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Howe ISD budget
Continued from page 1 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
"This is somewhat competitive with the area as you go south," Wilson told the board
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"Everybody is pretty much over $40,000, but for north east of Grayson County, we're pretty competitive there "
The school ended the 2016-17 year with an enrollment count of 1,066 which was up by 33 students from the previous year The staff amount was 144 which included 85 teachers to put the student/teacher ratio at 12 6
The district is outlying a plan to lower the tax rate because of the rising property values. The preliminary values of property tax rolls came in at $232,288,835 which was $203,561,987 a year ago and $183,660,678 in the 201516 school year. This year's number is based on 96 percent of the preliminary values Final values come out on July 20
The General Fund proposed budget in 2017-18 is $10,359,582 of 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 property values increasing, the district felt they could drop the debt service amount by a penny to $0 225 from $0 235
"Again, we won't know for sure until the certified values come out, but we feel like that's a conservative estimate Hopefully we can go a little lower than that, but we feel like that's a safe number," Wilson told the board "If something goes crazy with the certified amounts, we can come back and have another public hearing prior to August when we officially adopt the tax rate "
The impact of the proposed tax rate would see an increase of $172 32 per year, or $14 36 per month on the average home of $143,857 that increased in property value to $156,118 Although the Howe ISD tax rate would be slightly less, the property owner would pay more due to the increase in valuations.
