The FBISD Board of Trustees approved a Voter Approval Tax Rate Election or VATRE. Voting starts Oct. 23 at 7 a.m. and ends Nov. 3 at 7 p.m.
The main goals of the VATRE are to increase pay to recruit, and maintain teachers/staff, and “provide competitive wages for the district’s teachers”, according to the FBISD website. FBISD currently is $3,000 below peer districts in teacher pay and has one of the lowest starting salaries for teachers in the region. To solve this, 70% of the funds generated from the VATRE will go towards increasing teachers’ pay. To go along with the raises, FBISD is also lowering its tax rate.
FBISD’s tax rate, currently at $1.1346, is already one of the lower tax rates in the districts compared to peer districts like Lamar CISD, Cy-Fair ISD, and Katy ISD, according to the FBISD website. If the VATRE is approved, the new tax rate will be 98.82 cents. This would be one of the lowest for the district in the region.
Though all these raises and the tax rate decrease will cause a property tax increase, homeowners 65 and older or the disabled who have received the Over 65 Homestead Exemption will not experience increases in property taxes that exceed the frozen dollar amount.
On Aug. 22, the FBISD Board approved an election for an increase of $0.04 tax rate in the district. The board decided this would fall under the VATRE. The increased tax rate would bring $35.2 million per year and 70% would go towards compensation for teachers, nurses, librarians, and counselors. Some of these compensations are; increased starting teacher pay by $2,500 to a $62,000 salary, increased police officer pay by $5,742, increased pay for district professionals by 3%, increased the pay of nonprofessional staff such as classroom aides and bus drivers by $1.50 per hour, armed uniformed security assigned to all district elementary schools, and differentiated teacher step raises every five years of service.
Along with these compensations, at the $0.04 mark, the district would owe the state $1 million in recapture funds but would gain $13 million of the previously mentioned state funding.
According to the FBISD website, if the VATRE doesn’t pass, a significant loss of teachers, police officers, classroom aids, bus drivers and district staff will occur. Currently, 200 teacher and campus positions are unfilled due to a teacher shortage and the chance of the VATRE being unapproved could make this number increase drastically. Failure to pass may also affect class sizes and cause school consolidations and higher interest rates. Classroom ratios of student to teacher will be heavily affected due to more students and fewer teachers. Classroom sizes will also exceedingly increase if the VATRE is not approved.
