The Fort Bend ISD board of trustees unanimously approved a balanced budget of $561.7 million for the 2014-15 school year on June 9.

The budget reflects significant property tax revenue increases and includes an additional $5 million for instruction materials, specifically textbooks, and $8.9 million for unforeseen maintenance issues over last year.

"Our goal is to fund activities that support the district's mission and vision while achieving balanced budgets that do not require a tax increase," Chief Financial Officer Steve Bassett said. "We are not proposing any change to the tax rate. By maintaining our $0.30 tax rate, we will be able to pay off about $7.7 million of our debt early."

Salary increases

The 2014–15 budget covers a districtwide salary increase and additional staffing measures totaling $53.6 million. An increase of $19.5 million—$14.1 million for teachers and $5.4 million for staff—brings the district's starting teacher salary to $50,000.

Teachers will receive an average salary increase of 5.8 percent, according to district officials. For several months, district staff met with administration and faculty to discuss what should be added or modified to the budget for the upcoming school year. The board approved the salary increases in April.

"A lot of collaboration took hold during the budget planning process," Bassett said. "One of the priorities to come from all of these groups was salary increases for teachers."

With more than $28.4 billion of taxable value projected within FBISD's coverage area—a 9 percent increase over last year—the district is expected to receive $310.3 million in local funding, which is about 55 percent of the 2014–15 budget. Other revenue sources include $249.8 million—or about 44 percent—from state funding and $6.4 million in federal dollars.

Discussing boundaries

On Aug. 18, the FBISD board of trustees approved a new policy that modifies the way district officials will decide changes to the district's boundaries and feeder patterns.

"Through this policy, I see very clear guidance on a level that has not been provided in the past," Superintendent Charles Dupre said. "[The policy] will enable the district to establish the timeline, procedures, structures and format that we will need to plan and develop boundaries."

The approved policy stipulates the board will push to maintain neighborhood schools and engage the community to help examine available data. In addition, the policy states that once approved, new attendance boundaries and feeder patterns should stay in place for at least five years.

"This work will help [the district] use of all of our facilities in a way that is more effective and efficient and that best addresses student needs," Dupre said.

With Elementary School No. 46 slated to open fall 2015, boundary discussions have already begun, and preliminary recommendations will be brought to the board Sept. 8. Discussions will continue this fall, and a final decision on the Elementary School No. 46 boundaries will need to be made by Jan. 2015, Dupre said.

In addition to information provided by the district's demographer, DeJong-Richter, more information regarding school capacity is expected to become available later this year that will allow the administration to begin an in-depth community engagement process before bringing recommendations forward, district officials said.

GPA calculation

During the 2013-14 school year, FBISD officials worked on analyzing and revamping the district's GPA policy and procedure. In 2006-07, the district changed from grading on three academic levels—academic with a 4.0 scale, advanced with a 5.0 scale and honors/pre-AP with a 6.0 scale—to a two-level system—advanced and honors/pre-AP. However, the grade point scale was not altered to reflect the change, according to district officials.

On Aug. 18, the board approved a recommendation to change the GPA calculation to a 100-point scale, or percentage grade-point, system that will go into effect next year with the class of 2019.

"We are trying to take the emphasis off the conversion to the 4.0 scale," said Ginger Carrabine, executive director of curriculum with FBISD. "A student's class rank is most important, and we are trying to be as mathematically accurate as we can. In the big scheme of things, the 4.0 scale is not how we rank our students."

The percentage grade point is calculated by adding semester averages earned and dividing by the number of semesters to find the average. The new system is meant to be more accurately converted to a 4.0 grading scale, which is the most commonly used scale in higher education, Deputy Superintendent Christie Whitbeck said.

"GPA is highly emotional and can be difficult to understand," she said. "We are looking forward to a very true measure of GPA. There is no perfect system but we think this will be very thorough and fair to our kids."

The class of 2019—students currently in 8th grade—will be the first to see the change to the GPA calculation system.