TOP 10 IN TEXAS The 10 school districts that paid the most into recapture during fiscal year 2020-21 made up 60% of the total funds collected by the state. While Plano ISD’s $191 million recapture bill was 31% of its maintenance and operations tax collections, Dallas ISD paid just 6% of its collections, and Wink-Loving ISD paid 83%.
% OF TOTAL STATE RECAPTURE % OF MAINTENANCE & OPERATIONS TAX COLLECTIONS SENT TO STATE
Plano ISD 6% 31% $191.9M Houston ISD 7% 11% $197.8M Midland ISD 5% 45% $154.4M Austin ISD 24% 51% $710.5M
went into the [state’s] general fund and extrapolate down to PISD—if the state gave us that back, we wouldn’t have a defi- cit,” Stolle said. Rome said the Texas School Coalitionputtogethertheweb- site www.recapturetexas.org as a resource for taxpayers to learn more about where their money is going. “Our hope is that they will take the information that they’ve learned there and from other resources and talk with state leaders,” she said. “Write those letters, andmake those phone calls [to say], ‘This is something that I care about.’” In PISD, Stolle estimated the district likely has enough money in its accounts to cover one more budget cycle before recapture forces cuts to cur- rent school programs. “It’s like paying for your liv- ing expenses out of your sav- ings account—you can only do that so long before you have to cut out something from your budget,” Stolle said. “We’ve so far been able to continue offering the programming that we want to offer, but that’s the cliff we see coming up very rapidly.”
to the state’s general fund, it becomes nearly impossible to trace how it is used, she said. “The state budget is some- what of a black hole,” Rome said. What can be done While PISD could reduce its recapture bill slightly for fiscal year 2022-23 by reduc- ing its property tax rate, Hill explained that would also mean losing out on additional funding from the state. “We give up about $3 mil- lion [from the state] for every $0.01 we reduce [the property tax rate],” Hill said. “[As] our deficits are growing, we don’t think we can do that.” Meaningful change to the recapture system has long been a top legislative priority for PISD, Stolle said, and it will continue to be until some- thing is done. Among the changes PISD is advocating for are limits to recapture relative to a dis- trict’s total revenue. PISD officials also want to see dis- tricts refunded payments that are not used on education. District officials also said the state should create collection formulas that reflect inflation and differences in cost of liv- ing between rural and urban areas. “If you look at the percent- age of recaptured dollars that
60% of the recapture is made up of 10 school districts
Highland Park ISD 4% 68% $104.7M
as “property wealthy,” not all of its residents are wealthy. District officials said 35% of PISD’s students are classified as economically disadvan- taged, and 19% are English language learners. Humphrey said recapture has become another revenue source for the state. More than 30% of PISD’s property taxes over the last two years were recaptured by the state as excess revenue. “The individual taxpayer has no clue they’re being fleeced like this,” Humphrey said. “There’s no transparency in where that money goes.” The Texas School Coalition believes the recapture system benefits the state budget more than it does school districts, Rome said. Over the last two years, the state collected $1.4 billion more from recapture than it needed to cover educa- tion expenses, she said. “It was a $1.4 billion savings for the state, which allowed them to spend state funds elsewhere in the state bud- get,” Rome said. Once funds are transferred
Eanes ISD 3% 61% $101.8M
Pecos-Barstow-Toyah ISD 3% 78% $99.4M
Wink-Loving ISD 3% 83% $87M
40% of the recapture is made up of 148 other school districts
Dallas ISD 3% 6% $85M
Spring Branch ISD 2% 18% $61.2M
SOURCES: TEXAS EDUCATION AGENCY, PLANO ISD/ COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
Following themoney One of the biggest miscon- ceptions about recapture, according to Hill, is that the funds collected by the state benefit schools with lower property wealth levels. “This is just a flat out lie,” he said. “It doesn’t matter [where they are] on the wealth level. [School districts are] entitled to a certain amount of money based on [Texas education code]. That doesn’t change.” PISD Board Vice President Nancy Humphrey said even though the district is classified
to nearly $5 billion by 2023, Copeland said. To help slow that rise, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 3 in 2019. As part of the bill’s school finance reforms, recapture’s collec- tions were projected to be reduced by more than 50%, according to the TEA video. “[House Bill 3] did make recapture a whole lot bet- ter than how horribly bad it could have been,” Rome said. However, she said recapture has since vaulted back above its previous record high.
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