In Clearity's "Who Made That Decision?" episodes, subject matter experts explain decisions that impact the district and its employees. From budgets, curriculum changes, program abandonment or implementation, and even technology changes, we'll take a deeper dive into our Promise and how it affects our People.
Welcome to our first episode of Who Made That Decision? This podcast is dedicated to answering the frequently asked questions from our CCISD Team. If you have a topic, you would like us to cover, please send your idea to information@ccisd.net.
With our focus on PEOPLE, we thought the best topic to launch with is our budget because 90% of our operating budget is invested in our employees. We know you have lots of questions about how it all works and most importantly, how our budget impacts you directly.
During this episode, we'll go over where the money comes from, what factors influence our budget, how the budget is allocated, understanding the tax rates, and much more.
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I'm Elaina Polsen, Chief Communications Officer for Clear Creek ISD
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Welcome to our first episode of Who Made That Decision.
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This podcast is dedicated to answering the frequently asked questions from you,
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our CCISD employees.
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If you have a topic you would like us to cover,
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please feel free to email us at information@ccisd.net
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With our focus on people.
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We thought the best topic to launch with
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is our budget because 90% of our budget is invested in people.
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We are joined here today with Alice Benzaia,
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who is an incredible person in Clear Creek ISD She is our chief financial officer.
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While she's relatively new to that position.
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You're certainly not new to CCISD
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Can you give us a little bit of information about your background
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and your involvement, how long you've been in Clear Creek ISD Sure.
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So I have worked in the school district business for about 26 years.
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The last 14 of those years I've been in Clear Creek ISD.
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I initially started as a director of business services focusing on employee
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benefits, staffing, risk management, those types of things.
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I served for a short time as a controller
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and then in June I moved over as chief financial officer.
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I'm also a CCISD parent.
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I have two Clear Falls High School graduates and a current 10th grader there.
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Wonderful.
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So as you can tell, she is an expert on all things money.
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So we're going to go ahead and get started.
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We have heard
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just over time with our employees because we want them to be able
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to go out there and talk about how this all works and the state.
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Unintentionally or intentionally, however it is over
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the years, has made this process so complicated.
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So we're going to break it down into simple elementary terms.
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And you've done that in many settings.
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I know.
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Well, our employees will be well informed.
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So, Alice, we're going to start with where does the money come from?
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We're going to approach
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this budget breakdown in simple terms that we used in our own home finances.
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First, let's talk about where does the money come from
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to run our school district?
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Okay.
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So there's primarily three sources of funds that come into CCISD
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The first source is our local property taxes.
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These are the the taxes that our homeowners pay on their homes
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and businesses pay.
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That is about 67% of our revenue.
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Next is our state revenues.
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So the state provides funds to school districts across the state
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and that funding for CCISD is about 20% of our income.
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That funding in particular is based on student attendance.
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So the state
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provides funding for each student
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that attend school on a daily basis.
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And then the rest of our funding is made up of some federal funds
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and just various miscellaneous other other things.
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What factors influence our budget?
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So there's various factors, but one of the biggest factors
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is our student attendance.
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So as I mentioned earlier, the state funds us primarily
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based on our student attendance.
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So if we are our students are not attending school
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and we have lower attendance rates.
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Our funding will drop in conjunction with that.
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Our student enrollment plays a role because if you have less students
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enrolled in the district, you have less students attending, obviously.
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So that is one of the biggest factors when we're looking at our state revenue.
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The other factor is that
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looking
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at our property taxes and our property values across the district.
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So as many of our staff and homeowners
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across the district have seen the values in their homes increase,
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that value is works in conjunction with the tax rate
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that CCISD has set to provide revenue to the district.
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On the expenditure side, we have several factors
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that we've found very challenging over the past year.
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One of the largest challenges is
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the unprecedented inflation that we've seen this year.
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We've seen rising fuel prices and we have a large bus fleet
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that we have to fuel every day to get our kids to school.
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So that has been about $1,000,000 hit to our budget this year.
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Just having enough funds for that increase in fuel.
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We also have many fixed costs that
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that affect our budget every year.
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Things like property insurance.
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We live on the coast.
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We pay a high premium for our windstorm insurance
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to protect our buildings and our
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all of our assets.
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So those costs have been rising over the years just with the
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with the increase in these catastrophic weather events that we've had.
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So that is something that is unique to Clear Creek
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ISD and other coastal districts, several districts.
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Most districts in Texas don't see that because they're not on the coast.
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But that is that is something that is hard on our budget each year.
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Okay.
