The Fort Bend ISD board of trustees considered authorizing reappraisals of properties affected by Hurricane Harvey during discussions at a workshop Monday.

Reappraising these properties may possibly alleviate the tax burden for owners but only for a short period of time, FBISD spokesperson Amanda Bubela said. Residents would be taxed for a reduced value from Aug. 28 to Dec. 31.

The district’s chief financial officer Steve Bassett reported approximately 4,300 properties are subject to reappraisal. The value lost to the school district is estimated at $511 million, Bassett said.

“[Potentially], loss in local collections would be $1.2 million to the general fund, to the [maintenance and operations] fund,” Bassett said. “But the state penalizes you. Whenever you’re running things through the state funding calculation, if you don’t collect as much as they think you should be collecting, then your state funding actually is reduced.”

Overall, FBISD may suffer a loss of $1.7 million to its general fund and $300,000 to its debt service fund, according to workshop documents.

“These are things that have been discussed by the commissioner [of education] in terms of the state being able to make up those dollars, but we don’t know the time frame for that,” Bassett said. “We don’t know if and when that would actually happen.”

State officials have discussed not penalizing these school districts for the loss in decreased property values resulting from reappraisals, FBISD staff said.

Texas Commissioner of Education Mike Morath has announced a plan to adjust the average daily attendance for the 2017-18 school year for school districts affected by Harvey, according to FBISD’s business and finance department.

“One reason why I am optimistic along these lines is that these are one-time costs,” Bassett said. “[Legislators] have never been willing to go into the rainy-day fund to fund ongoing things, to fund schools, but clearly these are one-time costs.”

FBISD board president Kristin Tassin said she attended a Texas Senate Education Committee hearing earlier that afternoon at the University of Houston, where Morath testified on behalf of schools affected by Harvey.

“He was encouraging the senators to consider a special appropriation, which is what the legislature would have to do in order to hold us harmless for this $1.7 million in revenue loss to the general fund and the $300,000 in the [debt service fund],” Tassin said.