DENTON, Texas — Denton ISD is the latest school district to be forced to make tough decisions as state funding for public schools remains in limbo.
Hiring for 78 of the district's open positions is now on pause, indefinitely to battle budget strains.
“If it's a position that's been supporting kids outside the classroom and providing additional tutoring and things that we think are important, we've had to freeze that for lack of funding," said Superintendent Jamie Wilson.
It’s a reality for districts across Texas following a legislative session and several special sessions that deadlocked on school vouchers and didn’t approve any additional funding to public schools.
“Frankly, when you had a 34 billion-plus surplus budget at the state level and not one penny of that came to public schools, we are we are stuck. We've had 18% inflation since 2019. We're funding on 2019 levels,” said Wilson, “So that means we have less people to do the job that we know our kids need.”
Watch the full interview with Superintendent Jamie Wilson here:
So far – teachers aren’t a part of that freeze. But they will no doubt feel it.
“Everyone will probably be picking up additional workload,” Wilson said.
It’s also impacting the fate of new schools being built in the district. Construction at Dorothy Martinez Elementary School in Little Elm is almost done. It’ll open next school year, despite the district not being able to hire additional staff to work there.
But a few miles away, the district is forced to delay the opening of a second much-needed school, Fred Hill Elementary.
“We can't afford to open it. We can't afford to staff it and frankly, we really need it because we need the space, but our classrooms will just be a little more crowded in a couple of places for another year until hopefully we get the resources,” Wilson said.
Wilson says districts need about $1,100 per student to be fully funded. By freezing these positions, the district expects to save about $3.5 million but argues that’s still not enough.
“You're seeing districts that are closing schools, you're seeing districts that are reducing personnel, you're seeing districts that are changing schedules,” he said. “And for us, we're doing everything we can to try to protect the sanctity of the classroom.”
He’s calling on state legislators to step up.
“Our kids are sitting here in classrooms needing their resources to learn, and that money is sitting in Austin waiting on allocation. And we don't have it. It's not OK,” he said.
Wilson says the longer they go without, the more students will feel the squeeze.
“The next legislative session starts on January 25. We will start having conversations about what the reductions look like in 25/26 without any additional funding,” he said. “And that will include looking at our smallest schools and seeing if we need to consolidate looking at all of our programs to see if we can continue to have those at the at the different grade levels that we want our community expects us to have really first class activities and opportunities for our students.”
The district says the only reason they haven’t had to start making those drastic changes yet, is because of Denton County’s rapid growth, which gives them a little boost in revenue.
Despite these latest challenges, the district is hosting a teacher job fair at Denton High School on Saturday, April 13 from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.