Montgomery ISD announced Monday the district would postpone the opening of Lincoln Elementary School, which was scheduled to open for the 2017-18 school year at the former Montgomery Intermediate School campus. The decision to postpone the opening was made after the district was notified by the Texas Education Agency that it would have to pay $3.5 million from its 2017-18 school year budget to the state in the process known as recapture, or the "Robin Hood" law. that The amount represents about 5 percent of the district's operating budget, the district said in a statement. School districts are required to make recapture payments when average property values per student exceed the state of Texas limit of $517,000 per student. "We were expecting to have a recapture payment in 2017-18 due to slower-than-predicted student enrollment growth and rapidly growing property values over the last school year," the district said in a statement. "We were notified in late April we could be subject to as much as a $3.5 million recapture bill, and that was larger than we anticipated." Students who would have attended the school will instead remain at Montgomery Elementary School. However, the school has already been moved to the Montgomery Middle School facility, which has been renovated and converted into a pre-K through fifth-grade campus. The largest savings will come from reassigning staff from Lincoln to open positions throughout the district, according to the statement. "By consolidating the two schools, [Montgomery and Lincoln elementary schools], Montgomery ISD is able to save a substantial amount of money on utilities," the district said in the statement. "There are also considerable construction savings as crews will be able to move fast and complete the work sooner without teachers and kids on campus." The district also announced that it will also save on utilities by not repurposing the former Montgomery Elementary School into administrative offices as previously planned.