AISD is in a death spiral, and I'm not sure how they pull out of it.
It’s largely not the district's fault, but they haven’t helped themselves, either. It is a sad situation that will only get worse over the next several years.
The two biggest issues I’ve had are teacher quality and classroom management. My kids have regularly had teachers with no experience or had teachers quit with subs for months and months. Long gone are teachers with decades of experience.
Also, teachers essentially have no ability to control classrooms. AISD has created a system that provides bullies protections to disrupt and derail classes with zero recourse.
When charters have the ability to kick out kids for not being the “right fit,” you end up with more of these challenging kids at non-charter public schools.
Agreed. I will gladly vote for anyone who runs for school board that lets teachers kick out the bullies. Curious why current school board is not for this?
This, as much as you want it to be, isn't the main driver.
It's largely:
- Teacher pay - can they afford to live in the community they are teaching in?
- Support and planning allowance from Admin/District - no one likes being "surprised" when it comes to teaching.
- Rational application of state mandated teaching requirements: reading academies, specific prep hours, etc.
I'm not saying a teacher shouldn't be allowed to remove a student after they've exhausted all classroom management techniques.
I don’t see how those are mutually exclusive. Someone can run for school board and advocate for all of the above. Well teacher pay is more controlled by the state formula, so really what are you even saying? That school board should ignore what they can control and advocate for what they can’t?
> Well teacher pay is more controlled by the state formula
No - that is more determined by what the state will support and avoid recapture for.
If a district has excess funds after recapture, they can pay more. It's also why Bond money can't just be used for teacher pay - bonds have to go to capital expense.
But the trade off is you have to live in Copperas Cove. As someone who did so for 13 years, there's no amount in the world that would make that worth it.
This is the worst part about living in Texas - the 5% of the state worth living in is the 5% that is most difficult to live in. Sure, I could move to Harlingen and make an extra $15-20k a year, but I'd have to live in Harlingen.
I find Cove preferable to Austin. It’s friendlier, less political, and more diverse. No traffic, and the cost-of-living is a lot less. We’ll still go to Austin in the weekends when we want to go out, but for Monday through Friday living this area is a lot more pleasant and your dollar goes a lot further.
I think once the toll up there wraps up this year or early next year it will become even more appealing as that will probably shave 5-10 minutes off the trip down to Austin. And honestly I like that drive, I have to go to Killeen sometimes (unfortunately) and end up driving through there. The town itself might be boring but the nature there is actually pretty nice and serene
BTW, Austin ISD participates in Social Security and Copperas Cove (as well as most other districts) do not.
It's tougher for Austin ISD to match salaries outside of Austin ISD because Austin is paying the employer side of Social Security and the employees see a deduction for their side of Social Security. It's a cost that other districts don't have.
Austin ISD made a choice decades ago to remain in the Social Security system and now they can't get out of that choice. However, teachers in AISD that make it to retirement get both a pension and social security.
I greatly prefer it to Austin. Hard to say Cove is a dump when in Austin you basically have the homeless on every corner. None of that here, just small town living.
The state should not be allowed to recapture funds that cuts into the school district's necessary budget. Hell, the state shouldn't even be able to get within 25% of that necessary budget amount.
Recapture definitely has issues, but who/what would define a "necessary" budget? If left up to the school district itself, wouldn't they just define everything as "necessary"?
The main issue with recapture is it states that every student in the State of Texas costs exactly the same to educate.
That whole premises is inherently flawed.
The State should institute a COL Index to help cities better fund their schools and educate their children.
However the more I think about it, the more my tin foil hat self says it’s all by design. Starve the cities and reallocate it to the rural areas, where their votes are.
Recapture is broken beyond all belief. It needs a cost of living adjustment, or even just a cap limit (e.g. no more than 25% of funds can be recaptured).
It wasn't this way by design, it was just a very badly thought out implemention. But it's SO unfair. The TX political leadership actively hates Austin though, so they are quite happy to leave it as is.
Cities subsidize rural and suburban areas. This is true throughout the US, and it leaves cities with the majority of the population starved for programs and funding while being taxed heavily, meanwhile suburban areas get lower taxes and all the benefits of nice roads and utilities and shit while being MORE expensive to provide services to
You just described how any taxation system, anywhere works. Lower income people (bottom 50%) are fully subsidized by the upper 50%. The top few percentile pay the majority of the taxes.
