EDUCATION
2022 EDUCATION EDITION
LISD to pay $36.2M in recapture— highest amount in district history
PAYMENTS OVER THE YEARS
Under Chapter 41 of the Texas Education Code, also known as the “Robin Hood” or recapture system, Texas schools classied as property-wealthy must share property tax revenue with property-poor districts by making payments to the state in order to balance the amount of funding distributed to public school districts. Leander ISD is required to make a recapture payment this year due to rising home values.
BY ZACHARIA WASHINGTON
the actual cost until this fall. Although the recapture payment does not directly aect the district’s revenue, the money could have been spent elsewhere. “If there was no recapture, then I guess you could say we’d have $36 million more that we could’ve used toward teacher salaries, addi- tional sta, class size reduction, etc.,” Cogburn said. In the event that the proposed voter-approval tax rate election, or VATRE, fails in November, LISD would be facing a $35 million budget decit. As home property values and student enrollment numbers increase and uctuate, LISD will likely have to consider higher recapture payments every year. “We’re kind of just playing the cards that the state gives us through the funding formula; there’s not a ton of options available to us outside of that,” Trustee Aaron Johnson said. LISD is not the only district paying into recapture. Many in the Austin area are facing record-high payments, including Austin ISD, which pays the highest amount of recapture in the state. Some experts question if the system is working as intended. “When recapture was rst created, [its job] was really to seek equity across the state, so that every student in Texas had access to an exceptional education,” Gonzales-Dholakia said. “The problem is right now a lot of those recapture funds that are going back to the state are then not being reinvested in education.”
Leander ISD is expecting to pay $36.2 million back to the state in recap- ture for the 2022-2023 school year—the district’s rst recapture payment in eight years. LISD’s large recapture payment is due to increased home property values, Chief Financial Ocer Elaine Cogburn said. According to district budget documents, taxable property values grew by about 30%—more than the district evaluated in the spring. Recapture is a function of the amount a public school district receives in tax collections and how much that amount exceeds what the district is entitled to keep, based on the number and type of students in its district, Cogburn said. “The property values signicantly changed,” Trustee Gloria Gonza- les-Dholakia said. “With that giant increase in those property values, we knew and we anticipated that there was going to be a signicant amount of money that was going to have to be sent back via recapture.” This is the rst time since the 2014- 15 school year the district has had to pay into recapture. The cost then was $227,490. Cogburn said there is nothing the district could have done to prepare for this other than projecting numbers and modeling recapture scenarios. The estimated $36.2 million recapture payment is based on student enrollment predictions, attendance rates and actual tax collections, Cog- burn said. The district will not know
$36.2 million This is LISD’s rst recapture payment since 2014-15.
$40 million
$35 million
$250,000
$200,000
$150,000
$100,000
$50,000
0
SOURCE: LEANDER ISDCOMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
BUDGET BREAKDOWN The Leander ISD board of trustees approved a budget June 23 with expected general operating expenditures totaling $451.87 million. At $36.21 million, recapture makes up the second-largest single budget expense behind payroll, which totaled $360.54 million.
Recapture: $36.21 million Payroll: $360.54 million Supplies and materials: $18.74 million Contracted services: $14.25 million
Utilities: $8.69 million Transfers out: $7.51 million Other operating: $5.5 million Capital expenses: $313,569
Debt service: $132,000
TOTAL: $451.87 MILLION
SOURCE: LEANDER ISDCOMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER NOTE: NUMBERS MAYBE NOT EQUAL THE TOTAL DUE TO ROUNDING.
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