During the June 15 Board of Trustees regularly scheduled meeting, the Board adopted the budget for the 2020-2021 school year. The budget was developed using school funding laws approved with the passage of House Bill 3 during the 86th Legislative Session in 2019. The Board must annually adopt three budgets: General Operating, Child Nutrition, and Debt Service (voter-approved bonds).
General Operating Budget
The general operating budget consists of Maintenance and Operations (M&O) tax collections, as well as state and federal funding. The largest expenditure of the general operating budget is personnel, which accounts for 87% of maintenance and operations expenditures. In approving the budget, Trustees also approved raising the starting teacher salary to $54,000, while also providing at least a 1% of midpoint compensation increase for all employees.
An M&O tax rate of $0.9564 was used to develop the 2020-2021 budget.The official M&O tax rate will be calculated by the State after July certified values are received and may differ from the tax rate used in developing the budget. The Board will approve the final tax rate in August.
The 2020-2021 budget also includes a projected recapture, or Robin Hood, payment of $50.9 million, which is an increase of $1.43 million from the 2019-2020 budget year. This equates to $0.31 cents of every tax dollar collected in GCISD.
The District must adopt the budget before the end of the fiscal year on June 30. There are still many decisions that need to be made in order to begin school in the Fall that could possibly impact the budget. There is the possibility that the District will need to come back and amend the budget at a later date.
Child Nutrition Budget
The child nutrition budget consists of local food sales and federal School Lunch & Breakfast program revenues and supports the entire Child Nutrition program without supplementation from the general operating budget.
Debt Service (voter-approved bonds)
The Debt Service budget is based on a Debt Service tax rate of $0.3567. As a reminder, voter-approved debt is not subject to recapture. The Debt Service budget also includes a prepayment of the Series 2011 bonds in the amount of $12.78 million, which will save taxpayers an estimated $7.9 million in future interest costs. The District has prepaid bonds over the past few years in an effort to reduce the outstanding principal debt. These types of transactions contributed to the District receiving a bond rating upgrade from “AA” to “AA+” from Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings (S&P) in September 2019. This is the highest S&P bond rating given to Texas school districts, with GCISD being one of only 23 districts with the “AA+” rating.
In 2016, the GCISD community voted to approve a bond package that included a new Cannon Elementary School, two multipurpose centers, renovations to the learning commons and security upgrades at all campuses. To read more about the 2016 bond program, click here.