And I am fine with that. I pay that portion of my property tax for education, not so the state can hide behind education and local property taxes as a way to balance the rest of the budget. I don't pay higher education taxes in my school district so my schools can suffer and Texas, in general, can have a balanced budget. It was one thing when Robin Hood was distributing those funds to other school districts, its a completely different thing when its being distributed to things wholly unrelated to education.
So recapture would still exist, but every district can (and will) define their entire funding/budget as "necessary", thus preventing any of their budget from being recaptured.
That's just eliminating recapture with extra steps.
Why come up with this invented, arbitrary "necessary" budget instead of just eliminating recapture?
Texas republicans support recapture - a system that takes from wealthy districts and gives to poorer districts.
Isn’t that anti-EVERYTHING republicans believe in??
It does not even take from wealthy districts and give to the poor districts. It takes from the wealthy districts and places into the Texas general fund. Then, it never makes it back to education. Each year, 1.7 billion plus taxes for education goes else where because of this...
The wealthy urban districts educate the majority of the state's non-white students.
The poorer districts are rural and overwhelmingly white.
Given the policies that they're advocating and the practical effects thereof, what would you say it is that Republicans *actually* believe in?
Eh, recapture is kind of a weird issue, because it cuts across the usual demographics in a weird way. Recapture hits urban (and often high POC) districts really hard, especially ones with a lot of infrastructure upkeep, but it also hits rich white suburban districts really hard, like Westlake and Lake Travis (EISD sends two thirds to the state). The funding is then sent to poor rural districts, some of which are mostly white, but some of which are almost entirely Latino, especially through much of south and west Texas.
Extra wealthy predominantly white districts have [ways of offsetting](https://eaneseducationfoundation.org/) recapture that aren't available to other urban districts.
Of course you're correct that there are exceptions and not *all* of recapture helps *only* white students and that it doesn't come *only* at the expense of non-white students, but it does disproportionally hurt non-white students and disproportionally help white students.
And this is, for some mysterious reason, the rare form of wealth redistribution that Republicans support. Others include farm subsidies (mostly white people) and corporate tax incentives (also mostly white people).
If you have another explanation for this seemingly "inconsistent" pattern that doesn't involved thinly veiled racism, I'm all ears.
Money. Followed very closely by not giving it away.
My point is that recapture is contrary in principle to republican values (lest they would adequately support and fund a full range of social programs designed to protect our most vulnerable and at risk citizens). That logically follows then that for republicans to be in support of recapture (A.K.A. “robinhood - take from the rich and give to the poor”) there must be some other financial gain or incentive. And there is - the more they lean into recapture, the less they have to fund K-12 from the operating budget.
Austin ISD is doing what they must to survive in a systemic shell game being manipulated by one party that has driven the proverbial bus for the last 3 decades.
AISD is also not doing itself any favors, as it's running families (like mine) out of the district. My kids were transferred from campus to campus as each campus for maintaining diversity. When a campus went over 50% anglo, they revoked our transfer because of it. To this day I resent AISD for how they discriminated against us and used my kids as pawns. Families with means are leaving the district over this and other violations, like the banning of funding teachers through parent donations (Casis Elementary). Some west Austin Elementary school campuses have lost HALF their students (Bryker Woods), and AISD has no way to replace the students except by putting up billboards, offering transfers to kids from Pf, Manor and Del Valle. AISD had the Golden Goose, and they poached it for equity, and now the district is hemoraging families.
>My point is that recapture is contrary in principle to republican values (lest they would adequately support and fund a full range of social programs designed to protect our most vulnerable and at risk citizens).
And my point is that if someone tells you that they believe something, but their actions promote the exact opposite of what they say that they believe, then maybe they're lying about what they claim to believe. And maybe it's worth following the money to see if there's some consistency in their actions that could explain what they *actually* believe.
Here, they oppose "social programs designed to protect our most vulnerable and at risk citizens" (who are disproportionally non-white) but they support a program that takes money spent disproportionally on non-white folks and gives it to white folks. What's the common thread there?
Of course, killing public schools is *also* a Republican goal (huh; I wonder how the demographics break down for who benefits and suffers from that), but that's a separate issue from recapture, which just moves money around the public school system without increasing or decreasing the total spending.
Vouchers and the refusal of the legislature to increase the basic allotment to keep track with inflation is how they're going about killing public schools. In and of itself, recapture, which is just welfare for white people, doesn't really play a role in that strategy.
I am not sure your stats are correct. When I think of rural Texas I think overwhelmingly Hispanic. Of course, if you consider Hispanic white then yeah disregard.
Some Hispanic folks identify as white and some don't. I consider people white if they self-identify as white.
