Conroe ISD’s budget will increase 8.6 percent to $672 million for 2024 but does not include funding for teacher raises.
The board of trustees will adopt its budget and tax rate for the upcoming year Aug. 15.
While the budget will increase $53 million over 2023’s $619 million, CISD Chief Financial Officer Darrin Rice said the proposed tax rate will drop 15.2 cents from $1.11 per $100 property valuation to 96.21 cents.
“We did have some budget challenges this year,” Rice said.
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Those challenges include continued growth, no funding for employee raises and the end of federal grant funding as part of the elementary and secondary school emergency relief grant program signed into law in March 2020 as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.
That means the district is moving 225 positions to its general fund, totaling about $16 million in its 2023-24 budget.
The district added 555 full-time employees totaling $36 million for the upcoming year which includes added special education support and staff for three new campuses.
Rice said if the district gets funding through the current special legislative session, those raises would be effective back to the start date of employee contracts.
“Although we don’t have the funding for raises yet, we have done the work on it,” Rice said.
Rice said a 2 percent raise for employees would be about $13 million while a 5 percent increase would be about $26 million.
Conroe ISD is one of the largest employers in the county and has more than 9,000 employees.
Another budget factor is the state formula for funding school districts. Currently, funding is based on average daily attendance, not the number of students enrolled.
Karen Garza, director of finance for CISD, said during a budget update in June the district’s enrollment is expected to climb to 73,394 for 2024, which is 2,600 students above 2023 enrollment.
CISD will get funding from the state based on average daily attendance, estimated to be about 67,889 students.
“This is the area we assume the most risk in the budget because our expenditure budget is set on enrollment while our revenue is based on average daily attendance,” Garza said.
The historical reasoning for the attendance-based policy has been that it creates a financial incentive for school districts to fight truancy and drive up attendance, but Texas in 2015 decriminalized truancy, giving districts fewer tools to force students to come to school.
The district is looking to the public for help fund new construction and renovations as the district grows and agreed Aug. 1 to place a $1.9 billion bond package on the Nov. 7 ballot.
If approved by voters, the bond will add eight new schools and fund major renovations at five district campuses.
