Marble Falls School Board approves balanced budget
MARBLE FALLS — Without cutting any programs, the Marble Falls Independent School District board Aug. 29 passed a $43.4 million balanced budget for fiscal year 2012-2013, officials said.
Like most Texas school districts, MFISD has struggled with state budget cuts on the local level. “Obviously budgets are tighter, but we are going to maintain all the programs we had last year,” Superintendent Rob O’Connor said. “We’re still being conservative on the budget.”
The School Board passed a budget that included $36.8 million in spending for maintenance and operation and $6.6 million to pay down debts.
The M&O side — which includes salaries — saw a decrease of $2 million over the previous budget.
O’Connor said the budget, along with state funding, remained flat from 2006 to 2010.
“Then we had two big decreases (in state funding) in 2011 and 2012,” he said. “But we made the adjustments we needed to balance our budget.”
O’Connor added approval by taxpayers to shift 1.33 cents from the debt-service portion of the tax rate to the M&O side helped balance the budget.
During the Aug. 25 vote, residents approved an overall tax rate of $1.28 per $100 valuation, down from $1.29 — or a penny.
The vote authorized the district to move the 1.33 cents from debt service to M&O as well as giving one penny back to property owners.
The 2012-2013 budget does include raises for teachers under the current pay scale, O’Connor said.