Want someone to blame for Lamesa ISD’s budget deficit? Look to lawmakers in Austin

By Cassandra Raucheisen, crauchei@ttu.edu and Yemi Akinyeye, oakinyey@ttu.edu 

During his first year as superintendent of Lamesa Independent School District, David Richey was able to keep red ink from besmirching his carefully crafted school budget.

Lamesa’s enrollment had been dropping and its revenues along with it, but Richey still managed to offset the declines with just enough cost-cutting for revenues to exceed expenses and for the district to remain in the black. 

In his second year, however, he wasn’t so lucky. 

Declines in property values led to another drop in tax revenues and Lamesa was forced to report a $634,000 deficit.

More cost-cutting ensued.

“Since taking over this role we have been on a mission to trim anywhere we can that isn't human capital,” Richey said. “Trimming staff will be a last resort.” 

What’s facing David Richey is nothing out of the ordinary for school superintendents in rural West Texas and the panhandle. 

Faced with declining enrollments, a Byzantine tax system, and a state government in Austin that doesn’t seem to care, their lives are often spent figuring out what to cut next.

Public schools in Texas get their funding from two places: property taxes and the state, Richey explained. 

In very simple terms, every school district is assigned an amount of money based on enrollment that they need to operate. It's up to the school to raise as much money as they can from taxes. Then the state is supposed to come in and provide the rest. 

In a property-rich district – where property values are high and owners can afford to pay them – like Andrews County, the state does not have to provide much money at all, Richey said. But in a property-poor district, like Lamesa, the state has to provide quite a lot.  

The catch, Richey said, comes when property values are set locally by an appraisal district but are re-appraised by the state. If the state appraises the property higher than the local appraisal district, it will only fund the local school district based on the state appraisal.

If the local appraisal district sets the values too low to make the state happy and Lamesa does not collect as much in taxes as the state thinks it should, the state will only give Lamesa what it thinks it deserves based on its assessment, Richey said, and that leaves a hole.

“That hole is different for every district,” he said. “For us that hole costs us about $800,000 a year.”

Richey said he attends meetings of the local appraisal district and he appeals to the board to set higher rates. But he’s gotten nowhere.

“This problem exists in over 200 districts,” Richey said. “It used to only exist in a handful, but as people have paid more for their property across the state, the problem has spread. The local appraisal district does not want to be seen as the "bad guy" by appraising property higher, but as a result, the school districts are being punished by not receiving all of the funding that it takes to run a district.

“We have tried to get legislation to change so that the amount the state pays is based off of the local values, not the state values," Richie continued. "We have made no ground in that regard.”

In an August 2023 article in Texas Monthly, Forrest Wilder called the problem for rural school districts  “a slow-motion disaster” caused by a resource-starved public school finance system.

And the state legislature isn’t helping.

“Last biennium, they held the money allotted for public schools from us because the voucher bills did not get across the finish line,” he said “We do think we will get "some" help this time, but it won't be much. Public schools are still receiving the same amount of money that we did in 2019.

“I ask people all the time: ‘What in your life costs the same today that it did in 2019?’ There has been no adjustment for inflation.”