Mike Williams for WISD School Board Place 2

🗳🗳🗳 Election Day is here! 🗳🗳🗳

Make time to vote today, if you didn’t have the opportunity during early voting.

Please vote for Stacie Smith, Mike Williams, Virdie Montgomery, and Jacob Day for Wylie ISD School Board. Your voice and vote matter and make a difference in this very important election.

Polls are open 7am - 7pm.

Collin College
Murphy Community Center
Michael J Felix Community Center
Southfork Mobile Home Park
Seis Lagos
Wylie Senior Rec Center

Mike Williams for WISD School Board Place 2
Virdie Montgomery
Reelect Jacob Day for Wylie ISD Board Trustee Place 6

🗳🇺🇸 Tomorrow is Election Day!! 🇺🇸🗳

If you didn’t get a chance to vote during early voting, make sure you make time to go to the polls tomorrow and ensure your vote is cast and counted.

Polls will be open from 7am - 7pm.

Mike Williams for WISD School Board Place 2
Virdie Montgomery
Reelect Jacob Day for Wylie ISD Board Trustee Place 6

Here is something that Dr. Jacob Day prepared in response to questions about school finance.
Maybe it might answer some questions about No New Revenue and it how it affects WISD

At the League of Women Voters and Wylie ISD Council of PTAs candidate forum we were asked a question about whether we support a no new revenue (NNR) tax rate, and what impact that would have on the district. That is way too big of a question for 60 seconds! I did a pretty poor job of answering it then, so I’m going to take a MUCH more detailed stab at it here.

This is going to turn into a super long post, so let me just give you a spoiler up front, then the details that lead to that conclusion to follow:

Spoiler Alert!!!
We can either ask our educators to educate an additional 720 students without giving them $0.01 of a raise and no additional teachers to help teach those extra 720 students… AND find a way to cut 12% unilaterally from “discretionary” spending.

–or–

We can find a way to cut “discretionary” spending by 40% across the board and manage to eek out a 1.35% raise for our employees who will still need to educate those extra 720 students. (It’s important to note here that included in “discretionary” spending are items such as books, curriculum and technology).

Now, on to the details. Where to start….
There are two primary sources of funds for Wylie ISD. Local tax funds and State funding.

State funding is complicated. It’s based on average daily attendance, how many students fall into certain categories (like special education, CTE courses, etc) and some other factors. For the purposes of this exercise, I will assume that the state funding is fixed. Suffice to say, the state does not increase its funding if the school board lowers the tax rate.

Local funding is not as complicated. The county appraisal district sets property values and publishes a “taxable value” for all the properties in the ISD. The school board sets the tax rate (a dollar amount per $100 property value… for those keeping score at home, this effectively the same as a %). The local funds are calculated as the tax rate multiplied by the taxable value. Simple. Well, mostly. There are actually 2 tax rates: Maintenance and Operations (M&O) and Interest and Sinking (I&S). M&O covers all of our operating expenses. I&S covers debt payments. Disclaimer: If you look at reports from last year and from this year you will see a few different tax rates listed as well as taxable values. This is thanks to another wrinkle the state threw us in House Bill 3 a few years ago. Instead of previous year tax values, we are tasked with using current year values. This is tricky because the taxable value isn’t finalized yet (due to citizens contesting their appraisals and other reasons). So in May the district prepares a budget, and based on preliminary taxable values a preliminary tax rate is set. This budget is presented and approved in June. Then in August the final tax rate is adopted based on the finalized taxable values and the fixed budget number from back in May. Simple. (That last “Simple” was sarcasm)

There is also a smaller amount of federal funding. We’ll also assume it is fixed for purposes of this discussion.

Now that we know where the money can come from, let’s talk about where it goes. We break it up into three main categories: The General Fund (M&O), Debt Services (I&S), and Food Service(M&O).

Food Service:
Food service gets tracked separately because it is part of the National School Lunch and Breakfast program. It is also the easiest to consider. Let’s compare last year to this year’s budget.

Funding Source Last Year This Year
Wylie $3,300,126 $3,490,651
State $220,000 $152,500
Federal $3,684,515 $5,373,500
Total $7,204,641 $9,016,651

I said this is the easiest because the local contribution is effectively flat year over year, and because we can all agree that the price of food has gone up so it makes sense that the total budget went up. In this case, the federal government picked up the tab.

