A fair amount of misinformation in this thread.
I am a Frisco ISD employee, and have been for nearly a decade. I have a principal's certification as does my wife. (There is no such thing as being licensed in Collin County, it's a state level thing, not local)
School finance is complicated and that is a gift from our esteemed legislature, not local officials.
There are 2 property tax types that make up the tax rate.
Maintenance & Operation is for
basically everything except construction.
- Over 80% of this is salaries and the rest is everything from copy paper to utility bills.
- As mentioned earlier, when school finance was last redone it capped it at $1 per $100 valuation without voter approval. (This is capped at $1.17)
The other tax is Interest & Sinking.
All of this is voter approval of bonds
Issues at hand-
- We have a ton of growth! (do not compare FISD with Irving)
- Frisco does not want to be Plano, we have adopted the small schools model in that we don't want to be Allen or the Planos. We want our schools in 5A (less than 2200 students so they have more opportunities) This has been a selling point for the district for over a decade.
- We could build big high schools and save some money but our board and parents don't think that is what is best for kids.
- Let's start with the administration building. Dr. Reedy, the last superintendent wanted all the admin in one place to work more cohesively, instead of 3 builds that were pretty dang old. You could place fair criticism that our new building is a bit excessive and not the best use of some money. However, they were able to pay for it without raising any of the tax rates.
- Inside the Admin building there has been a lot of growth in personnel. Many of these positions are filled with quality professionals who do a good job of managing a district with over 50,000 students and several thousand teachers. There are some unneeded positions up there, however it is not $30 Million worth of unneeded people. I'm not sure of their exact salaries, but you could probably trim at most $2 Million but there would be some decline in efficiency and student services.
- There is a lot of money out at the campus level that could be saved as well, but with that, there comes a cost as well.
- The basis the district works on is that for over 20 years now, the residents of FISD have said through bond voting and board meetings that they want the best for their kids and are willing to pay for it. The district admin was probably anticipating the same message with the TRE, but it wasn't. Now there are going to be some changes to work within the confines of the new budget.
- I live outside Frisco and pay the max $1.17 M&O rate, it's not the end of the world. I also understand that the main rise in taxes has to do with the CAD valuation, not the school M&O raise. Generally speaking, a rising property valuation is a good thing. If your value is stagnant or dropping then you probably live in an area where there is no demand and thus the schools might be lacking the quality people are looking for.
- Honestly, I can see both arguments. Some people want the best for their kids and are willing to pay for it, while others want to save money whenever they can. What I don't like is the fact that the Frisco ISD pushed the election onto a single ballot election when there was already a primary in May and a general election in November. This was costly and shows a lack of faith in the general electorate. For this reason alone, I would have probably voted against the TRE. Thus making my job more difficult.
Fire away!!