Crockett ISD Approves 2021-2022 Budget, Tax Rate

By Will Johnson

Messenger Reporter

CROCKETT – The Crockett Independent School District Board of Trustees gave the green light to the financial blueprint of the district on Monday evening, Aug. 23 as they approved the 2021-2022 budget and adopted the 2021-2022 tax rate.

Once the meeting was called to order and it was determined a quorum was present, Board VP Roy Johnson opened a public hearing on the soon-to-be-approved budget and tax rate.

CISD Business Manager Tamra Scroggins was present at the meeting to answer any questions and walked the trustees through the various facets of the budget.

“Before you, you have your budget books. I left everything in there from the Aug. 2 meeting,” Scroggins said. “When you open your budget books, we still have the planning calendar. That didn’t change. We are to the Aug. 23 meeting on budget and proposed tax rate. The next page is the proposed tax rate that I’m hoping you will adopt tonight. It will be $0.9387 for M&O (Maintenance and Operations). The I&S (Interest and Sinking) will be $0.200 for a total effective rate of $1.1387 (per $100 of property valuation). That is a decrease of $0.023 to the taxpayers.”

As her presentation turned towards the budget, Scroggins showed the board a pie chart which broke down the district’s expenditures by category. She said just over 50 percent went towards instruction and 13 percent went towards maintenance.

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“Let me just interject here,” CISD Superintendent John Emerich said, “we have checked with several other districts and it is pretty standard that instruction is about 50 to 55 percent of the budget.”

Emerich also noted only five percent of the entire 2021-2022 budget was dedicated to athletics, UIL and other extracurricular activities.

Scroggins picked back up and said, “I have prepared a side-by-side (comparison) of what we brought to you on Aug. 2. We were proposing a possibility of $244,060 deficit, but we worked on it a little more and we have gotten it to a $229,199 deficit. We are expecting revenues of $14,919,748. With our expenditures, we are proposing $15,148,947.”

Emerich added last year the board had adopted “… a nearly $441,000 deficit budget. This is about have of what we projected last year.”

Following the disposal of several routine measures, the 2021-2022 budget was approved and the 2021-2022 tax rate of $1.1387 was adopted. Since 2011, the CISD Board has lowered the tax rate or kept it the same year-over-year.

Following the tax and budget discussion, a lengthy – and at times heated – debate was held on the 2021-2022 Student Code of Conduct. Eventually, however, the Code of Conduct was approved.   

In other matters brought before the Board of Trustees:

• Consent agenda items were approved.
• A gift in the amount of $2,000 from the Elks Lodge was accepted.
• The 2021-2022 Teacher Appraisal Calendar and the list of appraisers were approved by the trustees.
• A resolution regarding the extracurricular status of 4-H and adjunct faculty status granted to all eligible county extension faculty was approved.
• The 2021 certified tax roll was approved.

Will Johnson may be contacted via e-mail at [email protected].