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So we have a little show and tell us
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if you're listening through audio, you won't be able to see it,
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but you can imagine. I have two buckets here.
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One bucket is our maintenance
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and operations tax rate, and the other bucket is our interest and sinking.
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And so these are two distinct tax that then all combined
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make up our cumulative tax rate in Clear Creek ISD.
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So I want to talk a little bit about what we used to pay out of the maintenance
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and operations bucket and we've got some show and tell here.
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So this is a light bulb to illustrate electricity.
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Which bucket is this going?
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That would go in the M&O bucket.
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And then this one is teacher's
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staff things that make children come to school every day.
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But this one.
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That one would go into the M&O bucket as well.
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The salaries for all of our staff.
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What percentage of our budget is tied to people?
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About 90% of our budget is tied to salaries and benefits for our staff.
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Now we're going to move into how we budget our money.
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No different than people do in their own homes.
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So here is a dollar.
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Can you
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explain how much of that dollar goes to which function in our school district?
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Sure.
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So I'm happy to say that $0.64 out of that dollar goes directly
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into instruction and instructional resources.
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The next largest piece of that dollar
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would go towards maintenance and operations.
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So that's at 7%.
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So that covers things like our utilities, our custody of staff, maintenance staff.
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Another large piece of that six, about $0.06 of it
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is for our school administration, for all of our campuses.
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$0.04 goes to guidance and counseling and social work and social work services.
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And then about $0.04 goes to transportation, the to run
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our fleet of busses and the rest is is spread
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across various other functions.
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And with our attendance and enrollment down, as you explained
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earlier, and the way school funding works,
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our general revenue has actually decreased over time.
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It has not gone up. Is that an accurate statement?
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That's correct.
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And then there's also another financial issue that's right
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around the corner for us, and that's the end of Formula Transition Grant.
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Can you explain a little bit about what FTG is?
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Sure.
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So the formula transition grant is
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basically something
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that was started back in 2019.
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There is about 280 school districts across the state that receive formula
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transition grant funding and the reason
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that we receive that funding is because
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back with House Bill three, a few years ago,
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the changes that the state made to those funding formulas did not produce
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additional revenue for Clear Creek ISD Previously we actually lost money.
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So they built in a five year plan
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with this formula transition grant to give us additional funds
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so that we saw at least a 3% gain in what we would have have seen.
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So that funding actually this year we're estimating at about $12 million.
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That's built into our budget to cover our all of our expenses in the general fund.
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That funding will end in the fall of 2024.
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So at this point, we do not have
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we don't have any assurance from the state
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that they will continue that funding or make changes to the funding formula to
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allow us to keep that revenue.
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So we're very cautious in our financial planning for the next couple of years
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until we have some more information
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on what's going to happen with that funding.
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So we have less general revenue coming in.
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We have the sunset of the formula transition grant on the horizon.
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So how are we balancing our budget? Okay.
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So one of the things that has been wonderful
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for Clear Creek, ISD as we have over the years, managed our finances well.
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We have a very healthy fund balance and the general fund
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that meets what our board's policy is to maintain.
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We've also been able to over the years to take funds,
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excess funds that we had in the general fund at the end of each year
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and move them to a capital and contingency fund.
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Otherwise known as a savings account or a rainy day fund.
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And the wonderful thing about that is that those the funds in there
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have been able to allow us to make some facility improvements
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in situations where we did
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not have bond or general funds available to cover.
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It's also helped us during the pandemic
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when we needed additional
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expenditures, additional funds
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to cover additional expenditures that came along with that.
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And also in situations
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where we've had a weather event and needed to make emergency repairs.
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So those funds have been sitting in that account
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and we have used funds out of that account.
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But this year we're actually rather than moving funds
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over to capital on contingency, we're actually bringing some funds
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back to help balance our budget this year
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that this was approved at the August board meeting.
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So we are taking it close to 20% of those funds to help
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help us balance the budget this year so that we can meet our needs, meet our
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provide a
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salary increase for our staff and and meet all of these
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additional expenditure requirements that we have this year.
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And so there's a financial buzzword that we hear about also often just.
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Esser And
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keeps saying how Esser funds are used,
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generally what the purpose was of that were those are the federal funds
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that were allotted to school districts across the country for COVID.
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How much of Esser funds did we receive in Clear Creek ISD?
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We received about $36 million in Esser funds.
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The funds can be used over three years.
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The primary purpose of those was to
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meet our students instructional needs during that time.
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We have been able to utilize
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the funds to provide intervention
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dollars to our campuses for those purposes.
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We also have utilized the funds
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during the pandemic for some of our clinic needs that just came
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along with dealing with the students and staff coming back to work.
