While the Taylor Independent School District gave its teachers the largest pay raise in the district’s history, it forced every other department to experience cuts.
Taylor ISD’s budget, which the school board approved in a unanimous vote June 29, is balanced in respect to the general operating funds.
Devin Padavil, Taylor ISD superintendent, said it is remarkable that the district did not have to adopt a deficit budget.
“Something that is important to the school board is that we have a balanced budget just to remain fiscally conservative,” Padavil said. “We had to scrape from every other budget source to make those raises happen.”
On June 5, trustees approved a $2,000 annual raise for teachers with nine or fewer years of experience teaching and a $4,000 annual raise for teachers with ten or more years of experience.
Additionally, the district gave a one percent raise to all administrative employees and an extra dollar per hour to its hourly employees.
Campus budgets were reduced by 20% to accommodate for the staff raises. The office of the superintendent, which includes miscellaneous fees such as communications cost and consultation fees, was cut by 30%.
Despite the starting teaching salary in the district now rising to $52,000, Padavil said that salary is not enough to keep up with the cost of living and the teacher shortage in Central Texas. He adds that, in order to keep pace with the competitive market of pay, the district may need to cut even more or reduce personnel.
“The most important thing we can do to improve the learning of a child is to put a high quality teacher in every classroom,” Padavil said. “That’s why these sacrifices are worth it. If we are recruiting the right people with the money, we can have a huge impact on how kids experience school.”
While the district is projected to spend more than it will receive in the food-service and debt-service funds categories, the district primarily is focused on the operations budget. Jina Self, the district’s chief financial operator, said the two deficit funds were deliberate.
She said the foodservice fund was done because the district had excess savings in that category. Meanwhile, the debt-service fund was left in a deficit in an effort to save for future debt payments.
This is the third consecutive year that the operations budget has been balanced.
“There were some districts, like Dallas ISD, adopting a deficit budget,” Self said. “It’s not that it won’t happen, it happens more often than not. We just are very confident with the budget we have.”
There was hope that teacher raises would come from the Texas legislative session, which would have likely relieved the need to make cuts across all departments. However, no such bill was passed.
Padavil said that about two and a half years ago, Taylor had one of the lowest teacher pay in Central Texas. Now, he said it is among the highest.
