By Charles McClure
news@ltview.com
Lake Travis Independent School District is likely to receive additional state funding, in the wake of a decision by Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott to lend a hand to the Cypress-Fairbanks school district in Harris County.

Last Friday, Scott said the struggling Houston school district was supposed to receive an unspecified amount of surplus education money. However, the district chose to implement an additional tax break for homeowners in addition to the mandatory homestead exemption.
In addition to LTISD, Lago Vista ISD, is also likely to receive additional state aid.
“At this point, we do not know how much funding — if any — the district stands to receive,” said LTISD Director of Communications Marco Alvarado. “In a letter sent to school districts last week, the Texas Education Agency indicated that estimates would be made available in July.”
The TEA is not prepared at this time to elaborate on how much money will be distributed to the more than 200 districts that give the optional exemption; however, the final number could prove relatively insignificant.
Lago Vista Superintendent Barbara Qualls told the Austin American-Statesman that her district is on solid fiscal footing, but “there is always a way to use new or unexpected funding.”
While LTISD is also in better financial shape than many other school districts, school officials said there will likely be challenges ahead. All school districts in Texas are facing probable shortfalls in the near future, and LTISD tapped into its reserve funds to balance its current fiscal budget. Trustees will begin the task of assessing the district’s 2009-10 budget in August.
According to an article in the Statesman, the real target is the Cypress-Fairbanks school district in Harris County.
In the first week of June, the Cypress-Fairbanks superintendent suggested eliminating its additional homestead exemption to help plug a budgetary shortfall approaching $29 million.
The idea spurred Texas Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, as well as several of his colleagues, to seek a solution to salvage the tax break and Cypress-Fairbanks could receive more money.
Patrick, who is vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Education, estimated the school district could receive between $5-$8 million as a result of Scott’s decision. Questions remain concerning how much of the money can be used to cover the Cypress-Fairbanks’ operational costs.
That school district has been plagued by gaffs in the state’s school finance system. Like LTISD, it is rapidly-growing, however, it is in much worse shape under the funding system. Its per-student funding has been grid-locked at a much lower rate than most of its neighboring districts in the wake of the Texas Legislature’s much-maligned 2006 school finance legislation.
The situation for Cypress-Fairbanks got so bad that last year it was forced to tap into its reserve funds and lay off employees in order to balance its budget.
Scott’s decision was his only way to specifically address the Cypress-Fairbanks without giving financial funds to school districts that may not need the additional cash.
“What it does is give certain districts that have voluntarily chosen to give a tax exemption to homeowners additional money,” State Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, vice chairman of the Public Education Committee and chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on education, told the Statesman.
Hochberg also told the Statesman that the surplus could have been used to increase what was given to all school districts, but “I don’t blame the commissioner for doing this.”