At its Aug. 4 special meeting, the Conroe ISD board of trustees reviewed a presentation from John Robuck, managing director at BOK Financial Advisors, and CISD Chief Financial Officer Karen Garza focusing on the district's budget, compensation plan and tax rate for fiscal year 2026-27.
The framework
As previously reported in April, CISD was on pace for a balanced budget for the 2026-27 school year. Garza maintains this projection as the district nears the official budget and tax rate adoption date on Aug. 18.
The preliminary budget for FY 2026-27 is $769.6 million, with a projected property tax rate of $0.9496 per $100 valuation. This current budget is lower than the initial projection in April, which was $770.42 million.
The preliminary budget proposes an expenditure increase of around $7.59 million. The expenditure increase is made up of multiple different factors, including but not limited to:
- Personnel changes: $1.71 million
- Compensation plan: $0.7 million
- Other expenses (utilities & supplies): $1.68 million
- Teacher incentive allotment: $1 million
- TRS insurance plan: $2.5 million
TRS is the newly proposed insurance plan CISD will be rolling out for the 2026-27 FY. Garza said that previously CISD operated under a self-funded insurance plan where they would pay employee premiums through the CISD general fund reserves.
To avoid raising the premiums of their employees, CISD will be moving to TRS active care moving forward.
“It’s been hard on a lot of employees trying to adjust for that, but there are districts around us that are doing the same thing,” Garza said. “School districts are getting out of the health care business because they just can't sustain it.”
The conditions
As previously reported in April, Garza has said that CISD is currently projected to face stalling growth for student enrollment. For 2026-27, the student population is currently projected to be 72,800. With this in mind, the district is still on track to open three new campuses to address student overcrowding in the district.
Arnold Elementary and Fowler Intermediate schools are set to open on Aug. 12, and the Grand Oaks Ninth-Grade Campus is set to open during winter break, Garza said.
Other budgetary concerns for the district include:
- Slow or stagnant enrollment growth
- Inability to provide raises for employees
- Compensation plan
- Fast growth allotment anticipated drop to Tier 2 (2027-28)
- Strain of self-funded insurance plan
As previously reported, CISD will not be pursuing a district-wide pay raise for employees in 2026-27. At last year's Texas legislative session, CISD received $22.3 million in total from the state to help fund raises for teachers.
The district then decided to front-load their raises, focusing on higher pay for all employees, not only teachers, with the caveat that they would not be able to fund a large raise for employees this fiscal year.
CISD board members such as Nicole May and Angie Gambino have said they would like to establish a stronger plan to make salaries in CISD more competitive with other districts.
“I've had a lot of conversations ... regarding compensation; it keeps me up at night,” May said. “We need to generate more revenue in order to work on our compensation”
“We have other strategic initiatives, and maybe this should be one of them,” Gambino said. “Maybe it's a three- to five-year plan that gets us to a place where every year that's part of our budget, we’re not waiting on the state to give us money that's part of our plan.”
One more thing
On Aug. 18, CISD will host a public hearing where the board will formally adopt the district's tax rate and budget for FY 2026-27.
