The Texas Education Agency released Part 2 of their guidance on tax rates, and this piece focuses on 2020 tax rates, and the funding implications for the 2020-21 school year.
Tax rate compression will impact different districts in different ways, depending on each district's property value growth. Local compression means that a district's M&O tax rate will be reduced to keep the tax revenue limited to a 2.5% annual increase. Districts with value growth that exceeds the statewide average of 4.01% will have additional local compression. Districts with declining property values will still be subject to local compression of tax rates (and not required to increase their tax rates), and state aid will increase (or recapture will decrease) to make up the difference in funding.
Tier One
TEA will collect local school district property data from districts in May 2020. This data collection will include both TY 2020 data, as well as historical data that the agency will use to calculate estimates of comptroller certified property values to use for state funding purposes. The agency will also calculate maximum tier one tax rates and make those available in the
summer of 2020.
Tier Two
For TY 2020, districts can access the same amount of Tier Two pennies as in TY 2019, and those with only four golden pennies in the current tax year may access a 5th golden penny by a unanimous vote of the board of trustees for TY 2020. The 5th golden penny is still available to districts that have only accessed four golden pennies in TY 2021 without an election and by a simple majority vote of the board. Any new Tier Two tax effort beyond what was taxed in TY 2019 or the 5th golden penny requires a voter approval election. This particular guidance does not delve into the details of how the timing of such an election would work.