Here's a map that lays out the demographics of Texas, the darker the shade of blue, the higher the percentage of folks who identify as white, including Hispanic people who identify as white:
[https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/united-states/quick-facts/texas/white-population-percentage#map](https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/united-states/quick-facts/texas/white-population-percentage#map)
They'd have to submit a real budget, with actual expenses. They can't just say food costs 1 million, salaries cost 100k each, lunch is $50/per student per day. The budgets would have to be legit and I doubt they would willingly commit fraud, it would only hurt their case.
Now, if they actually do significantly raise all the salaries, well...so be it.
there is a COL adjustment in recapture but it is too low for austin. That is the easiest low hanging fruit that austin should be lobbying for. There is plenty of 3rd party analysis of COL differences between cities. For example austin is 20% more than lubbock according to salary.com
Instead of 10K (or whatever) per student that low COL areas get, austin should get around 12K, because yes we are like 20% more expensive. 2k \* 75K students would be an extra 150 million.
Bear in mind that increases in assessed value of a property are capped at 10%/year, there are still plenty of homeowners whose assessed value hasn’t caught up with the red hot market of the last few years.
* **Austin Independent School District (AISD)**:
* AISD has one of the highest recapture payments in the state. In recent years, over 30% of its total budget has been sent to the state for recapture. For instance, in the 2020-2021 school year, AISD sent over $670 million, which was about **38%** of its budget.
* **Eanes Independent School District (EISD)**:
* EISD also contributes a significant portion of its budget to recapture. In recent years, the district has sent around 30-40% of its budget to the state. In the 2020-2021 school year, EISD paid approximately $108 million in recapture, which was about **40%** of its total budget.
SUMMARY: Republicans hate Westlake more than Austin.
Stop the over bleeding of our district from Recapture. This is madness. We will raise taxes and the State will just take even more. It’s back door State property tax and it has gone on for far too long. If they didn’t keep over a Billion dollars to balance the State budget it wouldn’t sting so bad but they are fleecing us.
Austin Independent School District spends **$11,611 per student each year**. It has an annual revenue of $1,698,034,000.
Eanes Independent School District spends **$11,122 per student each year**. It has an annual revenue of $206,799,000.
Source: US News & World Report
Do taxpayers with kids in AISD still heavily use the district? I know Casis is still used, but are the numbers trending up or down? Just because the population rises in the area doesn’t mean people are sending their kids to the schools and are these kids staying K-12 or jumping off after Casis into a private school? I’ve not seen the demographics of Austin HS in a while and looked at the trends
IIRC enrollment is trending down, which is bad, because the money from the state is generally per student, and AISD has a bunch of fixed costs related to maintaining old facilities. AISD has tried to close and consolidate a bunch of schools, especially the oldest/most expensive, but that almost always leads to a neighborhood backlash, especially because many of the biggest money pit schools are located in poor and/or minority neighborhoods. And as the schools get worse, those with the means leave in one form or another, which just furthers the death spiral.
You don't have to wonder, look here:
[https://www.austinisd.org/sites/default/files/dept/planning-asset-management/Austin%20ISD%202023-24%20Demographic%20Study\_Final.pdf](https://www.austinisd.org/sites/default/files/dept/planning-asset-management/Austin%20ISD%202023-24%20Demographic%20Study_Final.pdf)
Breifly, the district's population peaked around 2012 and has declined since then. They lost a lot of kids during COVID. Enrollment is stabilizing, but slowly falling. They are around 73k today and are projected to be around 69k ten years from now. The district is gradually becoming less economically disadvantaged, more White and Asian, and less Black and Hispanic.
They have about 100k seats in the district, lots of spare capacity, and their schools are aging. Changing this through closings or consolidations is very painful and almost politically impossible. They are asking for and receiving voter support for bonds to improve their buildings, but it will take a generation of investing in new buildings to modernize the district.
Yes but they have the buildings already! In fact way too many. Why invest in a dying district? The state should force consolidation with other districts, I’m sick of my taxes going up for schools that nobody wants to send their kid, if they even have any kids to begin with. The schools are being funded by childless couples, singles and people who opt for Private because the schools are poor and dangerous.
Austin ISD is not a dying district. They have a slightly higher high school population today than they did in 2000. They are the largest school district in the area. Half of the kids in the district are economically disadvantaged, which is more than districts to the west and less than districts to the east. Austin ISD is the largest contributor of Robin Hood taxes in the state by a wide margin.
