Bryan ISD voices frustration over lack of legislative funding

BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) – Bryan and College Station ISDs are working on budgets to get them through 2024.

Currently, district leaders are looking at budgets that would have them operating in a deficit. Tuesday night, College Station ISD Board Members expressed their frustration with a lack of help from the legislature.

This issue is echoed by Bryan leaders, who say it’s impacting every corner of the state.

“Superintendents all across the state of Texas and public schools right now are talking about the lack of funding sources coming out of the state for compensating teachers specifically, but all of our staff we’re a bit frustrated,” BISD Superintendent Ginger Carrabine said.

Leaders thought they would see some funding in the 88th Legislative Session. Then, again in the Special Session. But it never happened. Luckily, Carrabine says they have one option to increase pay for Bryan teachers.

“We need our teachers and our staff desperately in the classroom and the best way we could invest in our staff is through compensation,” Carrabine said. “We did anticipate that something like this might happen. So we had money set aside from ESSER which is the federal COVID relief money and we dedicated that to our teachers and all of our staff for the next school year. So we do have some things in place, but it’s a one-time teacher retention stipend offered a couple of times throughout the year.”

ESSER was approved by the state during the COVID-19 pandemic for Texas schools. It consisted of $19.2 billion during the pandemic through several iterations of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief fund, according to Texas Education Agency data.

Both Bryan and College Station ISDs say there are a few reasons budgets are falling into the negative. Kevin Beesaw who oversees BISD finances says with a combination of inflation and district needs to increase pay, new property tax relief passed by the state to benefit homeowners will actually prevent schools from getting any additional funds they need.

“Even to just move forward with the same budget that we had last year. You would think ‘okay that’s all right,’ but that doesn’t include any raises for anyone and then it also doesn’t include any inflation. Just for example if we did a 5% inflation increase on our nonpayroll categories, that’s about $1 million. So, you know trying to come forward with a deficit budget from the prior year you would be adding another million dollars to that deficit if nothing changed at all which is, you know is the information right now that we have from the legislature,” Beesaw said.

Carrabine says schools are hoping chatter about a Special Session in October will be true, and come with some teacher pay or budget help.