What's at Stake

What do we have to lose? The extremists have made apparent their desire for even more financial conservatism. Although GCISD continues to do more with less, these critics do not believe it is enough. When nearly 90% of your operating budget is tied up in salaries, cutting the budget so you can reduce taxes means one thing - reduction of personnel and the programs they support. What people and programs are you willing to do without?

Are we better as a district than we were 20 years ago? The short answer is we are different. Incredible things happened for kids 20 years ago as they do now. Twenty years ago we would never have conceived of students graduating high school with an Associate's degree or a variety of technical certifications. We would have scoffed at a virtual campus. We would have questioned the need for bilingualism and biliteracy. We might have even wondered how we would find enough highly gifted kids to create an academy for. Twenty years from now let’s not look back and wonder how we allowed all of this to be discarded.

Our District Quality

GCISD standardized test scores are a poor measure of student achievement. In addition, misinformation is being spread about student performance on the STAAR test. Socioeconomic status (SES) is highly correlated with test scores, and the diversity of SES in the district has been increasing over time.

GCISD's Innovative Programs

GCISD excels at implementing innovative programs to meet the diverse needs of the community. Unfortunately, some of these special programs are being cut or scaled back because the board majority will not make a plan to increase revenue.

Our Property Values

With a lower quality school district comes lower property values, as parents do not seek us out as a destination district. A number of parents have already left the district because they don’t feel welcomed here or because they are tired of the toxic local politics. We need to prevent this.

We want to make sure that you, as a stakeholder in GCISD, understand how your property taxes are determined and how "Recapture" or "Robin Hood" affects your tax bill.

The state uses a formula to determine how "wealthy" a district is based on property values and number of students. This yields an amount that the district must pay to the state (Recapture).
Recapture has nothing to do with your tax rate, just your property values. As our property values increase, the amount of Recapture rises. This is why the GCISD recapture payment has increased by about 49% over the past 10 years. It amounts to over $50 million each year.
The total tax revenue received by the district is determined by the tax rate and your property values.
The GCISD total tax rate has declined more than 12 cents over the last three years, a result of reforms approved by the Texas Legislature and decisions made by the GCISD Board of Trustees
The only way to lower the tax rate by larger amounts is to cut GCISD salaries, cut positions, or cut programs.
If you removed 100% of the extra-curricular programs in the district, that would mean cutting about $3.5 million dollars and would take off about $50-$70 of the average household tax bill.
Write your state representatives if you disagree with Robin Hood. Before the new board majority took over, GCISD worked hard to continue to provide excellent education, amazing options for all students, and to prepare students to be productive members of society without the benefit of additional revenue.