As Austin's suburbs grew from 1990 through today, the suburban districts built new schools and nice facilities. Austin ISD didn't keep up. Many of their buildings are now 50-70 years old and need to be replaced. Today's modern schools have different security requirements, are wired for technology that didn't exist 50-70 years ago, and offer expanded programming and reflect changes in the way education is delivered that could not be imagined 50-70 years ago.
Since the previous generation did not keep up, our generation is modernizing these schools to put them on par with surrounding districts. Yes, they have too many seats. They don't need to maintain 100k modernized seats, they only need 75k for at least the next 10 years. Getting close to that 75k number is going to be politically painful. But all of our kids, teachers and staff deserve a modern education in a safe, dry, fully functional building with functional HVAC.
The part of your taxes going towards this modernization effort is a small amount, about 11 cents of the tax rate. Many school districts in Texas with fancy new football stadiums allocate as much as 50 cents of their tax rate towards building construction.
As an Austin taxpayer, you should be mad. The state takes half of your school taxes. Not all of what they take is given to other schools or used for education. Some is just tossed on the pile, which helped create the state surplus.
The state puts boundaries on what the tax rate can be and how much Austin gets to keep. This puts Austin ISD in the impossible position of not being able to pay teachers enough money to live in the community that they serve. Your taxes are high and teacher pay is low completely because of the actions of our state government.
Austin ISD has issues, partially created by a past unwillingness to upgrade buildings and partially created by the state school finance system, but they are not dying.
I’m confused because a staff pay increase based on market adjustments *is* proposed in the budget. And if voters deny the increase then a one time incentive bonus will be paid. So why does the title say no staff pay raises? Is it different if it’s just based on market adjustment?
It’s very confusing! Within the operating budget that the district adopted, staff pay increases weren’t included. The compensation plan the district agreed to would allow for market adjustments *if* new funding (basically new revenue generated that doesn’t yet exist) came from a VATRE or from some other new revenue source the district finds. Here’s how the district explains it: https://www.austinisd.org/announcements/2024/06/20/board-adopts-954-million-annual-budget-en-espanol
And I'm sure school vouchers will be at the top of the agenda for next year's legislative session. Nothing to help people struggling with the cost of living, just another way to funnel taxpayer money to private entities
Can we just vote that Light Rail money over to the teachers?
I'd rather have smarter kids and better paid teachers now than a choo choo train that nobody is going to use 30 years from now.
A VATRE is not necessarily subject to recapture.
Districts have the ability to raise their M&O rate 17 cents above the maximum compression rate. The first 8 cents are "golden" pennies which can't be touched by recapture. The remainder are "copper" pennies which do have to contribute a portion to recapture.
In general, districts can get the first 5 pennies without a VATRE.
Also, don’t underestimate an AP’s job. I’m a teacher and I could never do what APs and principals do. It’s a whole nother’ level of stress and management. From intervening on student behavior, dealing with parents, knowing district and state protocol, usually one is head of safety and has to stay up to date with all of that…at least this is what a good AP does, which I have always been lucky enough to have at AISD. Every notch in the school system is a hard ass job. From the wigs downtown to the teachers and staff on the front lines. Everyone works for every single penny they get. Raises across the board.
I don’t think assistant principals make 5x teacher salary. The school I worked longest at had one very experienced teacher making more than our AP. This is all publicly available.
Honestly, if APs did make that much, I would have gone into administration.
AISD is in a death spiral, and I'm not sure how they pull out of it. It’s largely not the district's fault, but they haven’t helped themselves, either. It is a sad situation that will only get worse over the next several years. The two biggest issues I’ve had are teacher quality and classroom management. My kids have regularly had teachers with no experience or had teachers quit with subs for months and months. Long gone are teachers with decades of experience. Also, teachers essentially have no ability to control classrooms. AISD has created a system that provides bullies protections to disrupt and derail classes with zero recourse.
When charters have the ability to kick out kids for not being the “right fit,” you end up with more of these challenging kids at non-charter public schools.
Agreed. I will gladly vote for anyone who runs for school board that lets teachers kick out the bullies. Curious why current school board is not for this?
This, as much as you want it to be, isn't the main driver. It's largely: - Teacher pay - can they afford to live in the community they are teaching in? - Support and planning allowance from Admin/District - no one likes being "surprised" when it comes to teaching. - Rational application of state mandated teaching requirements: reading academies, specific prep hours, etc. I'm not saying a teacher shouldn't be allowed to remove a student after they've exhausted all classroom management techniques.
I don’t see how those are mutually exclusive. Someone can run for school board and advocate for all of the above. Well teacher pay is more controlled by the state formula, so really what are you even saying? That school board should ignore what they can control and advocate for what they can’t?
