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Austin ISD talks position cuts as they face budget deficit

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AUSTIN (KXAN) — Facing a $60 million dollar deficit, Austin Independent School District administrators and trustees met Thursday night to discuss the preliminary budget for the 2024 to 2025 school year.

AISD’s Chief Financial Officer Ed Ramos discussed cutting expenditures by $30 million.

“Our goal is to achieve $30 million in budget cuts and that gets us to an estimated $30 million dollar proposed deficit budget,” Ramos said. “So even though as a district we are looking at making some difficult decisions and reducing our overall expenditures, cutting $30 million will not get us to a balanced budget, but it does get us to a manageable deficit budget for the next school year.”

Some of the positions that could be cut are currently vacant and some current contracts the district has with companies could be stopped to reduce spending.

Some of the cuts could come from the central office and in operations, keeping teachers is a top priority for the district.

AISD could also ask voters to approve a tax rate increase, which would generate at least an additional $44 million in revenue.

Representative James Talarico said by not using the state’s $33 billion dollar surplus to fund schools we could see more and more cuts and issues with funding in public schools.

“We are seeing larger class sizes, we are seeing fewer programs and we are seeing academic performance suffer,” Talarico said.

The district is still discussing ways to decrease the deficit and no numbers presented in the budget are final at this time.  

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