Millsap ISD voters reject tax hike

<b>By Libby Cluett</b><br><a href="mailto:lcluett@mineralwellsindex.com">lcluett@mineralwellsindex.com</a>

MILLSAP – Millsap ISD voters said “no” to the district’s request for 13 more cents for maintenance and operations taxes in Tuesday’s tax ratification election, known around the state as a TRE.

The unofficial count Tuesday night was 311 against and 244 for the levy.

MISD Superintendent Jerry Lee Hunkapiller called the results “very disappointing.”

“It hurts my heart because this is about kids,” he said. “We’re doing everything for our kids’ future and to make sure they have the best education they deserve.”

Millsap becomes the second of two area districts trying to pass a TRE this fall. In October, Santo ISD voters rejected the increase in the M&O; tax rate.

“It just shows it’s very difficult to understand public school finance,” Hunkapiller said after calling in the results.

“Our community is very supportive of our kids,” he added. “You’ll always have people, no matter what you do, who are against public schools, but the majority of our community do support our kids and the school district.”

What next for MISD?
“We’ll have to regroup, and when we set our tax rate for next

school year, we’ll definitely need to have it at $1.17,” Hunkapiller said.

“Between now and September we’ll continue what we started and that’s helping [voters] understand that we truly need an increase in our tax rate in order to continue our programs and keep our staff,” he added.

Combining the $1.04 M&O; rate with the bond debt tax rate of 49.5 cents, MISD taxpayers will pay $1.535 instead of the 2009 budgeted amount of $1.665 per $100 taxable value – as they did last year.

The reason for a Texas school district to have a TRE goes back to House Bill 1, adopted in 2006. According to the Texas Association of School Boards, H.B. 1 created a target revenue system for funding school districts’ M&O; expenses, largely fixed on revenues from 2006, without accounting for inflationary increases.

The bill also adjusted school districts’ tax rates, locking schools into a $1.04 M&O; tax rate per $100 of taxable property value. The only option to raise more operational revenue is to pass a local TRE for up to an addition 13 cents per $100 of taxable value.

MISD and Santo were among close to 35 Texas school districts conducting TREs this fall. Many, like Millsap, receive low target revenues. MISD’s target revenue of $4,715 per weighted average daily attendance, or weighted student, falls well below the state median. Hunkapiller and many other superintendents have called this an inequitable system.

TexasISD.com has been following the fallout from HB 1 and the resulting past few years of TREs.

Prior to this school year, TexasISD.com estimated that about 250 of Texas’ 1,025 public school districts conducted at least one TRE – 180 TREs passed and 72 failed. Last year, neighboring Lipan ISD voters approved a TRE for the extra 13 cents.

Mike Vineyard, LISD’s interim superintendent, told the Index earlier this fall that school districts all over Texas are struggling from the $1.04 rate set by the Legislature.

If things don’t change with the school finance system Vineyard said many more, if not most, Texas districts will have to have elections to ratify their $1.04 tax rates in the future.

As a veteran superintendent with over three decades of experience in public school administration Vineyard called the current school finance situation, “The worst I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s been a great disservice to school districts. I believe the Legislature was misguided. They meant to protect the taxpayers but over protected them. Legislature didn’t give the school boards the latitude they needed to operate,” Vineyard said. “School districts are locked in at $1.04. With inflation, most school districts are having to go into reserves. You just can’t keep doing that.”

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