Debt Service:
I’ll talk about debt service next because it is the second easiest, in my opinion. Let’s compare years again.

Last Year This Year
Wylie taxable values $8,284,026,236 $9,347,290,936
Tax Rate (per $100) $0.47 $0.455
Wylie Budget $37,030,891 $40,854,859
State Funds $0 $500,000

You would expect the Budget to be taxable value * tax rate / 100. But a keen observer will notice that $1.6M is missing from both years’ Wylie Budget line items. This is because that money falls under M&O instead of the debt service line item.

This debt service fund goes to pay off bonds that the district has taken out over a number of years. These payment structures are determined at the time bonds are issued (or re-structured). As such, there is not really much flexibility in this budget category. I feel like now might be a good time to interject another point of clarification… THE DISTRICT CANNOT ENTER INTO MORE DEBT WITHOUT VOTER APPROVAL. To claim that this (or any other Texas school) district is actively taking on more debt by decision of the board or administration is inherently incorrect because it is not possible. Schools incur debt by issuing bonds. Bonds MUST be approved by voters in an election. End. Of. Discussion.

Now, I will follow that up by saying that the district/board CAN re-structure that debt. Anyone familiar with bonds knows that those bonds can be called before their full maturity date and the repayment profile can be altered. Typically the reason you would do this is to avoid paying future interest. Think of this like converting from a 30 year mortgage to a 15 year mortgage. You can also defease bonds, which is a word that sounds negative but really just means making a cash payment directly toward principal. The board has taken these actions several times in the last few years. To what end? Saving MILLIONS of dollars in interest down the road. As a board member, I simply will not apologize for paying down voter approved debts early instead of pushing that debt off to future generations (our kids).

The General Fund:
And finally, the General Fund. This is by far the largest budget area with the most moving pieces. I’ll break it into some of the primary components.

Last Year This Year
Wylie taxable values $8,284,026,236 $9,347,290,936
Tax Rate (per $100) $0.9898 $0.9429
Wylie Budget $80,599,198 $86,320,270
State Funds $88,125,995 $92,456,568
Federal Funds $1,731,800 $2,331,800
Total Funds $170,456,993 $181,108,638

The Breakdown
Payroll $142,820,493 $153,295,283
Operational Costs $7,244,345
“Discretionary” Funds $20,569,009

There are many directions you could go with this, but I think it is important to pause and make a few notes. First, as a reminder, we gave the educators in this district a 3% raise this year. That’s a pretty standard “cost of living” increase. It’s pretty much an insult with the current state of inflation. And don’t get me started on how much of that gets eaten up by healthcare benefits for those employees who get that through their employment with the district. I get it, everyone is in the same boat and is living through the same inflation. I’m not discounting that. I’m just clarifying what was done for our educators in Wylie. Also, I’d like to point out that we LOVE our teachers. And I think that they love us. But that love doesn’t put food on the table. At some point if surrounding districts are offering high enough salaries, our teachers will leave. I want to keep our amazing teachers, so I’m committed to staying competitive with teacher pay. That does not mean we are the highest paying district around. But we also can’t afford to be in the bottom half.

Also, this budget was built anticipating 720 additional students coming to the district compared to last year. We hit that by the end of August. Those students have to be accounted for in classrooms as well.

I’ll also highlight that I put quotations around “discretionary” funds. I did this because they aren’t really discretionary. Operational costs include things like insurance and utilities that we have no choice about. “Discretionary” funds include everything else, including curriculum materials, technology, etc that you can’t really educate kids without. Noted that you can cut SOME of these, but you can’t cut them all.

Since we are discussing the no new revenue (NNR) rate, we should also establish what that is, and what it would cost the district. The official wording used to adopt the tax rate in August tells us what the NNR rate is. When we adopted a total tax rate of $1.3979 per $100 taxable value, we also included that this is an effective increase of 11.02%. That effective increase is compared to the NNR. So what would the tax rate need to be to avoid this 11.02% increase? 1.3979 = x*1.1102 —> $1.2591 per $100. So how much does that mean we need to cut from the budget? $1.2591 per $100 times the taxable value is $117,695,712 total local dollars. What is the total local general fund budget currently? $130,665,780. So how much do we need to cut from the general fund budget? $130,665,780 - $117,695,712 = $12,970,068.

