The Clint Independent School District will maintain one of the highest savings among El Paso school districts after its board last week adopted a balanced budget for the current school year and for the third consecutive year approved the highest tax rate possible without triggering an election.
The Clint ISD Board of Trustees on Aug. 25 voted unanimously to adopt a tax rate of $1.09 per $100 property valuation, which will raise the district’s portion of property tax bills by about $20 for the average-value home of about $212,400.
About 4,600 homeowners in Clint – about 40% of all properties with a homestead exemption – will pay no school tax this year because the taxable value of their homes is less than the amount of property tax exemptions.
The Clint ISD board also voted unanimously to adopt a nearly $127 million budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts Sept. 1. The board gave the OK to spend an additional $4.6 million on previously approved expenses from its almost $73 million fund balance.
This includes $1.8 million on a COVID-19 “spend down plan,” meant to help the district gradually reduce expenses that were once paid for through relief funds, and $2.8 million for bathrooms at the Horizon High School baseball stadium and other construction projects.
The district’s overall fund balance includes about $20 million in restricted and assigned funds, which are earmarked for specific projects or purposes. The other $52.7 million is in unrestricted savings – or unassigned fund balance used to cover budget shortfalls or unexpected expenses. That’s enough for the district to operate without additional revenue for 140 days – nearly double the state’s recommendation for high financial ratings and far above some of El Paso’s largest districts that have seen those savings fall below 40 days.
Clint district leaders say they’ve been able to maintain a healthy fund balance through conservative budgeting, using pandemic-era relief funds for operating expenses and moving other revenues to savings, then using those savings for improvements without impacting its operating budget.
“Our financial stability depends on that fund balance,” Clint ISD Superintendent Juan Martinez told El Paso Matters. “In the event of an emergency, we will have the funds to take care of our staff. At the same time, there are other expenses that we don’t anticipate during the year, and sometimes those expenses are very large, such as a bus that breaks down.”
The board last year adopted a $124.6 million budget – and spent an additional $12.8 million from previously approved expenditures from its restricted fund balance, according to budget documents posted to the district’s website.
Clint ISD Chief Financial Officer Jessie Cline said the district has used COVID-19 relief funds to pay for some of its operating expenses, and save some of the revenue it normally gets from the state.
The Texas Education Agency recommends that districts have two to three months’ worth of unrestricted savings, and requires at least 75 days of savings for districts to receive an A in its financial accountability system.
Clint ISD was able to build its reserves even though the district had fewer students year over year. Enrollment at the district declined by about 13% from the 2019-2020 school year to about 9,900 students by the end of the 2025-26 school year, according to state enrollment data.
Because of this, the district has worked to reduce expenses, primarily by cutting payroll costs by eliminating vacant positions and rearranging staff as employees retire.
“We try to have less personnel when we don’t need to. Every opportunity, we assess whether that position is necessary or not; we assess whether we can assign duties to other people,” Martinez said.
Even with these strategies, Martinez noted during Tuesday’s board meeting that it has become more difficult for the district to save money and teach students adequately with limited staffing.
“We need to understand that as we cut positions, there’s a lot more responsibility from the staff and there’s only so much you can ask people to do. So, we need to be cautious about what we do with our finances because it’s getting a little bit challenging to balance these budgets year after year,” Martinez said.
These concerns come as school districts across El Paso have been in financial crises.
In June, the El Paso Independent School District declared financial exigency due to years of poor financial planning, forcing officials to lay off dozens of employees. District officials expected to end the 2026 fiscal year with 38 days’ worth of unassigned fund balance.
The Ysleta Independent School District this summer approved a budget that nearly depleted its savings – leaving just $4.5 million in reserves to operate for four days. The Socorro Independent School District, after years of overspending, laid off employees in 2024 to avoid depleting its savings. The district in June estimated its fund balance would stand at about $46.6 million – or 37 days – at the end of the 2026 fiscal year, district documents state.
Both Socorro and Ysleta ISDs will have elections in November seeking permission to raise the tax rate above the amount permissible without voter authorization.
Building a fund balance
Martinez said Clint ISD has prioritized financial stability over the last three decades and made efforts to add to its savings whenever possible, while continuing to invest in students.
“We always wanted to make sure that the fund balance was solid, and it’s been the practice that we’ve added to it year after year,” Martinez said. “We know sometimes we went up, sometimes we went down, but we’ve never been below, in the last 14 years, two months or three months.”
Between fiscal years 2022 and 2025, Clint ISD’s unassigned fund balance grew by almost 28% from $40.9 million to $52.7 million, according to the district’s annual financial audit reports.
Cline said the growth was in part brought on after the district used state and federal pandemic relief grants, which needed to be spent by September 2024, to offset its operating costs and while shifting revenue into its savings.
Clint ISD received over $54.5 million in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds, according to data collected by Edunomics Lab — a non-partisan research center at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.
David DeMatthews, who holds the W.K. Kellogg Endowed Professorship in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin, said many districts saw reserves increase as relief funds arrived and local revenues remained stable.
“So, if Clint ISD says that they appropriately used ESSER funds and in doing so saved money, you could view it as a financially wise move that can enable a district to navigate further uncertainties like enrollment declines, state funding uncertainty, and a predictable post-ESSER fiscal cliff,” DeMatthews said.
“Or, you could view it in a more critical way and question why the district did not do more to use ESSER funds to aggressively support students during the pandemic recovery period,” he added.
Almost 46% of Texas schools used ESSER funding to continue operations, including paying salaries, according to a report from the United States Government Accountability Office.
Cline said the district was also able to add to its unassigned fund balance anytime the general fund — which pays for day-to-day operations — was not fully expended, which can occur when there are vacancies, positions are closed or enrollment is higher than expected, among others.
Meanwhile, the district spent over $21 million from its assigned fund balance — a savings account set aside for previously approved expenses — on facilities and supplies for students between fiscal years 2022 and 2025.
Some of the improvements made using these savings include purchasing equipment and supplies for its career technology education classes, remodeling some of its nurses’ offices and green spaces throughout its campuses.
Over the years, Clint ISD has used its fund balance to remodel the football field and build a state-of-the-art weight room at Mountain View High School and upgrade air conditioners at the Clint Early College Academy, among others.
Martinez said Clint ISD plans to continue to use its savings to ensure all its campuses have upgraded facilities and equipment.
“I wanted to give our students the ability to go to a school in which they don’t wish they were somewhere else,” Martinez said.
The post How Clint ISD holds strong reserves as other El Paso school districts struggle appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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