The Houston Independent School District board approved the budget for the 2016-2017 school year.
Texas now considers HISD a wealthy district due to rising property values and that means the district has to reimburse the state approximately $162 million through a mechanism called recapture.
The budget for the next school year contains $84 million in cuts to balance this situation, which is happening for the first time in HISD’s history.
The cuts will result in the district eliminating 80 administrative positions, as well as doing away with the Apollo program and ending teachers’ bonuses.
Some members of the board criticized the state’s system to fund public schools and interim Superintendent Ken Huewitt said reforms are needed.
“We can kind of move forward and start dealing with this recapture issue because this is not something that we have to deal with every year, we’ve got to get this changed,” Huewitt said at the end of the public hearing held to approve the budget.
The budget was passed by five votes to two.
Trustees Manuel Rodríguez, Wanda Adams, Rhonda Skillern-Jones, Jolanda Jones and Michael Lunceford voted in favor of the budget, while Greg Meyers and Anna Eastman voted against it.
Trustees Harvin Moore and Diana Dávila were not present at the time of the vote.