Question 1: How much extra funding will Austin ISD get if voters approve this tax increase?

 

The school says they have a $78 million deficit this year.

 

The tax increase would bring $171 million to Austin ISD but they would only keep $41 million. (Discuss recapture).

 

Question 2: How does the school plan to use that extra money? 

 

Almost half of that will go towards raises for teachers.

 

Austin and many other school districts have blamed staffing shortages on low wages and benefits. 43,000 teachers retired or resigned in Texas in 2022, a state record.

 

Last year the district gave out $65 million in pay raises.

 

We obtained their payroll records and found they had a $660 million payroll last year.

 

But it wasn’t distributed very evenly - Only 325 people made six figures. Superintendent Matias Segura is making $365,000 — that’s the most in the history of the district, at least in our records dating back to 2017. 

 

But the bulk of teachers are making between $60,000 and $80,000.

 

Question 3: Why is this necessary? How did Austin ISD end up with such a large budget deficit?

 

Well, everyone likes to blame someone else. 

 

If you ask Austin and most other districts, the funding issues are mostly Governor Abbott’s fault. 

 

The most recent per-student funding increase in Texas was in 2019, because Abbott has refused to increase school funding until the Legislature passes a school voucher program to help more kids attend private schools. 

 

Since then, public school funding has decreased by 13% when you factor in inflation. San Antonio ended up closing 15 schools and says they might have to close more.

 

Abbott blames school districts for spending their federal COVID money irresponsibly. He says some schools used the money to hire new staffers, but now that the COVID money is used up they have no money to pay those new employees. He says they should have used it on one-time expenses.

 

Question 4: Is Abbott right? How responsible has Austin ISD been with budgeting its money the last few years?

 

Austin ISD promised in February that they would cut their budget deficit in half and only have a $26 million budget deficit this school year. That didn’t happen - the deficit almost doubled instead.

 

Our researchers obtained the school’s checkbook and found the district spent $338 million paying outside vendors last year.

 

$44 million of that was for contracted services like tutors and extracurriculars. The district has said that’s the main area where they want to cut costs and save money.

 

Three months ago our team put in an open records request to see the hourly rates Austin is spending on those services. Two times they told us they would have the info ready for us but then didn’t meet their own deadline. Now they say they won’t give us the records until the end of October.