The primary driver of any ISD budget is the compensation plan and Howe is no different. All across the country, people say that teachers don’t get paid enough and Howe ISD has improved their pay scale again this year to be competitive to attract high-quality educators as well as retain high-quality educators. The district upped their starting salary to $40,000 per year.
“We compare pretty well with Grayson County, but when you go south, they are all well above $40,000.,” Superintendent Kevin Wilson told the Howe ISD Board of Trustees on Monday night.
All other ISD staff members received a three percent raise and teachers with over 20 years experience and not on the pay schedule will receive a $500 step increase. The starting salary for an aid was $14,250 and will now be increased to $15,000. The ISD did a comparison with other local districts and found they were beneath the average payment amount for substitutes and raised the rate for certified substitutes from $70 to $80 per day. With insurance for employees going up to $367, the total budget for payroll came to $8,493,089.
The enrollment increased from 1066 students at the end of the 2017 school year to 1199 at the end of 2018. The ISD is adding six positions to keep the student/teacher ratio at 13.31 which is in line with the last five school years with the exception of last year due to the increase in students by 130 while working on the same budgeted amount for teachers.
“Teachers will increase from 86 to 90 and that’s the greatest need we have and that’s where we want to put our money,” said Wilson to the board.
The district saw a 15 percent increase in property tax evaluations and Wilson said he expects another 15 percent increase. However, they base their tax rate on 96 percent of evaluation totals to make for a conservative figure. During Wilson’s term as superintendent, the tax rate has always decreased from the original projection based on the conservative figure he presents in mid-summer.
The estimated revenue for the 2018-19 school year’s general fund is $11,343,551 which is roughly $800,000 increase from last year. Payroll cost is $8,493,0859 which is increased from $7,707,093 a year ago. Payroll cost is generally 75 percent of the total budget and it is scheduled that way once again for this school year.
Factoring in all revenues, the budget reflects $13,669,844 which includes the general fund amount plus $508,300 for food service, $1,546,220 for debt service (bonds), and $271,773 from federal funds. The increase in budget from a year ago is slightly over $1.4 million. Expenditures are the same except for the debt service is short $220,000 due to the district paying the first bond payment from reserves without tax revenue initially recovered.
Upon looking at a possible tax rate, the local rate is scheduled to remain the same at $1.17 and the debt services amount will increase from $0.225 to approximately $0.38 if everything falls into place with the new bond amount. Therefore, the bond will take the overall tax rate from $1.395 to approximately $1.556.
If there were no increases in home valuations, the overall tax burden means that the average Howe home which is listed at $156,110 would see a real increase in their taxes from $1,689 to $1,908 which equates to a $219 increase yearly or $18 monthly. But in real life terms, valuations are steadily increasing and combined with the tax increase would make the average Howe home valued at $180,395 which would result in an annual increase of $504 or $42 monthly.
