The Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District board of trustees on Monday unanimously approved a one-time incentive for educators who submit an early notice to retire or resign from their positions. The move is one of many efforts the district is taking to help balance a projected $6.8 million budget deficit next year as a result of public education funding cuts from the Texas Legislature.

Effective immediately, the school district is providing an incentive plan—10 percent of the employees' annual gross base pay of up to $8,000 and an additional $750 for those with a perfect attendance record along with more than 10 remaining local leave days as of April 1—to a total of 40 eligible employees. The payment does not include allowances or stipends.

The deadline to submit an early notice of separation to the district's Human Resources Department is 5 p.m. March 21.

"From both the staffing and the budgetary perspective, it is advantageous for us to have a notice of intent to separate far in advanced of the deadline, which is July the 13th," Superintendent Robin Ryan said.

The Texas Education Code requires staff to notify the school district by July 13, or 45 days in advanced to the start of the fall semester, if they want to resign from their position.

GCISD spokeswoman Megan Overman said eligible employees who submit their notice early will help the school district in budget planning.

"We've already made many of the budget decisions and staffing decisions well before that time, so if we could know ahead of time of somebody who is already thinking about it, who is already considering retiring or resigning at the end of the year, that helps us as we are planning the budget," she said.

The incentive plan applies to 25 middle or high school employees and 15 elementary school employees in the district on a first-come, first-served basis. Educators must finish their current contract year term to be eligible for the incentive.

Those eligible must be current full-time contracted employees working as one of the following:

• Counselor
• Content area specialist
• ESL specialist
• Gifted and talented specialist
• Instructional technologist
• Librarian
• Program interventionist
• Reading specialist
• Teacher in a special education program
• Teacher of record
• Teacher with an assigned homeroom

"Right now, we have a couple of folks who have given their notice to retire and we would not exclude them from this," said Tommie Johnson, GCISD's human resources executive director.

This is the second year in a row for GCISD to incentivize early notice of retirements and resignations. Last year, the district offered a one-time, $1,000 payment to the first 30 teachers who gave notice.