EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — The Ysleta Independent School District will operate under a projected $22 million budget deficit this upcoming school year as the district’s financial outlook becomes increasingly unstable.
YISD’s Board of Trustees approved the district staff’s proposed $420.2 million budget for the 2025-2026 school year in a 4-3 vote Wednesday night.
In her presentation to the board, YISD’s chief financial and operations officer, Lynly Cambern, said that district staff had initially projected next year’s deficit to total over $44 million.
However, she said they managed to reduce that projected deficit to $22 million by reducing costs in different areas of the district, and due to a slight increase in state funding the district will receive from House Bill 2.
District staff also project to head into the new school year with just $33 million in financial reserves after their expenditures for this past school year exceeded their revenue by over $49 million.
As part of the adopted budget, YISD’s board also approved a new compensation package that gave raises to select staff.
Teachers with at least three years of experience will receive the state-mandated $2,500 raise funded through HB2. Teachers with at least five years of experience will receive a raise of $5,000.
Hourly-paid support staff such as bus drivers and custodians will receive a 1.5 percent raise. Salary-paid support staff such as counselors, librarians, nurses, and teachers with less than three years of experience will receive a $500 stipend in November.
Trustees Shane Haggerty, Chris Hernandez, and Kathryn Lucero voted against the budget as they advocated for hourly-paid support staff to also receive a stipend at the end of the year.
Rosie Perez, president of the teacher union West Texas Alliance, said her members were present at Wednesday night’s meeting to advocate for the hourly-paid support staff. She said they will continue to advocate for them to receive a stipend in July.
“More than likely, there will be an increase in the insurance cost, and support staff are not going to see a raise because it’s going to be canceled out. The amount is not very high. And so, we were hoping that with a combination of the 1.5 percent pay increase and the $500 stipend, it would at least allow them some relief with regards to any insurance increases,” Perez said.
However, Superintendent Xavier De La Torre and Cambern said that the now adopted budget had no room for more expenses if they hoped to reach their goal of restoring a balanced budget in two years.
“We need to be careful not to insist on giving somebody a $500 stipend and then letting them know in the spring that they will no longer be with us,” De La Torre said at Wednesday’s board meeting. “We just saw an example of what a district goes through when they have to do a reduction in force. And I don’t want that to be the legacy of this board or this administration. Because what will end up happening after 10 years, 12 years, however many years we survive, no one’s going to remember that we reinvented this district, all they’re going to remember is you bankrupted the district, you exposed the district, and the Texas Education Agency had to get involved.”
Perez said teachers and staff across YISD feel that district administration has done the best they can to navigate the financial challenges over the past few years created by limited funding support from the state. However, she said many were shocked to learn that the district’s financial outlook was as dire as presented.
“They honestly felt it was worse in Socorro and El Paso ISD than it was for us. And after yesterday’s presentation, they kind of felt like, ‘okay, now it feels like, it’s a little bit harsher for us, but we didn’t know this in advance, like we’re barely hearing about this,” Perez said.
Read: Read More