Chief Financial Officer Pete Pape provided the budget update to the board of trustees during the Nov. 20 board meeting.
The gist
The board adopted the 2025-26 budget with a $20.2 million shortfall in June, which included $460.6 million worth of revenues against $481.2 million worth of expenditures.
According to Pape, the district received $4.2 million in new state revenues following increases to the homestead exemption and over-65 hold harmless provision. There was also a $200,000 decrease in recapture payments.
Pape said district officials expect to have more accurate estimates of the exemption and provision's impacts in December. The Texas Comptroller will then certify these values in January, and the Texas Education Agency will rerun these numbers to recalculate funding in February.
"That will lead us to know exactly what our values are for this year and what that does for our funding," Pape said.
Remember this?
Despite an $8.4 billion public school funding bill that provided funds for teacher pay raises, a school safety allotment, special education allotment and more, LISD is still lacking $10.5 million in other state funding.
Officials said House Bill 2 changed funding formulas for a hold harmless provision that protected the district from revenue losses caused by prior state-mandated reductions to the tax rate. LISD is one of ten school districts that no longer qualifies for this provision due to the changes in an "unintended consequence" of the bill.
The district previously received about $23 million which would have gone toward teacher salaries and buying down the shortfall, Pape said.
While the updated shortfall does not include any additional revenue from this, officials are continuing to advocate for a resolution with Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath.
"We anticipate coming back in January and getting our legislators and everyone else to write more letters to emphasize, ... 'You've got [the] final data; now look at it, run it and tell us if we got dinged or we weren't properly funded by House Bill 2,'" Pape said.
