More school closures and staff cuts could be coming to several North Texas school districts after voters in several districts rejected a tax rate increase to pay for salaries and other expenses. Education reporter Wayne Carter tells us who is impacted, and what may come next.
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Six school districts asked voters to let them raise tax rates in order to help balance their budgets.
Voters shot down all but two: Celina & Grapevine-Colleyville ISD.
In GCISD, the vote was to raise one tax rate but lower another even more so voters really approved taxes going down there.
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Celina Superintendent Tom Maglisceau managed to pull off the only true tax hike for schools and he credits his long nights at the voting locations.
"I would go out to the polls and, you know, while early voting was going on, and just communicate with the voters as they came through, just making sure that they were informed. And there were so many people, despite all of our efforts, who weren't aware that was on the ballot and didn't know what it was," said Maglisceau.
He's hurting for his fellow districts that didn't pass the tax hike, he knows many are already running on fumes in their budgets, and no new tax money means trouble.
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"The story we got to tell in our community here was that, just like you all in your homes, all your home costs are going up, and so are ours. And essentially, we're still getting paid on a 2019 wage, and but yet we want to also make sure we're compensating our teachers on a wage that's not a 2019 wage," he added.
Superintendent Brad Hunt knows and told the story too but voters in Coppell weren't hearing it.
Many sore over the district already closing one elementary school. He says with this not passing, Coppell ISD will likely have to make more cuts.
"There's going to be additional cuts that could include another school that is closed or program consolidations, most likely will include some staffing adjustments and reduction in staff possibly would impact salaries. I know that we were planning on using the bulk of this money for our employees," said Hunt.
Hunt says they can and likely will try to pass another tax hike next year, but he's not sure if the budget can wait that long.
There's hope Governor Abbott will approve more funding for schools, now that he may have enough votes to approve vouchers, something he said was required before he dishes out any more money. Even today hours after the election he called a press conference to talk about vouchers.
School leaders say it may already be too late for that.
"The reality is, we're still faced with this situation in the immediate future even if something were to happen during the session that money usually doesn't come in until significantly after our school year starts next year, so we're going to have to deal with this now," said Hunt.
In the meantime, districts that didn't get the tax hike will now have to come up with a plan to somehow pay their bills, even some of those who got the hike still have holes in their budget as public schools struggle with less money and resources to educate students.