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And then finally, we also use the funds really to help with the general fund,
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some of our recurring expenses that we've had these funds
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helped us cover
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some of the losses that we've seen in revenue due to that declining enrollment
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and declining attendance that we spoke about earlier.
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So we've planned it out well to utilize those funds.
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We utilize them last year.
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We'll have them available this year and again next year.
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And it's also giving us time by planning those out
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this way.
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It's giving us time until we find out what the state's going to do
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with our funding formulas in this next legislative cycle.
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And while we've chosen to plan these funds out over three years,
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it really is a one time check that was provided to us
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and how local school districts use those funds is entirely up to them.
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So when our employees hear HISD
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just gave 11% raise and we're having these big raises across our region,
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those funds are primarily
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coming from these federal one time federal dollars that in.
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Some situations with some school districts, yes, they are utilizing them
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for maybe one time payment
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to their staff.
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They may be fund
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funding, some long term salary increases that they're providing to staff.
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The danger in that is that the funds will stop and they won't have those.
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But if they've utilized it for those purposes, they'll have to find
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another revenue source to cover those recurring expenses.
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So it is
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I'm proud to say that we with our
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salary increase this year, we have remained very competitive.
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One thing that we look at every year
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is where do we stand with our teacher salaries?
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We want to remain competitive so we can
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not only recruit the best talent, but we can retain our great teachers.
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And so we look closely at various school districts and region 4
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the school districts that we compete with and about 17 of them.
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And we have been able to,
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especially at teachers with experienced
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levels of ten and above, which makes up about half of our teaching staff.
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We are ranking right at the top of our peers
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that we survey ourselves against.
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And we've also, with our new starting salary this year of $60,000
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for our teachers, beginning teachers,
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we are right at the
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end the ballpark where for other districts are are paying.
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So we're I'm very proud that we've been able to maintain that
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great salary structure for those teachers.
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Well, you and your team found an amazing job because Clear Creek ISD
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is still the place to be for teachers and staff.
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And I just want to re-emphasize what you said, that 50% of our teachers
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are within 20 years of experience or that's about 50%, 10 to 20.
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Ten or above.
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So that's at the highest level in our peer district review.
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Yes, it is.
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And then our starting teacher salary is at the benchmark.
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It's right there where all the other districts are.
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I know, but moving to 60,000 was a big step for many school districts this year,
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so that was a good to see.
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I would like to wrap up by just
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honing in on those three big point that we talked about
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is the importance of student attendance and increasing our student enrollment
00:15:13:16 - 00:15:15:14
because we've seen a decline in our student enrollment,
00:15:15:14 - 00:15:18:27
which may be tied to many other factors COVID, cost of living,
00:15:19:11 - 00:15:21:28
people having many options, places to live.
00:15:22:14 - 00:15:25:27
But we do ask that our employees spread the word about the importance
00:15:25:27 - 00:15:28:05
of kids coming to school every single day.
00:15:28:05 - 00:15:28:26
Certainly it's
00:15:28:26 - 00:15:32:13
important for their learning, but it also has financial impact as well.
00:15:32:26 - 00:15:35:17
And then hopefully this is informative for our employees
00:15:35:17 - 00:15:38:10
that they feel now well versed in school finance.
00:15:38:17 - 00:15:41:11
If not, they can always repeat listening to the podcast
00:15:41:21 - 00:15:45:07
or certainly come and visit with you because I know we'll be going out
00:15:45:07 - 00:15:47:04
doing a lot of these presentations.
00:15:47:04 - 00:15:50:23
And then we do ask that our employees become legislatively
00:15:51:02 - 00:15:54:17
informed and engaged because the future of our school
00:15:54:17 - 00:15:58:06
financial picture will be very contingent on what happens
00:15:58:06 - 00:16:01:00
in this next legislative session, which begins in January.
00:16:01:14 - 00:16:03:26
So that wraps up our first
00:16:04:23 - 00:16:07:14
who made that decision with Alice Banzai.
00:16:07:14 - 00:16:11:09
And so again, if employees have any recommendations of topics
00:16:11:09 - 00:16:15:01
that they'd like to see us cover in these frequent podcast,
00:16:15:02 - 00:16:18:05
just let us know if there was actually an area of school finance
00:16:18:05 - 00:16:19:29
that you'd like us to go deeper on.
00:16:19:29 - 00:16:22:01
Please let us know and we will do it.
00:16:22:01 - 00:16:24:15
In the meantime, thank you so much for joining us today, Alice.
00:16:24:18 - 00:16:27:10
Thank you very much.