Several school districts in Tarrant County have expressed opposition to the reappraisal plan and budget the Tarrant Appraisal District passed last month, citing concerns about its effect on local schools.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, the Tarrant Appraisal District (TAD) voted 5-3 to change the frequency of residential property evaluations from yearly to every other year, despite the efforts of new TAD Board Members Eric Morris, Matt Bryant, and Callie Rigney, who ran on limiting the county’s appraisals to once every three years.
Current residential property values will roll over to 2025, and the new plan will require greater levels of proof before a residential property appraisal can be raised by more than 5%.
However, local school districts have weighed in on the new plan and its expected impact on area students.
“If we have no new revenue for three years, how are we supposed to educate our kids and pay for inflation, supply costs, labor, the regular maintenance with no new money?” Fort Worth ISD Board of Trustees President Camille Rodriguez said, per KERA News.
Last week, Fort Worth ISD trustees formally denounced TAD’s reappraisal plan and 2025 budget by a vote of 7-2. A majority of the taxing entities within the appraisal district must approve the budget before it can go into effect.
Michael Ryan, one of the two Fort Worth ISD trustees who voted in dissent, said he wants to see how the financial data shakes out before making a judgment call, claiming that the biggest issue is the failure of the state legislature to increase school funding.
“The state has dropped the ball on funding the schools,” Ryan argued, per KERA. “If they’d fund it the way they should, as far as our taxing structure, it wouldn’t be detrimental to people. But I’ve got too many people that I work with that [are] elderly, and they’re going, ‘I can’t take another increase on my house.'”
Texas lawmakers were unable to pass an education spending bill that would have increased state spending on public education last session after House Democrats and a bloc of Republicans killed the proposal because it included a measure that would institute education savings accounts, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Given that school districts are having to go with less taxpayer money than perhaps initially anticipated, the districts in Tarrant County are chafing under any further reductions in spending that would likely result from TAD’s budget and reappraisal plan.
“Parents want the tax benefit from this proposal … but they really need to know that it’s all about education. How will this impact your students’ education? It’s going to have an adverse impact,” Leon Fisher, CFO of Crowley ISD, told Fort Worth Report. “It’s going to have an adverse impact on your school district’s ability to both complete (bond) projects within the scheduled time and within the budgeted amounts that were initially identified for these bond projects.”
Northwest ISD released a statement earlier this month claiming that the new reappraisal plan could cause the school district to lose up to $10 million annually, and other school districts in TAD could lose as much as $15 million each. Northwest ISD said that the new plan would “actually harm taxpayers by delaying and stacking — not eliminating — tax burdens” and that “Tarrant County residential homeowners’ tax bills will likely be higher over a three-year period with this new reappraisal plan in place.”
Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD Superintendent Jim Chadwell wrote a two-page letter to TAD claiming that the board had been dismissive of the district’s concerns.
“We told you what would happen in our school districts and how it will directly affect students throughout Tarrant County, only to learn that you simply don’t care. … We learned that either the board is arrogant and doesn’t think school finance law is complicated, or worse, does not care,” Chadwell wrote, according to KERA.
TAD Board Member Alan Blaylock acknowledged receiving pushback from taxing entities within TAD.
“Several taxing entities have expressed concern that a move to make homesteaded residential property owners’ lives easier may adversely impact the entity. We must never lose sight of who we are here to serve and be thoughtful in our decision process,” Blaylock told The Dallas Express. “While there is understandable concern from some entities in this moment, I am confident we will work together to mitigate risk to those entities together, both here in Tarrant County and at the state legislature.”
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, school districts in North Texas and elsewhere in the state have been finding themselves short on taxpayer dollars amid declining enrollment stemming from poor student achievement outcomes and perceived politicization of curricula.
For instance, both Dallas ISD and Fort Worth ISD had lackluster showings in the Texas Education Agency’s latest available accountability reports. Just 41% of Dallas ISD students and 32% of Fort Worth ISD students hit the at-grade-level mark on the STAAR exam in the 2021-2022 school year.