In addition to the letter, here is a summary of what's going on at STISD:South Texas ISD has enjoyed the power of taxation for years to fund their exclusive multi-county campuses.
STISD is the only public school district in the State of Texas to have had this unbelievable power of taxation, considering that they only serve about 3400 students.
In addition to the local school property taxes paid, taxpayers who live in Hidalgo, Cameron and Willacy counties must pay .0492 per $100 valuation to STSID. This allows STISD to generate around $25 million dollars from local taxes. They also get around $23 Million dollars from State and Federal funds (Federal funds are very insignificant).
This of course is encouraging STISD to continue wasting so much money instead of lowering the tax rate. School officials continue to increase the budget knowing that they are collecting more local taxes. The budget grew more than 10 Million dollars just in the last few years.
The district approximately tax about $52 Billion dollars worth of properties in the three counties. The district has the luxury to continue spending more money by building more schools, add more buildings to the existing campuses and create more useless positions at different levels. Most families who live in the three counties don't even benefit from STSID since their kids don't attend the school system.
They also had the audacity to charge students for summer school even though parents have been over-burdened by paying two school taxes. Parents have expressed their concern by notifying the superintendent and school board members, but they didn't even bother to act on it. They chose to ignore the parents knowing that they have the upper hand in calling the shots. School officials gained too much power after running the district freely without any challenge or accountability.
Other examples of waste in the district would be the hiring of a marketing director and a secretary, liaison between STISD and UTPA, three full-time librarians to service 1500 students and the creation of the New Scholar Academy to help new comers adjust to the new environment. Keep in mind that this particular program is unnecessarily costing the school district around $250,000 every year, which is not needed at all. The district has around 75 school buses traveling around 1.3 Million miles annually. They have certain buses transporting a hand full of kids from the other side of the Valley. They don't really care about the cost of fueling knowing that they have too much money designated for transportation and other wasteful spending.
We believe that the school district is not worried about all this waste since they are getting around $48 Million dollar annual budget. Community and lawmakers need to hold STISD more accountable by investigating their spending habits and the entire operation. They might even have to get more involved to put a stop into this abuse and lack of fiduciary responsibility.
It's time to get the ball rolling by protecting taxpayers in Hidalgo, Cameron and Willacy counties.
14 comments:
STISD was created for the sole purpose of providing services to children with disabilities at a time when most school districts were not able to provide the services. With the Least Restrictive Environment Mandate (LRE), all of the school districts were forced to provide the services to their disabled students within their school district forcing STISD in changing their mission from a school district established for the disabled to one providing Career and Technical Education (CTE) to the students.
Question: Is there a need for STISD to exist when most school districts in the Valley provide the same services (Career and Technical Education) to their students?
Many argue that Charter Schools are now doing the job that the independent school districts were supposed to do. Now, here is yet another level of taxing authority that taxes us to do a job that another taxing entity (the county school systems) are supposed to do. For the state of Texas it seems that multiple taxing entities is just a legislative scheme to tax more and provide less. We have Brownsville Navigation District which also taxes us and provides little to the community but corruption and a self serving board. Same at STISD??????????
How about concerned tax payers....or don't we count? Time to have these taxing entities more "transparent" as the politicians say these days....but there is no effort to make anything "transparent".
STISD has done a very good job of providing a high level of education to it's students. These students give up a lot to attend. Maybe the local districts should use their money more efficiently so they can provide those services. The number of librarians is not out of line because they have several locations. Total number of stduents is not how they should decide the number.
Where is the outrage from taxpayers? This district started to serve the special ed population before they became so huge Valley-wide. Why would they continue to increase their budget knowing that people here in the RGV are hurting financially? We need to get county commissioners, from the three counties, involved so they can prevent this terrible abuse. How about contacting TEA in Austin? The three librarians mentioned in the letter are located in one library at the Mercedes complex. They have other librarians at the other campuses district-wide.
How come this information was never mentioned in the media before? My cousin told me that school buses are practically empty when transporting kids from one side of the Valley to another. Do they have an oversight from the school board? How do they know if the money has been spent wisely? I would probably contact the board members just to let them know what's happening. This will be the first step before taking it to the highest educational level.
As a parent, I saw the waste myself after observing the destruction of the landscape done last year in front of Med Hi. They decided to build another building right on top of the site where thousands of dollars was spent on landscape, benches and expensive trees. I just couldn't believe that no one thought about building somewhere else. Even my teenage daughter commented on why they are throwing money away. I told her that taxpayers are footing the bill, not school leaders or board members. She was smart enough to make that observation.
Look at board members at STISD
I recently spoke to one of the school board members from our local school district. She told me that most people in the area are not aware of how much money STISD is collecting from taxpayers. She even mentioned that STISD has a half-day program to pretend that they are serving just a few special ed students. They are spending approximately $11,000 per student from the entire district. Most local districts spend around $5700 or so per student if they are lucky. Unlike most districts in the Valley, STISD doesn't have athletics, band and other expensive extra curriculum activities.
I was trying to find out more information about the new high school school at Rancho Viejo. I was told that the district will be paying the total cost of $30 million cash. How can they generate this kind of cash if they are collecting the right amount of money to meet the needed budget? Most school districts must borrow the money by passing a multimillion dollar bond that has to be approved by the voters. To be frank, this is an indication that STISD is collecting too much taxes from the three counties. By having so much cash at hand, the board is not obligated to present this as a bond issue to the voters. Someone knows this to be the case.
After reading the letter from the concerned parents, I can't help but feel bad for them. That wasn't nice when the supt and board members chose to ignore their concern. Taxpayers have the right to get answers from these supposedly entrusted individuals. I would definitely show up to the board meeting to inform them about what's going on. They usually provide the public certain amount of time to address board members.
I just found out that school officials are telling their employees that money needs to be spend quickly. She told me that even the secretaries have the power to order fancy and expensive office furniture without any oversight from the principal. They even surplus things that are in very good shape. The library in Mercedes has unlimited budget to buy anything they want. They are constantly getting new computers, remodeling different parts of the library, and getting state of art equipment and copy machines. I wish that my local district has this kind of wealth to spend on our students.
The fact that this is the only kind of school system in the state of Texas makes us look like fools. I live in Brownsville and pay taxes to BISD, TSC and STISD. This is ridiculous. STISD is solely replicating services provided by all school districts. And to top it all off, STISD gets to select its own students. Public schools are legally obligated to take whatever comes their way. Local districts like BISD and LFCISD provide the same services and actually provide more services than STISD. As taxpayers, we need to question the free reign that the superintendent and the board have.
I feel sorry for you having to pay taxes for BISD, TSC and STISD. In our end of the Valley, we are paying Sharyland ISD, STC and STISD. I'm not sure if you know how high the taxes are at Sharyland? The other thing we don't understand is why STC keeps passing multi-million dollar bonds to expand by building more campuses. During the last bond election, Star County ended up forcing Hidalgo County to win the election. Where is the fairness in this over the top system? As long as people keep their heads in the sand, STISD will continue to splurge by throwing our tax dollars away. How can we stop this nonsense? I'm just wondering!!!
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