Budget problems last year led to layoffs and cuts in transportation along with other programs within the Fort Bend Independent School District. Now, an anticipated slash in state funding is once once more prompting officials to seek remedies.
This time, officials are studying possibly evaluating fees for extracurricular activities, further decreasing the number of bus routes and cutting costs to run academies and vocation programs. They also are researching regardless of whether to make changes in staffing and health insurance or to cut department and campus budgets.
Tracy Hoke, the district's chief financial officer, anticipates
Fort Bend ISD will face a $74 million budget shortfall because of much less cash from the state.
"A budgetary decrease of $74 million would return Fort Bend ISD to the 2005-06 spending levels," Hoke said.
If the shortfall materializes, it would mark the fourth consecutive year the district would operate with a deficit budget.
"Seventy-four million dollars ... is fairly overwhelming," school board trustee Susan Hohnbaum said last week throughout a board workshop, pointing out that the quantity would much more than triple the spending budget deficit the district had been projecting for the 2010-11 school year.
To cope with a budget shortfall last year, the district took a host of drastic measures that included layoffs of about 450 employees, meal-price increases, bus-route cuts and elimination of transportation services for after-school activities.
The district has scheduled town hall meetings for March three, 8 and 10 to inform residents of the spending budget problems.
Trustee Marilyn Glover said the district should "take a no-whining attitude and take a look at this as an opportunity."
"We will require to ask our parents to bear with us. Just as state representatives and senators take hard-line approaches, I think the district needs to do that as well," Glover said. "We need to ask them to come together assisting this procedure and come up with some very great ideas on how to keep our campuses open."
District leaders had proposed closing a number of schools with low enrollments and inefficient use of space to save cash. That plan has since been scrapped.
Board president Sonal Bhuchar called on residents to contact lawmakers to increase funding for public education.
Superintendent Tim Jenney also has joined other school districts' chiefs in pushing for an end to a state law that demands voter approval prior to the maintenance-and-operation portion of the property tax rate could be raised.
The 2006 law caps it at $1 per $100 assessed value, but permits districts to exceed that rate by up to 4 cents.
Seeking an increase higher than that demands a voter referendum.
The school officials also seek a change in the state's school finance system and the removal of a mandate that limits class sizes to 22 students per teacher in kindergarten via the fourth grade.
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Fort Bend ISD
