Houston ISD's state-appointed board of managers — which includes four new appointees — voted unanimously Thursday to pass the district's $2.1 billion budget for the next school year.
The budget, which is 2.5% smaller than the 2024-25 school year budget, includes boosts to several departments and programs, such as $5 million toward pre-kindergarten expansion and $13.7 million for special education teachers and teaching assistants.
The vote came after several budget workshops that dived deep into Superintendent Mike Miles' proposal for financial changes in the district — meetings where nearly half of the board was absent.
That's because Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath replaced four of the nine board members just two weeks before the deadline to approve the budget.
The four new board members — Edgar Colón, Marty Goossen, Lauren Gore and Marcos Rosales — received a "crash course" on the budget's details ahead of the vote, Miles said during Thursday's meeting.
"And then I think most of you watched some of the videos of the budget workshops," he added.
When it came time for questions, none of them had any and gave it their stamp of approval.
Last year's budgetnarrowly passed on a 5-4 vote. Three of the recently replaced board members — Cassandra Auzenne Bandy, Rolando Martinez and Adam Rivon — voted against the budget in 2024.
HISD elected trustee Placido Gómez, who has no voting power during a state takeover of the district that began in June 2023, spoke during the meeting's public comment session, noting the four board members removed by Morath "just so happened to coincidentally to be the four board members who had the most questions, who had the most pushback."
"I profoundly disagree (with the board changes), and it would serve everybody here well to work with us, to listen to us," Gómez added.
That sentiment was echoed by more than 100 teachers, parents and students who came to the meeting, asking the new board members to involve the community in their decisions.
"We'd love for you to hear what we have to say," Sundiata Rose, an HISD parent, said during public comment. "The people closest to the problems are the people closest to the solutions."
But after more than two hours of public comments, the board members, including the four new managers, voted to approve the budget without much discussion.
The budget allocates $11.7 million for teacher pay raises through a locally designed educator evaluation model coined the Texas Excellence System.
The system, which board members approved in March, will score teachers based on classroom observations and students' tests scores. It is expected to become the basis for a pay-for-performance compensation structure beginning with the 2026-27 school year.
It will also place teachers on a forced distribution curve, also known as "stack ranking," which will limit how many teachers can get the highest score and earn the highest salary — $90,000 — and place the lowest scoring teachers at the bottom, who will receive $60,000.
For the next fiscal year, HISD is expecting to receive $2.08 billion and spend $2.1 billion, leaving the district with an operating deficit of about $40,000.
Part of the reason for the revenue boost is because state representatives during the recent Texas legislative session approved of a per-student allotment increase of $55. For HISD, that's going to bring in roughly $83.8 million.
As for expenditures, the district will be allocating $21.5 million for schools under Miles' instructional reform program, the New Education System (NES). Other campuses will be receiving a total of $14 million.
That means NES campuses will receive roughly $8,500 per student and traditional campuses will receive a little more than $6,000.
Some of the deepest budget cuts came from the district's central office, which in total is going to get $29 million less than last year.
"And I said at the beginning of the budget process, back in February, we were going to try to get to a balanced budget this year or next year," Miles said.
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