by Jill Minshew, Llano ISD Chief Financial Officer
Most people in Llano are well aware of the “Robin Hood” provision in school finance laws that requires the district to send local tax dollars back to the state to help fund other school districts. However, I’m not certain if people are aware of a provision known as Additional State Aid for Tax Reduction (ASATR) and how it affects Llano ISD. This stems from the last time the legislature wanted to provide tax relief to property owners (79th Legislature) by reducing the maximum maintenance & operations tax rate school districts could adopt. I wrote about it last year, but as it is still a very important issue for Llano ISD, I felt it was worth repeating.
When the legislature passed this bill, they also passed the ASATR provision to ensure that the school districts were “held harmless” for any local tax revenue lost on a per weighted average daily attendance (WADA) basis. Each district was given a “target revenue” number based on the state and local revenue a district would have earned had it not had to lower its tax rate. Beginning with the 2006-2007 school year, if the state and local revenue amount is less than the “target revenue” amount, the district receives that difference in funding via ASATR. In the first year, Llano ISD received $1,851,568 in ASATR from the state to keep us at our 2005-06 funding levels after the tax rates were reduced.
In 2011, Llano ISD, along with 882 other school districts (86%) were still receiving ASATR payments, which means our funding still isn’t above 2006 levels. However, in the 82nd Legislative session (2011), funding for schools was cut drastically. Part of those cuts included reducing ASATR payments to school districts and completely repealing ASATR by September 2017. In the 83rd & 84th sessions, cuts were partially restored, but the mechanism for repealing ASATR by September 2017 still remains in effect.
For the 2015-2016 school year, Llano ISD expects to receive approximately $680,000 in ASATR. If the 85th legislature does not change the law which repeals ASATR, Llano ISD will lose approximately $400,000 of funding in 2017-2018. That loss will cause Llano ISD to make some cuts to staffing and programs which would be damaging for the children of our community.
The District is paying close attention to this issue and has notified our representatives of the impact the loss of ASATR will have on our district and community. However, it is always good for our representatives to hear from the community as well, so I would encourage you to notify them that eliminating ASATR without replacing that funding in another capacity will have a detrimental impact on our schools.
