Pasadena ISD CFO warns $29.6 million general-fund gap under current law; draft budget has no pay raises

Dr. Tamika Alford Stevens, Pasadena ISD chief financial officer, told the Board of Trustees on Tuesday that, under current law, the draft 2025–26 general fund budget shows a projected deficit of $29,600,000.

In a budget workshop presentation, Dr. Alford Stevens said the draft reflects known revenue and policy at this time and therefore does not include a salary increase. She also said the district plans to rely in part on $20 million of savings projected from staffing attrition and about $3 million from operational adjustments, while continuing to use reserves as needed to balance the budget before adoption.

The nut of the board presentation: the district faces structural gaps driven by declining enrollment, reductions in certain federal and state revenues and rising operating costs. Dr. Alford Stevens highlighted three revenue drivers — enrollment/average daily attendance, property values (including temporary ‘‘disaster pennies’’), and federal/state program funding — and said recent changes have reduced expected revenue compared with previous years.

Most of Dr. Alford Stevens’s examples were numeric. She showed the district’s 2024–25 budgeted totals as $534,717,728 in revenue and $543,425,063 in…