AUSTIN, Texas — With budget challenges ahead, the Austin Independent School District (AISD) is focused on which positions it can eliminate.
District leaders gave the community and Board of Trustees a preliminary 2024-25 budget with a potential $60 million deficit looming.
During Thursday night's meeting, AISD officials said their first goal is to reduce and cut expenditures by $30 million. While the cuts would not lead to a balanced budget, officials said it would get them closer to where the district feels "comfortable."
The district said it's considering several areas for cuts, including contracts currently being paid out. It also plans to reduce positions within the district, but officials said a "majority" of them are already vacant.
"With regards to positions, we're concentrating on central office and operational positions. So we are trying to do our best to leave campuses untouched," Eduardo Ramos, the district's CFO, said.
RELATED: College admissions could be impacted as Austin ISD recalculates GPA, rankings due to inconsistencies
The district could also ask voters to approve a tax rate increase, which would generate at least an additional $44 million in revenue.
"The possibility for tax ratification. This community, I firmly believe, believes so deeply in public education in these schools that they'll find any way they can to support our schools, because our legislature is not," Ken Zarifis, the president of Education Austin, a union representing AISD employees, said.
"If we were to move forward with that, and the voters were to approve that, that's the additional revenue that we would generate," Ramos said. "So our revenue would climb from $753 to $797 million."
Currently, payroll makes up 87% of AISD's budget. Officials hope that reducing the scope of contracts would help to keep positions without eliminating them while still making do.
"It's really important that people understand that the success of students is based on human beings, not programs, but the people in the classroom, in the cafeterias, on the buses," Zarifis said.
Despite having a $33 billion surplus, Texas hasn't increased enrollment-based funding for public schools since 2019. Texas lawmakers have included allotment increases in education-related bills, like school voucher legislation, but those bills haven't passed.
The district said a recent survey reported that nearly half of the state's school districts face budget deficits. That's led to AISD maintaining a $30 million deficit in future budgets. Any additional expenses, such as employee raises, would result in more cuts to the district.