howeenterprise.com
Monday, June 26, 2017
Howe ISD budget
Page #3
Continued from page 1
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and added $1,000 stipend to teachers who have obtained their masters degree. District employee insurance contribution will now be $351 which is slightly above the $341 a year ago. The policy is the minimum plan for the staff. Wilson also explained that they have adjusted the bus driver pay which was $20 per route. Due to longer routes and shorter routes, they decided to keep the shorter routes at $20 but increase the longer routes to $22.50 which is more in line with the competition in the area. The total teacher pay for 2017-18 came to a total of $7,803,653. The starting salary for a first-year teacher is $39,000 which is a $2,000 increase previously mentioned due to the step increase.
which is mostly absorbed by teacher salary of $7,803,653 (75 percent). The All Funds proposed expenditures on top of the general fund amount also include the food service budget of $448,140, debt service of $899,355, and federal funds of $271,180 for the total of $11,978,257. The federal funds revenue amount was significantly less than a year ago due to federal policy changes. "With the transition of No Child Left Behind to the ESSA, we lost primarily the title funds in that," said Wilson.
The local tax rate is proposed to stay the same at $1.17, but with the "This is somewhat competitive property values increasing, the with the area as you go south," district felt they could drop the Wilson told the board. "Everybody debt service amount by a penny to is pretty much over $40,000, but $0.225 from $0.235. for north east of Grayson County, we're pretty competitive there." "Again, we won't know for sure until the certified values come out, The school ended the 2016-17 year but we feel like that's a with an enrollment count of 1,066 conservative estimate. Hopefully which was up by 33 students from we can go a little lower than that, the previous year. The staff but we feel like that's a safe amount was 144 which included 85 number," Wilson told the board. teachers to put the student/teacher "If something goes crazy with the ratio at 12.6. certified amounts, we can come back and have another public The district is outlying a plan to hearing prior to August when we lower the tax rate because of the officially adopt the tax rate." rising property values. The preliminary values of property tax The impact of the proposed tax rolls came in at $232,288,835 rate would see an increase of which was $203,561,987 a year $172.32 per year, or $14.36 per ago and $183,660,678 in the 2015- month on the average home of 16 school year. This year's number $143,857 that increased in is based on 96 percent of the property value to $156,118. preliminary values. Final values Although the Howe ISD tax rate come out on July 20. would be slightly less, the property owner would pay more due to the The General Fund proposed budget increase in valuations. in 2017-18 is $10,359,582 of
