The Eanes Education Foundation announced a projected $2.02 million grant intended to be used to hire 40 more teachers during the next school year at the Eanes ISD Board of Trustees April 26 meeting. “It just kind of catches my breath to be so grateful for the magnitude of the generosity of our parents,” said trustee Beau Ross following the announcement. “Can you imagine how hard that discussion would be if we had a $2 million hole [in the budget]?” Annie Zucker, the foundation’s treasurer, said this was a “record-setting” and “unprecedented” year for the foundation. She said the foundation has raised more than $14 million since 2004, which funded more than 270 teachers for EISD. During the 2015-16 school year, nearly $1.4 million was raised to hire more teachers. Trustee Ellen Balthazar said the new grant was a 30 percent increase from last year and called the foundation “courageous”.

Superintendent’s preliminary budget

The EEF announcement came following Superintendent Tom Leonard’s preliminary presentation on the 2016-17 budget, where he fell short in his prediction of the EEF contribution, forecasting a grant of $1.68 million. He presented the board with a “50,000-foot view” of the upcoming budget, predicting a tax assessed value, or TAV, of 8.4 percent and a fund balance withdrawal of $2 million, along with the predicted $1.68 million from EEF. He stressed that the numbers presented were estimates and subject to change. He said preliminary numbers showed a possible 1.5 percent increase in salaries—which he said is “in the middle of the pack” compared with Central Texas ISDs like Lake Travis and Leander—and a 5 percent benefits increase for staff, as well as additional staffing at the elementary, middle and high school level. Last fiscal year, teachers received a 2.8 percent salary increase. Lester Wolff, human resources assistant superintendent, said state law requires teachers to contribute 7.7 percent—up from 7.2 percent—of their paycheck to the Teacher Retirement System, or TRS, starting in the new school year. In addition, teachers benefiting from TRS ActiveCare, the state’s health coverage program for teachers, must contribute some of their salary to a premium each year, he said. “What matters to the teacher is, ‘how much is their take-home [pay]?’” Wolff said. Trustee Rob Hargett said he would prefer to consider a 2 percent pay increase, and trustee Beau Ross agreed. “I feel like if we’re looking at a 1.5 percent [increase] and people are putting .5 percent into retirement and the cost of living is .9 percent [increase], some employees are going to take home less,” Hargett said. “I’d at least like to know what the impact is [of a 2 percent increase].” Leonard said the next two board meetings would involve discussing budget assumptions, TAV, the additional staffing model and salary and benefits adjustments. “We will not know everything exactly by the end of May,” Leonard said. “Everything is based on assumptions.” The school district’s 2015-16 fiscal year ends June 30.

Alternative revenue ideas

Budget talks continued with a presentation from the Revenue Generating Task Force, a subcommittee formed last fall to come up with ways to raise $2 million annually through means other than fundraising—mainly, through educational initiatives and cost savings. The task force broke the ideas down into four categories: generating large income that could be implemented in a short period of time, generating large income over a long period of time, generating small income over a short period of time and generating small income over a long period of time. While it tabled the fourth category—generating small income over a long period of time—the task force proposed 13 ideas for the other three categories, including installing LED lights and cutting electricity usage, hosting a college prep exposition, requiring school uniforms, selling district-owned vacant lots, increasing the average daily attendance and offering parking lots and shuttle services for local events such as Austin City Limits. The board agreed to take the ideas to the administration to determine what was feasible, narrow down the projects and return to the drawing board if necessary. “This is going to take some time to study,” Hargett said, adding he did not want task force members to get discouraged. “It’s going to take time to figure out where our resources are,” he said.