HISD trustees approve $1.9B budget
Houston ISD trustees approved a $1.9 billion budget late Thursday that includes raises for all teachers, an increased minimum wage and no additional health insurance costs for employees.
In a packed board room populated by dozens of educators and support staff, trustees voted 5-1 to boost salaries of teachers and many other educators by 3.5 percent to 8 percent, depending on experience levels, while also upping the minimum wage from $12 per hour to $14 per hour. Nearly all support staff earning less than $75,000 will receive an additional 3.5 percent, unless they are bumped up to the $14 per hour minimum wage.
“It’s a victory,” said Wretha Thomas, president of the Houston Educational Support Personnel, a union of about 1,000 HISD employees, many of them among the district’s lowestpaid. “Now people will be able to put food on their table, put gas in their car, take their kids to the movies.”
It was not immediately clear how the district plans to pay for about $15 million to $20 million in additional spending that is not funded by revenue increases. The money likely will come from reduced spending or reserve funds, though trustees stipulated district officials could not lay off employees.
Trustees spent six hours haggling over the budget Thursday, largely focusing the minimum wage proposal opposed by Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan has opposed. Supporters argued the increase provides a much-needed boost
to the district’s lower-paid staff, while Lathan said the district would have to lay off hundreds of employees to afford it.
To preempt any layoffs, trustees voted to require that district officials pull from HISD’s reserve funds to pay for staff before eliminating positions.
Trustees Wanda Adams, Jolanda Jones and Rhonda Skillern-Jones were not in attendance for the budget vote. Adams and Skillern-Jones both joined the beginning of the meeting but left before the vote due to prior commitments.
The back-and-forth came as HISD faced a looming June 30 deadline to pass the district’s budget. The budget negotiations have taken a bitter turn in recent days, as Lathan refused calls from exasperated trustees to tweak her compensation proposal.
HISD officials had an additional $135 million in the upcoming fiscal year to spend compared to what was expected prior to the passage of a landmark school finance reform bill this spring. State law requires at least 30 percent of the new funding must go toward increasing employee salaries.
Lathan proposed a balanced budget that offered raises to all employees ranging from 3.5 percent to 8 percent, with no minimum wage increase. Multiple trustees, however, criticized Lathan’s plan for delivering too little money to the district’s support staff. Under the proposal, employees already earning annual salaries exceeding $100,000 would have received raises totaling about $3,500 to $5,000, while minimum-wage staffers would get less than $1,000 more.
Trustee Elizabeth Santos on Thursday proposed raising the minimum wage to $14 per hour and requiring offsetting cuts to various departments that are not campus-based.
Santos said district officials could eliminate spending on some vendor contracts and reduce administrative costs to pay for the minimum wage increase.
“This is 1 percent of a $2.1 billion budget. If the administration can’t do that …” Santos said.
Lathan, who had previously refused Santos’ request to outline how she would cut spending to pay for additional wages, threatened in response that the district would eliminate jobs if forced to raise the minimum wage. Bus drivers, custodians and maintenance employees would have seen would see the most layoffs, district officials said.
“We will start notifying people next week that there will be layoffs and people will lose jobs to balance the budget” if trustees raise the minimum wage, Lathan said.
While districts across Texas have passed spending plans with relative ease, HISD’s budget process devolved into a clash of wills.
With Lathan refusing to budge on her recommendation, Santos on Thursday proposed amending the budget from the meeting dais and directed the administration to make cuts to specific departments — a highly unusual move for a school board member. Trustees typically leave decisions about day-to-day spending to administrators, though superintendents typically work more collaboratively with their board than Lathan has in the past several days.
The last-minute nature of Santos’ proposal left Trustee Sue Deigaard concerned about the unknown consequences of potential spending cuts.
“I’m going to need to be assured that this doesn’t compromise a child who is struggling in reading, that this doesn’t compromise a kid who’s behind in their education and needs to get caught up,” Trustee Sue Deigaard.
The debate among trustees followed comments from about 30 educators, clergy and community members, the vast majority of whom called for raising the minimum wage.