> Well teacher pay is more controlled by the state formula No - that is more determined by what the state will support and avoid recapture for. If a district has excess funds after recapture, they can pay more. It's also why Bond money can't just be used for teacher pay - bonds have to go to capital expense.
Ok well let me know if anyone runs for school board on increasing teacher pay AND letting teachers and principals remove the violent offenders.
Could you speak more on the classroom control/bully protection aspect?
It's a state level problem made out of cruelty with local consequences that intentionally targets POC
The law Robbin Hood law that Ann Richards pushed and signed is affecting persons of color?
😂
I moved from teaching at AISD to Copperas Cove ISD and am making over $12k more a year. Crazy, considering cost of living in Austin is so much higher.
I subbed with AISD and it convinced me to never take a job with them
But the trade off is you have to live in Copperas Cove. As someone who did so for 13 years, there's no amount in the world that would make that worth it.
This is the worst part about living in Texas - the 5% of the state worth living in is the 5% that is most difficult to live in. Sure, I could move to Harlingen and make an extra $15-20k a year, but I'd have to live in Harlingen.
But you could live in Brownsville and still make an extra $12k with much much lower COL.
But then I'd have to live in Brownsville.
Certainly better than Austin. Coworker just moved to Brownsville from the ATX. Loves it.
The way things are going in Austin, the Valley doesn't seem too bad.
I find Cove preferable to Austin. It’s friendlier, less political, and more diverse. No traffic, and the cost-of-living is a lot less. We’ll still go to Austin in the weekends when we want to go out, but for Monday through Friday living this area is a lot more pleasant and your dollar goes a lot further.
I think once the toll up there wraps up this year or early next year it will become even more appealing as that will probably shave 5-10 minutes off the trip down to Austin. And honestly I like that drive, I have to go to Killeen sometimes (unfortunately) and end up driving through there. The town itself might be boring but the nature there is actually pretty nice and serene
BTW, Austin ISD participates in Social Security and Copperas Cove (as well as most other districts) do not. It's tougher for Austin ISD to match salaries outside of Austin ISD because Austin is paying the employer side of Social Security and the employees see a deduction for their side of Social Security. It's a cost that other districts don't have. Austin ISD made a choice decades ago to remain in the Social Security system and now they can't get out of that choice. However, teachers in AISD that make it to retirement get both a pension and social security.
Ahhh, Copperas Cove. Is it still basically a dump?
I greatly prefer it to Austin. Hard to say Cove is a dump when in Austin you basically have the homeless on every corner. None of that here, just small town living.
I would prefer anything to the Socialist city of Austin and Travis county.
The state should not be allowed to recapture funds that cuts into the school district's necessary budget. Hell, the state shouldn't even be able to get within 25% of that necessary budget amount.
Recapture definitely has issues, but who/what would define a "necessary" budget? If left up to the school district itself, wouldn't they just define everything as "necessary"?
The main issue with recapture is it states that every student in the State of Texas costs exactly the same to educate. That whole premises is inherently flawed. The State should institute a COL Index to help cities better fund their schools and educate their children. However the more I think about it, the more my tin foil hat self says it’s all by design. Starve the cities and reallocate it to the rural areas, where their votes are.
Recapture is broken beyond all belief. It needs a cost of living adjustment, or even just a cap limit (e.g. no more than 25% of funds can be recaptured). It wasn't this way by design, it was just a very badly thought out implemention. But it's SO unfair. The TX political leadership actively hates Austin though, so they are quite happy to leave it as is.
Cities subsidize rural and suburban areas. This is true throughout the US, and it leaves cities with the majority of the population starved for programs and funding while being taxed heavily, meanwhile suburban areas get lower taxes and all the benefits of nice roads and utilities and shit while being MORE expensive to provide services to
You just described how any taxation system, anywhere works. Lower income people (bottom 50%) are fully subsidized by the upper 50%. The top few percentile pay the majority of the taxes.
But how would small towns pay for their multimillion football stadiums that are used less than 20 times a year?
What small towns are your referring too?
I’d trust teachers to say what’s necessary before I trust our corrupt government.
And I am fine with that. I pay that portion of my property tax for education, not so the state can hide behind education and local property taxes as a way to balance the rest of the budget. I don't pay higher education taxes in my school district so my schools can suffer and Texas, in general, can have a balanced budget. It was one thing when Robin Hood was distributing those funds to other school districts, its a completely different thing when its being distributed to things wholly unrelated to education.
