Fort Worth Independent School District board approves $43.6M deficit budget
The Fort Worth Independent School District's board approved a budget on Tuesday evening that leaves the district in a financial hole — but one district leaders expect to be able to climb partway out of in the next few months.
The board voted unanimously to approve a $43.6 million deficit budget for the 2025-26 school year.
But district leaders expect that number to shrink to $33 million in the coming months as funding measures that Texas lawmakers recently passed come into effect.
Carmen Arrieta-Candelaria, the district's chief financial officer, said the district would need to dip into its reserves to cover the deficit. Over the next year, Fort Worth ISD's financial team will develop a three- to five-year financial plan to allow the district to put the district in a better financial position and allow it to move toward a balanced budget, she said.
The general operating budget the board approved comes to $869.7 million. The bulk of the budget — $486 million, or about 58% of the general fund — is dedicated to instruction. While the operating budget the board approved is slightly smaller than the district's projected spending for the 2024-25 school year, its instructional budget grew by about $2 million.
The budget doesn't include new money the district is set to receive through House Bill 2, an education finance bill that includes more than $8 billion in spending. Lawmakers passed the bill during the legislative session that wrapped up earlier this month. It includes money for teacher pay raises, campus safety requirements and incentives for high-performing teachers. The final version of the bill also included a $55 increase in the per-student allotment districts get from the state, marking the first adjustment lawmakers have made to the basic allotment since 2019.
But that change represented a major departure from earlier versions of the bill, which included a $395 boost to the basic allotment. In the final version, lawmakers instead included targeted money for priorities such as transportation, insurance and costs associated with re-hiring retired teachers to fill vacancies.
Arrieta-Candelaria said district leaders are still analyzing funding-related bills to figure out how they'll affect the district financially before incorporating them into the district's budget. District leaders will bring the raises outlined in House Bill 2 back to the board as a budget amendment proposal in July or August, Arrieta-Candelaria said.
Fort Worth ISD isn't the only district dealing with budget woes. In April, Northwest ISD cut more than 100 teacher positions in an effort to close a $16 million budget deficit. Last month, Dallas ISD's board approved a budget with a $129 million shortfall, to be covered by the district's rainy day fund.
During Tuesday's meeting, several board members said they were concerned about the district's financial stability. Board member Kevin Lynch noted that, at its current trajectory, the district could only afford to continue operating on deficit budgets for about another two years. Saying the situation caused him 'a little bit of heartburn,' Lynch said the board and school leaders will need to make some difficult financial decisions in the next few years.
Last month, board members approved a plan to close 18 campuses over the next five years in response to more than a decade of declining enrollment and per-student revenue losses. But Karen Molinar, the district's superintendent, told the board on Tuesday that investing in instruction can be part of a strategy for attracting families back to the district. The district's student achievement has been stagnant for more than a decade, and its state test scores have lagged behind the state's other big urban districts.
But there are signs that the district is making progress on that front. Also during Tuesday's meeting, Molinar presented the district's preliminary results from last spring's STAAR exams. Across grades 3 through 5, the district either held steady or gained ground in all subjects except 5th-grade math. While she acknowledged that the district isn't where it should be, Molinar said the progress on the state test is a sign that the district's strategy is working.
The district also needs to do a better job of making sure families feel welcome in the district, Molinar said. Often, when parents transfer their kids out of the district, it's because they felt like no one was listening to them, she said. The district's leaders, both in its central office and at its campuses, need to make sure families understand that the district values them and their kids, she said.
'People want to be somewhere where they feel wanted, and where they feel comfortable,' Molinar said. 'And we have to be the ones who model that and put that in place.'
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