Background Information
For more than six years, school districts across the state have dealt with the ongoing effects of the Texas School Funding Crisis. From 2019 to 2025, school districts relied on the stagnant same per-student funding, known as the basic allotment, of $6,160 despite rampant inflation of essential operations costs. This forced school districts across Texas to make challenging decisions, such as increasing class sizes, cutting student programs and closing schools.
In the 89th Texas Legislative Session, lawmakers approved new funding for schools, though the majority of funding was restricted to teacher and staff salaries. While this new funding is important, it did not provide school districts with significant funding to address class sizes or student programs. Just $55 was added to the basic allotment for a total of $6,215, the one area of new funding that school districts have flexibility in its usage. This provided Northwest ISD with just around $2 million with flexible funding, or 4% of the necessary increase to match inflation since 2019.
A Statewide School Funding Crunch
Rampant cost increases have dramatically affected school district operations budgets across Texas. With little funding provided by the state to address these cost increases, school districts have made challenging budget cuts to balance budgets.
- Cypress Fairbanks ISD: $77 million deficit budget, reduced more than 600 positions
- Dallas ISD: $127 million proposed deficit budget for 2025-2026
- Denton ISD: $19 million deficit budget, increasing class sizes proposed
- Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD: $10 million deficit, analyzing efficiency adjustments
- Judson ISD: $48 million deficit, considering cutting librarians, increasing class sizes
- Keller ISD: $9.4 million budget shortfall after previously cutting $45 million
- Lewisville ISD: $4.5 million deficit budget following successful VATRE, closing five campuses
- McKinney ISD: $22 million deficit budget, planning student program cuts
- Round Rock ISD: $16 million deficit budget, analyzing reductions
- Socorro ISD: $38 million budget deficit, reducing more than 300 positions
Increased Class Sizes to Balance Budget
Following a lack of state funding adjustments for inflation and the failure of the 2024 operations funding election, Northwest ISD began a challenging but necessary restructuring to balance the district budget. This resulted in larger class sizes for the 2025-2026 school year as well as changes to program staffing models that modified several student services. Because of these changes, more than 100 positions were eliminated, primarily through attrition (resignations and retirements).
As a fast-growth district, Northwest ISD annually adds about 1,200 students per year, which led to hiring more staff to meet increased student population needs. Northwest ISD previously slowed or froze hiring at the district level while continuing to increase staffing at the campus level. With a $16 million deficit during the 2024-2025 school year, maintaining existing staffing models was no longer possible without additional revenue.
Of the reductions in the district budget, more than $6 million in staffing reductions were approved for support positions, and $5.7 million in staffing reductions were approved for teaching positions. Additional reductions were made to non-staffing areas such as contracted services and material budgets.