Now we can finally talk about options.
Option A: The teachers take the hit
1. Don’t hire any more teachers to teach the extra 720 kids. Also, don’t give any existing educators a raise. Savings: $10,474,790
2. Cut the remaining $2,495,278 from the “Discretionary” funds, which amounts to a 12% unilateral reduction across the board while still having to educate those extra 720 students. I’ll admit that this is in the realm of feasibility. 12% would be tough in an economic environment like we are in, but you might could swing it.

Option B: “Discretionary” funds take the hit
1. I can’t claim that you should be able to pull the full $12,970,068 from “discretionary” funds. That would be a 63% cut for that category. Let’s get crazy and say we are going to cut it by 40%. Savings: $8,227,603.
2. That means the teachers (who still have to educate those extra 720 kids) will only get $4,742,465 put toward them. If $10,474,790 got them a 3% raise, then I guess that means $4,742,465 would be about a 1.35% raise. It’s not 0, I’ll admit. But in 2022 it might as well be. And I’m still not convinced that anyone could actually find the above 40% to come out of “discretionary”.

Conclusion:
I apologize for the novella. See why I couldn’t get it into 60 seconds?!?!

This is the point where I double down on my answer from the forum. I’m a taxpayer in Wylie. I also don’t like paying higher taxes. But I cannot, with a clear conscience, claim that we can responsibly get to a NNR tax rate without doing immense harm to this district.

It was said last night, and I’ll repeat it here again. The best path toward reform and relief is through modified funding models from the state. They are in session this year. Reach out to your representative!

Also, this is going to come off as petty, but I think it’s important sometimes to take a step back and appreciate how good we have it in the grand scheme of things. We live in an amazing state! People are moving here in droves for a reason. I understand that it is tough to pay your property taxes in a lump sum at the beginning of each year. But can we all just appreciate that we live in a state without an income tax and this discussion revolves around a 1.4% tax on the property we live in?

Please consider coming to this Candidate Forum. The community has submitted questions which we will answer. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Save the date!

The CCLWV will be moderating a candidate forum. Please come and listen to candidates answer questions submitted by the community.

Hope to see everyone at the rodeo!!

Honored to be included in this group, I'm in good company here. It's truly all about supporting the students and staff of Wylie ISD! Reelect Jacob Day for Wylie ISD Board Trustee Place 6 Stacie Smith Wylie ISD Trustee, Place 1 Virdie Montgomery Ahmo Montgomery

Sign Update:

We have delivered 200 signs to the yards of those who requested one - first come first serve. Thank you for choosing to support students and teachers!! We have 100 more on order that will arrive next week. If you have requested a sign, please be patient, we will get you a sign as soon as more come in. If you have not requested one and want a sign to show your support for students and teachers, use this link to request:

https://tinyurl.com/2psh3mxf

Thank you for supporting my campaign and in turn supporting our kids and staff members!

- Mike

Mike Williams for WISD Trustee Place 2 - Campaign Support I need to tell you thank you for your kind words in support of my campaign for WISD Board of Trustees. Over twenty years of service to our community has allowed me to have an understanding of the needs of our students and staff. I have many friends that are employed within the district, but as a tru...

Sign Update: We should have all signs requested so far delivered by the end of the day Wednesday.

If you would like a sign here's the link to the form https://tinyurl.com/2psh3mxf. Thank you so much for your support!

Signs are here! We are working on delivery for ones already requested. If you would like a sign, you can still request one here https://tinyurl.com/2psh3mxf.

Have a question for Mike? He wants to answer it! Use this link to send him your question. https://tinyurl.com/2euqgtk7

You can also keep up with me on my website. You'll find information about me and other resources. Take a minute and check it out!

www.mikewilliamsfortrustee.com
www.mikewilliamsfortrustee.org

Home About Mike

If you would like to volunteer or help support my campaign for WISD School Board Place 2, please take a moment to fill out this form so we can be in touch!

Thank you,
Mike

https://forms.gle/MfcYZuDcPmptz6VK7!

Mike Williams for WISD Trustee Place 2 - Campaign Support I need to tell you thank you for your kind words in support of my campaign for WISD Board of Trustees. Over twenty years of service to our community has allowed me to have an understanding of the needs of our students and staff. I have many friends that are employed within the district, but as a tru...