The Tomball Independent School District is moving forward as best they can with formulating a new budget for the 2011-12 school year, but with the state legislature still haggling over a new school finance formula, final approval of a budget is on hold.

According to Tomball ISD Chief Financial Officer Jim Ross, the district’s budgeting process for the upcoming school year is one month behind, a delay he says is “directly tied to the legislative session.”

At press time last week, Texas lawmakers were entrenched in a special session called to iron out a new education finance plan and determine, if possible, how to make up an expected shortfall of about $10 billion in education. The special session is expected to end this month.

“There is a lot of stuff that could happen, especially with the legislature still running,” Ross told the Tomball ISD Board of Trustees at a June 13 meeting.

At the meeting, Ross proposed a 2011-12 general fund budget of $83.1 million, 1.74 percent higher than last year’s adopted budget of $81.6 million.

However, the board was unable to move forward with the budget, or approve it, without having a projected revenue budget. Ross explained that the district could not project revenues without a funding mechanism put in place by state lawmakers.

“How do we have these conversations when we have no idea what’s going to happen?” Ross said.

However, Ross said that the district has “a pretty good idea” of which direction school finance laws will take. Facing such a large shortfall in revenues, Ross explained that most likely for the first two years of any plan, every district will experience a similar pro-rated cut based on its per pupil cost.

Despite facing such potential cuts, the district has stated it will not lay off teachers or staff for the coming year.

District spokesperson Staci Stanfield previously said that last year the district recognized the potential for a revenue shortfall and made preparations for such an eventuality, setting aside funds in order to avoid layoffs.

Several school districts in the greater Houston area, including Magnolia ISD, have announced massive layoffs for the coming school year.

However, at the June 13 meeting Ross conceded that should the district be facing a significant enough shortfall, “payroll is the most likely” area to be trimmed.

The budget proposed by Ross includes payroll expenditures of $69.7 million, which makes up 85.6 percent of the operating budget.

“The majority of our expenses go to the students,” he said.

Other proposed expenditures include $6.7 million for Contracted Services, $3.3 million for Supplies and Materials, $1.2 million for “Other Operating” expenditures and $416,640 for Capital Outlay.

The district is expected to see its Debt Service Fund Budget increase by about $2.4 million. That is primarily due to the sale of bonds through the Bond 2007 project which has resulted in several new facilities for the district.

The one revenue item that is known is the Food Service Budget, which Ross said was proposed as “balanced” for 2011-12 with $3.6 million in revenues and $3.6 million in expenditures.

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