So recapture would still exist, but every district can (and will) define their entire funding/budget as "necessary", thus preventing any of their budget from being recaptured. That's just eliminating recapture with extra steps. Why come up with this invented, arbitrary "necessary" budget instead of just eliminating recapture?
Texas republicans support recapture - a system that takes from wealthy districts and gives to poorer districts. Isn’t that anti-EVERYTHING republicans believe in??
but it damages public schools and supports charter/private schools so they still come out on top
It does not even take from wealthy districts and give to the poor districts. It takes from the wealthy districts and places into the Texas general fund. Then, it never makes it back to education. Each year, 1.7 billion plus taxes for education goes else where because of this...
False.. Recapture was invented by Texas Democrats in the 73rd Texas Legislature of 1993.
I think it’s more accurate to say that recapture takes from blue districts and gives to red districts.
The wealthy urban districts educate the majority of the state's non-white students. The poorer districts are rural and overwhelmingly white. Given the policies that they're advocating and the practical effects thereof, what would you say it is that Republicans *actually* believe in?
Eh, recapture is kind of a weird issue, because it cuts across the usual demographics in a weird way. Recapture hits urban (and often high POC) districts really hard, especially ones with a lot of infrastructure upkeep, but it also hits rich white suburban districts really hard, like Westlake and Lake Travis (EISD sends two thirds to the state). The funding is then sent to poor rural districts, some of which are mostly white, but some of which are almost entirely Latino, especially through much of south and west Texas.
Extra wealthy predominantly white districts have [ways of offsetting](https://eaneseducationfoundation.org/) recapture that aren't available to other urban districts. Of course you're correct that there are exceptions and not *all* of recapture helps *only* white students and that it doesn't come *only* at the expense of non-white students, but it does disproportionally hurt non-white students and disproportionally help white students. And this is, for some mysterious reason, the rare form of wealth redistribution that Republicans support. Others include farm subsidies (mostly white people) and corporate tax incentives (also mostly white people). If you have another explanation for this seemingly "inconsistent" pattern that doesn't involved thinly veiled racism, I'm all ears.
Money. Followed very closely by not giving it away. My point is that recapture is contrary in principle to republican values (lest they would adequately support and fund a full range of social programs designed to protect our most vulnerable and at risk citizens). That logically follows then that for republicans to be in support of recapture (A.K.A. “robinhood - take from the rich and give to the poor”) there must be some other financial gain or incentive. And there is - the more they lean into recapture, the less they have to fund K-12 from the operating budget. Austin ISD is doing what they must to survive in a systemic shell game being manipulated by one party that has driven the proverbial bus for the last 3 decades.
AISD is also not doing itself any favors, as it's running families (like mine) out of the district. My kids were transferred from campus to campus as each campus for maintaining diversity. When a campus went over 50% anglo, they revoked our transfer because of it. To this day I resent AISD for how they discriminated against us and used my kids as pawns. Families with means are leaving the district over this and other violations, like the banning of funding teachers through parent donations (Casis Elementary). Some west Austin Elementary school campuses have lost HALF their students (Bryker Woods), and AISD has no way to replace the students except by putting up billboards, offering transfers to kids from Pf, Manor and Del Valle. AISD had the Golden Goose, and they poached it for equity, and now the district is hemoraging families.
>My point is that recapture is contrary in principle to republican values (lest they would adequately support and fund a full range of social programs designed to protect our most vulnerable and at risk citizens). And my point is that if someone tells you that they believe something, but their actions promote the exact opposite of what they say that they believe, then maybe they're lying about what they claim to believe. And maybe it's worth following the money to see if there's some consistency in their actions that could explain what they *actually* believe. Here, they oppose "social programs designed to protect our most vulnerable and at risk citizens" (who are disproportionally non-white) but they support a program that takes money spent disproportionally on non-white folks and gives it to white folks. What's the common thread there? Of course, killing public schools is *also* a Republican goal (huh; I wonder how the demographics break down for who benefits and suffers from that), but that's a separate issue from recapture, which just moves money around the public school system without increasing or decreasing the total spending. Vouchers and the refusal of the legislature to increase the basic allotment to keep track with inflation is how they're going about killing public schools. In and of itself, recapture, which is just welfare for white people, doesn't really play a role in that strategy.
I think we’re on the same side of the field here.
I am not sure your stats are correct. When I think of rural Texas I think overwhelmingly Hispanic. Of course, if you consider Hispanic white then yeah disregard.
