The announcements came at a March 3 budget workshop ahead of the adoption of the 2022-23 budget expected this summer. House said the freezes are necessary as HISD attempts to deal with what he called "a structural budget deficit that will continue to grow if left unchecked." The district faces a potential $69 million budget deficit this year.
"We’re going to act aggressively ... to address our financial challenges and be transparent about the hard choices that need to be made to get us through," House said.
The freeze will save the district roughly $100 million in unspent dollars, which House said will now be subject to stronger vetting measures for how it can be spent. Departments and school principals will have the ability to make requests that will be reviewed by the central office for approval.
"We all are going to have to be prepared to tighten belts and make these adjustments and ensure that this commitment is one that is really moving forward in this administration," House said. "It makes sense to focus on it now and not wait until another fiscal year."
The campus-based freeze affected 75% of each school's general funds. Funding levels that have been dedicated to specific needs—including payroll, special education, magnet funding, and gifted and talented programs—will be maintained.
Some HISD board members expressed concerns about the consequences of principals losing their unspent funds on short notice. HISD officials said the intention is to prevent unspent money being spent just for the sake of it, and the district is working with principals to make sure important needs are met.
The March 3 workshop was also the first time the district presented financial details for how it plans to bring to a life a five-year strategic plan released in February.
The plan lays out strategies for recruiting and retaining teachers, and improving equity across the district, among other goals. It also calls for having a nurse, nurse associate, and librarian or media specialist at every school.
HISD officials introduced a new compensation plan for all district employees, including proposals for salary increases and step increases over the next three years. Based on a recent survey, House said around one-third of the district's teachers are considering leaving the district the next school year, a trend he said demands urgency.
The compensation plan is based on an analysis of compensation at other school districts and market trends, HISD Chief of Talent Jeremy Grant-Skinner said. The district looked at teachers, principals, assistant principals and police officers as separate groups, as well as the master pay scale, which includes all employees.
"What we see in those results is a lack of current competitiveness pretty much across all of those groups," he said at the March 3 meeting.
Among other changes, the strategic plan calls for a cost-of-living sort of adjustment to the teacher pay scale of 4% in addition to step increases every year for the next three years. By the 2024-25 school year, the starting teacher salary will increase from $56,869 to $64,000, he said.
“This would mean we’d be above the average of our regional competitors in that third year even if they keep growing at the same rate they’ve been growing at in the last three years," Grant-Skinner said.
The estimated cost of the new compensation plan, including benefits, would be about $82.7 million in the 2022-23 school year, Grant-Skinner said.
The budgeting conversation will continue at future budget workshops, including workshops that will focus on immediate short term budget challenges, the financial considerations of the strategic plan and a longterm financial outlook that will focus on the structural deficit. The district is also digging into whether a bond election would be appropriate, House said.
"There are going to have to be some bigger cuts as we move forward, and that will be part of what the next 12 months will be about," House said.
