After Montgomery ISD announced a $6.9 million budget gap for the 2018-19 school year in August, MISD board of trustees unanimously approved a hiring freeze at its Nov. 13 meeting to avoid layoffs, MISD Superintendent Beau Rees said afterward. “The move was an attempt to be proactive by reducing the personnel expenditures through attrition,” Rees said. “In order to reduce expenditures, MISD plans to reduce staff through the process of attrition—when people resign or retire, we will not fill those positions.” Rees said typically the district would fill between four to seven teacher positions at the end of the fall semester, along with a number of at-will positions—those that can be fired without establishing just cause— hired each month. This year those positions will not be filled during the freeze—something which has happened before in 2011 and 2012 to address a funding reduction from the Texas Legislature, Rees said. About $1.9 million of the district’s operating costs are due to the paying for the utilities of the three new schools that opened over the past three years, which were funded by a 2015 bond to address overcrowding and new student enrollment. Another $2 million is due to teacher salaries to staff the new facilities, and $5 million to the state’s recapture funds intended to even funding for schools across the state because MISD is considered a property-wealthy district. In 2018, MISD paid $2.4 million to the state in recapture. It is projected to pay nearly $5 million in 2019 from local school property taxes, Rees said. Enrollment numbers, weighted average daily attendance and property wealth all play in to how much the district pays back to the state. Rees said in 2016 and 2018, MISD recorded two of the lowest student enrollment growth rates the district has seen in the last decade at 1.19 and 1.06 percent respectively—while 2017 saw the highest at 4.7 percent. At the same time, property values in MISD have increased drastically. “Needless to say, accurately predicting enrollment has been difficult the last four years—add that to the fact that we paid zero recapture in 2016 and we are going to have to pay [around] $5 million recapture in 2019,” Rees said. “Our board of trustees ... has authorized the use of fund balance to minimize impact on classroom instruction.” To mitigate the budget gap this year, MISD changed the 12-month fiscal year to 10 months, reduced all campus and department budgets, consolidated four bus routes and eliminated the employee shuttle. Reducing staff positions—80 percent of the school district budget—as personnel leave is the next step and purpose of the hiring freeze. “Since MISD does not control how many students show up to attend school nor does it control local property appraisals, we are trying to be proactive,” Rees said.