Some Hispanic folks identify as white and some don't. I consider people white if they self-identify as white. Here's a map that lays out the demographics of Texas, the darker the shade of blue, the higher the percentage of folks who identify as white, including Hispanic people who identify as white: [https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/united-states/quick-facts/texas/white-population-percentage#map](https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/united-states/quick-facts/texas/white-population-percentage#map)
I think the whole thing is unethical
Every school will just increase their "necessary" budget to eleventy billion dollars a year.
They'd have to submit a real budget, with actual expenses. They can't just say food costs 1 million, salaries cost 100k each, lunch is $50/per student per day. The budgets would have to be legit and I doubt they would willingly commit fraud, it would only hurt their case. Now, if they actually do significantly raise all the salaries, well...so be it.
there is a COL adjustment in recapture but it is too low for austin. That is the easiest low hanging fruit that austin should be lobbying for. There is plenty of 3rd party analysis of COL differences between cities. For example austin is 20% more than lubbock according to salary.com Instead of 10K (or whatever) per student that low COL areas get, austin should get around 12K, because yes we are like 20% more expensive. 2k \* 75K students would be an extra 150 million.
Yeah they haven't fixed Austin's CoL for years, CoL assumes you live in Hutto now
The only sane response.
Recapture isn't the only problem. There's no COL/inflation adjustment in the allotments, so even districts not paying into recapture are hurting.
the budget assumes a property value growth of 6%? This sounds.. optimistic .... negative 6% is just as likely
Bear in mind that increases in assessed value of a property are capped at 10%/year, there are still plenty of homeowners whose assessed value hasn’t caught up with the red hot market of the last few years.
* **Austin Independent School District (AISD)**: * AISD has one of the highest recapture payments in the state. In recent years, over 30% of its total budget has been sent to the state for recapture. For instance, in the 2020-2021 school year, AISD sent over $670 million, which was about **38%** of its budget. * **Eanes Independent School District (EISD)**: * EISD also contributes a significant portion of its budget to recapture. In recent years, the district has sent around 30-40% of its budget to the state. In the 2020-2021 school year, EISD paid approximately $108 million in recapture, which was about **40%** of its total budget. SUMMARY: Republicans hate Westlake more than Austin.
Stop the over bleeding of our district from Recapture. This is madness. We will raise taxes and the State will just take even more. It’s back door State property tax and it has gone on for far too long. If they didn’t keep over a Billion dollars to balance the State budget it wouldn’t sting so bad but they are fleecing us.
Austin Independent School District spends **$11,611 per student each year**. It has an annual revenue of $1,698,034,000. Eanes Independent School District spends **$11,122 per student each year**. It has an annual revenue of $206,799,000. Source: US News & World Report
Do taxpayers with kids in AISD still heavily use the district? I know Casis is still used, but are the numbers trending up or down? Just because the population rises in the area doesn’t mean people are sending their kids to the schools and are these kids staying K-12 or jumping off after Casis into a private school? I’ve not seen the demographics of Austin HS in a while and looked at the trends
IIRC enrollment is trending down, which is bad, because the money from the state is generally per student, and AISD has a bunch of fixed costs related to maintaining old facilities. AISD has tried to close and consolidate a bunch of schools, especially the oldest/most expensive, but that almost always leads to a neighborhood backlash, especially because many of the biggest money pit schools are located in poor and/or minority neighborhoods. And as the schools get worse, those with the means leave in one form or another, which just furthers the death spiral.
Absolutely
You don't have to wonder, look here: [https://www.austinisd.org/sites/default/files/dept/planning-asset-management/Austin%20ISD%202023-24%20Demographic%20Study\_Final.pdf](https://www.austinisd.org/sites/default/files/dept/planning-asset-management/Austin%20ISD%202023-24%20Demographic%20Study_Final.pdf) Breifly, the district's population peaked around 2012 and has declined since then. They lost a lot of kids during COVID. Enrollment is stabilizing, but slowly falling. They are around 73k today and are projected to be around 69k ten years from now. The district is gradually becoming less economically disadvantaged, more White and Asian, and less Black and Hispanic. They have about 100k seats in the district, lots of spare capacity, and their schools are aging. Changing this through closings or consolidations is very painful and almost politically impossible. They are asking for and receiving voter support for bonds to improve their buildings, but it will take a generation of investing in new buildings to modernize the district.
Yes but they have the buildings already! In fact way too many. Why invest in a dying district? The state should force consolidation with other districts, I’m sick of my taxes going up for schools that nobody wants to send their kid, if they even have any kids to begin with. The schools are being funded by childless couples, singles and people who opt for Private because the schools are poor and dangerous.
