What you need to know
As the district begins the process of creating its budget for the upcoming school year, RRISD Chief Financial Officer Dennis Covington shared that there are multiple factors impacting decision-making, such as lowered enrollment resulting in reduced revenue and continued lowering of the maximum tax rate the district is allowed to set by the state of Texas, as well as growth of charter school enrollment and home-schooling.
The latter, he said, will be shown in an upcoming demographic update.
These considerations, in addition to others presented to the district's board of trustees, may result in the following actions being taken to reduce the district's budget for the 2024-25 school year:
- Reduce central office positions
- Reduce central office school support positions
- Reduce position allocations due to enrollment decline
- Increase high school, middle school and elementary school class size formulas
- Reduce school level support positions
- Reduce summer school program
- Reduce all service calendars by one day
- Reduce departmental allocations
- Eliminate cellphone stipends
- Reduce travel
- Eliminate food purchases
- Adjust transportation delivery model
RRISD Superintendent Hafedh Azaiez said that the district is planning to avoid eliminating positions with the effect of letting any employees go. Rather, the district will use attrition—unfilled positions that are then eliminated—to curb personnel expenditures.
Covington also shared that the options being considered are not official, and that the district will conduct surveys to find the best path forward to reduce its budget.
Place 6 trustee Tiffanie Harrison expressed gratitude to administrative staff for taking this path forward to avoid cutting staff positions, as other districts have done in a similar position.
"I know we're in a tough situation," Harrison said. "I know this will continue to develop. I'm grateful as an educator that there are a lot of things I don't see on this list that I know other districts are considering. I know this is a work in progress."
