CROSBY – Monday’s Trustee meeting included a packed room, four citizen’s comments, extensive discussion of dire finances and a Superintendent’s report of what the state of the finances are, what needs to be done and how the district will get to the point of solvency to avoid being taken over by the State.
Dr. Scott Davis, Superintendent of Crosby ISD, and recently-hired Chief Financial Officer, Lesa Jones, presented an overview of the District’s current financial state.
Davis has been in regular communication with the Texas Education Agency regarding Crosby ISD’s financial state and will continue to provide regular updates to the Commissioner of Education, Mike Morath.
He indicated that no one wants to see Crosby ISD taken over by the State.
“Be careful what you wish for.”
In 2015 and 2016 the Board of Trustees discussed how to get the “highest academic standards possible.” At the last meeting everyone learned from the Accountability Report that Crosby ISD was rated a ‘B’ according to the Domain Scores by the State – neighboring school districts were rated “Met Standard” or “Substandard.” One easy way to get student’s scores up is to hire more teachers. Generally it is held that the lower the teacher to student ratio, the faster students learn. Although, there are certainly studies that indicate otherwise or that it makes no difference.
Monday attendees and trustees learned why we have seen the last hiring of over 200 new teachers in a district with nearly 6000 students. While personnel normally accounts for about 80% of a district’s budget, it has been found that about 89% of Crosby ISD budget goes to personnel.
Superintendent Davis painted a bleak picture of unknown layoffs near Christmas and slashing spending “to the bone and then cutting a little bone.” The budget passed last June is about to undergo revisions and special meetings are ordered to consider the new budget plans and what to do about the spending, mostly on personnel and what to cut elsewhere in the system.
District Staff will partake in a series of meetings in the next week to determine which items are absolutely essential in order to operate each campus and/or department. The goal will be to reduce staff budgets dramatically in order to protect as many positions as possible. Another wish was that growth would offset spending by adding revenue, that happened once but not since.
Thus far 18 full time employee teachers and 13 auxiliary full time employees have been replaced by attrition.
