Austin Area Voters Reject School Tax Rate Increases, Putting Budget Cuts on the Table

Voters in several Austin area school districts rejected proposed property tax rate increases in the Nov. 3 election, leaving many districts with little choice but to consider additional cuts to their budgets. Many of those districts, including Georgetown and Round Rock, had hoped to use the extra revenue to fund pay raises for teachers and staff.

In Georgetown, 51.56% of voters opposed raising the district's tax rate, a measure that would have generated an additional $8.4 million annually. The district planned to use that money to boost teacher salaries by 3.5% to 4% and other staff salaries by 3%.

Georgetown ISD Superintendent Devin Padavil said keeping compensation where it is now is not an option. "The most important thing we do for kids is put high quality teachers in every classroom," Padavil said. "So, we have to ensure we have a supportive culture and competent compensation." But paying for those raises, he said, will now require reducing other costs.

In the coming months, the district will weigh cutting staff and further trimming campus and department budgets, steps that could lead to larger class sizes and changes to student programs. "We've had a balanced budget for two consecutive years," Padavil said. "But we have hit a point where we can't increase teacher compensation or staff compensation without finding more things to cut."

In Round Rock, 52.3% of voters opposed a tax rate increase that would have brought in an additional $30 million each year, though about half of that amount would have been taken by the state through recapture. The district had planned to raise teacher and staff salaries by 2% and increase its contribution to employee health care.

"Because of the constraints we have in our budget, we couldn't use our own budget to give a raise to staff," Round Rock ISD Superintendent Hafedh Azaiez said. "So that was the only option for us, if we want to give a raise and help offset some of the increasing cost of living."

Azaiez said Round Rock does not plan to make budget cuts in response to the measure's failure. Instead, the district has started setting goals for next year's legislative session and arranging meetings with elected officials, including newly elected ones. He said he wants lawmakers to raise the basic allotment for districts "so we can maybe then address the increase in cost of living, the inflation and take care of our staff and teachers and give them a decent raise."

The rejections extended well beyond the Austin area, with only four of 33 such measures passing statewide. Rachel White, a professor in UT Austin's Department of Educational Leadership and Policy, called the combination of Democratic victories and the failure of so many school funding measures a "juxtaposition we wouldn't expect," noting that many newly elected Democrats, including Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa, have pledged to increase public education funding. White said voters may be signaling they want systemic change in how Texas pays for schools, rather than funding built on rising property taxes, since local leaders are often asked to do more without seeing that money stay in their communities.

White's colleague, professor David DeMatthews, agreed and pointed to voter fatigue. "They're being asked to support public schools, [but] they're still dealing with rising housing costs, inflation and insurance costs," he said. DeMatthews added that short-term tax rate increases cannot solve the long-term challenges districts face, such as hiring and retaining teachers. "While it's important for districts .. it's really like putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound at this point in time," he said.