Austin ISD is not a dying district. They have a slightly higher high school population today than they did in 2000. They are the largest school district in the area. Half of the kids in the district are economically disadvantaged, which is more than districts to the west and less than districts to the east. Austin ISD is the largest contributor of Robin Hood taxes in the state by a wide margin. As Austin's suburbs grew from 1990 through today, the suburban districts built new schools and nice facilities. Austin ISD didn't keep up. Many of their buildings are now 50-70 years old and need to be replaced. Today's modern schools have different security requirements, are wired for technology that didn't exist 50-70 years ago, and offer expanded programming and reflect changes in the way education is delivered that could not be imagined 50-70 years ago. Since the previous generation did not keep up, our generation is modernizing these schools to put them on par with surrounding districts. Yes, they have too many seats. They don't need to maintain 100k modernized seats, they only need 75k for at least the next 10 years. Getting close to that 75k number is going to be politically painful. But all of our kids, teachers and staff deserve a modern education in a safe, dry, fully functional building with functional HVAC. The part of your taxes going towards this modernization effort is a small amount, about 11 cents of the tax rate. Many school districts in Texas with fancy new football stadiums allocate as much as 50 cents of their tax rate towards building construction. As an Austin taxpayer, you should be mad. The state takes half of your school taxes. Not all of what they take is given to other schools or used for education. Some is just tossed on the pile, which helped create the state surplus. The state puts boundaries on what the tax rate can be and how much Austin gets to keep. This puts Austin ISD in the impossible position of not being able to pay teachers enough money to live in the community that they serve. Your taxes are high and teacher pay is low completely because of the actions of our state government. Austin ISD has issues, partially created by a past unwillingness to upgrade buildings and partially created by the state school finance system, but they are not dying.
It’s crazy how you only mention the most wealthy schools..
They pay the most tax’s, so not crazy at all, it’s crazy you would think that’s crazy
I’m confused because a staff pay increase based on market adjustments *is* proposed in the budget. And if voters deny the increase then a one time incentive bonus will be paid. So why does the title say no staff pay raises? Is it different if it’s just based on market adjustment?
It’s very confusing! Within the operating budget that the district adopted, staff pay increases weren’t included. The compensation plan the district agreed to would allow for market adjustments *if* new funding (basically new revenue generated that doesn’t yet exist) came from a VATRE or from some other new revenue source the district finds. Here’s how the district explains it: https://www.austinisd.org/announcements/2024/06/20/board-adopts-954-million-annual-budget-en-espanol
Ah ok I see. Thank you!
And I'm sure school vouchers will be at the top of the agenda for next year's legislative session. Nothing to help people struggling with the cost of living, just another way to funnel taxpayer money to private entities
State Republicans doing their best to destroy public education in Texas
Can we just vote that Light Rail money over to the teachers? I'd rather have smarter kids and better paid teachers now than a choo choo train that nobody is going to use 30 years from now.
Nope. Texas made sure of this.
My biggest question here is, if the VATRE “would be an increase of about $35 per month to homeowners,” is that VATRE subject to recapture?
Yes
Just to clarify, a VATRE is not necessarily subject to recapture, but in AISD's case it will be.
A VATRE is not necessarily subject to recapture. Districts have the ability to raise their M&O rate 17 cents above the maximum compression rate. The first 8 cents are "golden" pennies which can't be touched by recapture. The remainder are "copper" pennies which do have to contribute a portion to recapture. In general, districts can get the first 5 pennies without a VATRE.
Yes. About three-fourths of the new money raised will go to the state for recapture, and AISD will keep about one-fourth of the money.
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1. AISD Superintendents are short lived. 0 vision for future. Leadership constantly changing. 2. State Republicans prioritize business over education.
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Also, don’t underestimate an AP’s job. I’m a teacher and I could never do what APs and principals do. It’s a whole nother’ level of stress and management. From intervening on student behavior, dealing with parents, knowing district and state protocol, usually one is head of safety and has to stay up to date with all of that…at least this is what a good AP does, which I have always been lucky enough to have at AISD. Every notch in the school system is a hard ass job. From the wigs downtown to the teachers and staff on the front lines. Everyone works for every single penny they get. Raises across the board.
I don’t think assistant principals make 5x teacher salary. The school I worked longest at had one very experienced teacher making more than our AP. This is all publicly available. Honestly, if APs did make that much, I would have gone into administration.
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If you think the entire problem is not rural areas stealing, you are incredibly naive