EPISD Board approves ballot language for Tax Ratification Election
In a 6-1 vote, board members of the El Paso Independent School Board approved the language for the Tax Ratification Election, or TRE, for the November ballot.
Voters are asked to approve money to be taken from the Interest and Syncing (I&S) account and use it for the Maintenance and Operation (M&O) account. The money will be used to fund a one-time teacher stipend, expand academic programming and repay money borrowed from the district’s savings account.
EPISD District 3 Trustee Susie Byrd was the only board member who voted against the motion. Byrd said she wanted the language to specify the money would only be used to fund employee salary increases.
“I wanted to, if we were going to get new funding from the state, that it would all be dedicated to employee compensation,” Byrd said. “That’s an area where we continue to really struggle in comparison to our peer school districts.”
Byrd believes investing in employee compensation will help the district attract and retain the best teachers and employees the district can get.
The other board members also want to increase employee salaries, but they were hesitant to tie the TRE funding exclusively to those increases.
“If we’re committing dollars to salary increases today for future budgets, in order to make a budget, we have to go back to fund, balance or, even worse, we have to start cutting positions,” said EPISD Board Secretary and Trustee Al Velarde.
Board members said employee salary increases remain a priority, but every year is a new budget and needs the flexibility required to plan a budget. “Our board is fully supportive of teacher raises and compensation for our teachers. However, we have to be fiscally responsible to ensure, year over year, we are, first of all, caring for our students, number two, caring for our teachers. We need to ensure our dollars are there to do that,” said EPISD Board President Trent Hatch, saying the board knows it will be short $5.5 million for the 2019-20 school year as a result of declining enrollment.
The TRE won’t affect the tax rates residents already pay for the school district. “To be clear, no tax rate increase to members of the community,” said Hatch, “All we’re asking is the members of the community to allow us – by vote – to move pennies from one bucket of money to another bucket of money.”
What the TRE does is move $0.10 from I&S to M&S, allowing the school district to spend more money on the everyday operation of the district. According to EPISD, if the TRE is passed, the district will get an estimated $7.5 million in matching funds from the State of Texas.
The district will use $5.5 million dollars to fund the one-time employee stipend to qualifying employees. The other $2 million will be used to replenish $1.8 million the district borrowed from the fund balance to balance the 2018-19 budget. The money will be used in different ways every year, within the boundaries set out by the TRE.
