts time from 90 minutes to 45 minutes.

• Reduction of world language courses at high school

• Reductions in department budgets that provide intervention resources and tutoring support

• Elimination of employee recognition banquet where staff and Teachers of the Year would be recognized for their service and achievements

• Retirement of 5 elementary schools for school year 2025-26

• No employee raises while health care costs increased, effectively lowering the pay of staff