The school district's governing board at a meeting (date not specified) voted to adopt a balanced 2025-26 general fund budget and reviewed tax-rate calculations, then approved a 2024-25 budget amendment to adjust fund-level allocations.

The budget vote covered three totals: a general fund of $52,237,000, food service of $2,793,000 and debt service of $13,686,000, for a combined total of $68,716,000. "This will be a balanced budget," Speaker 5, Staff member, said when asked if revenues matched expenditures.

Why it matters: The board's action sets the district's principal operating budget for 2025-26 and addresses constraints on property-tax rates that affect how much local revenue the district can collect. During the meeting staff explained that tax-rate decisions are limited by state-driven formulas and the central appraisal district's calculations.

Most important facts: Speaker 5, Staff member, explained that the district is adopting the general-fund budget net of grant funds in certain functions and that the overall general-fund total is $52,237,000. The board discussed the compressed rate (referred to in the meeting as the MCR) and an INS rate; Speaker 5 said the district was approved for the compressed rate and "we get our 5 pennies," and identified the MCR as 0.6669 and the INS rate as 0.483 (as presented to the board).

Board action and process: Speaker 2, Board member, stated, "I'll make that motion that we adopt the 2526 budget, in for the general fund amount of 52,237,000..." (motion text as spoken). The transcript records the motion and a subsequent call for votes; the recording indicates the motion was approved but does not include a roll-call tally in the transcript. The transcript does not provide full names or formal titles for the members who moved and seconded beyond the speaker labels used here.

2024-25 amendment: The board reviewed and approved an amendment for the 2024-25 fiscal year to ensure adequate allocations within function-level accounts (so the auditors will not report overexpenditures by function). Speaker 5 described the amendment as covering the general fund, food service and debt service and said the amendment lists a general-fund total revenue of $52,971,500 and total expenditures of $48,884,123. For food service the amendment shows revenue of $2,719,000 and expenditures of $2,718,743. The transcript contains a garbled figure when staff described the debt-service revenue in the amendment; the debt-service expenditure was reported as about $13,300,000 in the discussion. Because the transcript text of the debt-service revenue number is unclear, that revenue figure is not specified in this article.

Budget controls and audit issues raised: Staff described the reason for the amendment as a technical control: auditors review function-level spending (for example, functions 11, 31, 32, 61) and an overexpenditure in a function can lead to audit notes or affect ratings even if the district is under-expended overall. Speaker 5 said Texas Education Agency (TEA) reviewers use a three-year average and flag variances greater than 3 percent. Staff also noted the need to accrue the first payroll in September to reflect August expenditures when preparing the amendment.

Constraints on tax-setting: Staff emphasized that the district's ability to alter the major tax rates is constrained. They attributed the limitations to the central appraisal district's calculations and to recent state legislation that increased the homestead exemption (affecting senior and disabled taxpayers); Speaker 5 said the legislation increased the exemption and cited an example of a $200,000 threshold for the double exemption for taxpayers over 65. The board discussion stated that the district is "limited on our, the compressed rate" and that going above or below the set amount carries penalties under the state system as represented by staff during the meeting.

What was not decided or remains unclear: The transcript does not include a detailed vote roll call or individual vote tallies for the budget or amendment, and does not provide the full legal citation for the homestead-exemption change staff referenced. The exact debt-service revenue figure in the 2024-25 amendment was not clearly stated in the transcript and is therefore not reported here.

Next steps: Board members indicated the next regular meeting schedule in passing, mentioning March 1 as a future date; no additional formal directions or staff assignments were recorded in the transcript excerpt.

Speakers quoted and paraphrased in this article are identified by the speaker labels used in the meeting transcript (the transcript did not provide full names or official titles).