The Brownwood ISD Board of Trustees approved the 2022-23 school year budget and maintenance and operations tax rate during a special called meeting Thursday.

The budget is climbing to $36,189,846, which is an increase from $32,870,819 a year ago. Also, the school nutrition budget of $2,378,973 was approved, which is higher than last year’s $1,817,951, and the debt service budget of $2,304,025 dipped slightly from $2,306, 975 the prior school year.

“I’m proud of the budget we have, it’s not excessive by any means,” said Brownwood ISD Superintendent Dr. Joe Young. “The budget today that we approved of $36 million is up about $3 million from last year, and $2.7 million of that went back into employee compensation for benefits such as salary raises and those kinds of things. Also, everything has gone up in price – gas is higher, electricity is higher, the cost of schoolbooks, everything has gone up significantly. Even though everything has gone up, most of the budget increase has gone back to our teachers.”

A maintenance and operations tax rate of $.8634 was approved, which is more than 7 cents lower than the $.9369 of a year ago.

“We were able to decrease the overall tax rate by right around 3 cents,” Young said. “The school board does a good job of being good stewards of the money, being sure we take in what we need to educate our kids while also decreasing the tax rate and paying down the bond.”

Also, the school nutrition budget of $2,378,973 was approved, which is higher than last year’s $1,817,951, and the debt service budget of $2,304,025 dipped slightly from $2,306,975 the prior school year.

The meeting also featured the passage of a defeasance resolution, as Texas law was previously amended to permit Texas school districts to levy an ad valorem tax for debt coming due in the current tax year or in a future tax year.

This process requires the adoption of a redemption resolution that brings an additional debt payment into the current fiscal year along with the levy of the tax rate for that year and allows for the prepayment to occur by funding an escrow when tax proceeds are collected, resulting in the defeasance of outstanding debt.

Utilizing this strategy, BISD is able to maintain a steady debt service tax rate and prepay outstanding debt with current revenues, resulting in significant interest cost avoidance.

“We’re going to put some additional money toward the bond that we had in the past to get the interest cut off there to save our district some money,” Young said.