Category: School News

On June 5-6, the Devine FFA Ag Clays team competed at the State FFA Ag Clays competition held at the National Shooting Complex in San Antonio. They competed in Trap Shooting on day 1 and Sporting Clays on day 2. Team members included Madison Brown, Zoe Gonzales, Sierra Brown, Tristan Walker, Korbin Campbell and Luke Friesenhahn.

By Anton Riecher
A tax ratification election in November is being considered as part of the complicated resolution to a possible $2.5 million Devine ISD budget shortfall attributed to uncertainty of appraised property values (since so many were protested).
Going the tax ratification route would allow the district to regain any funding lost from tax collection by means of state aid, Superintendent Todd Grandjean told the board in a budget meeting Monday evening.
“With being able to go out for a TRE we would have a more assertive way to tell (voters) that this is going to happen,” he said.
Much of what was discussed hinges on a pending special session of the Texas Legislature called by Gov. Greg Abbott to further debate property tax relief and other issues.
The school board is also considering taking $717,961 from $1.1 million in remaining elementary and secondary school emergency relief (ESSER) funds to support budgeted salary increases.
As explained by the district’s chief financial officer Shannon Ramirez the proposed election revolves around the use of $689,624 in “golden pennies” or Tier II funding set aside by the school board in its formula to “compress” the tax rate. (Editor’s note: The state’s definition of “golden pennies” is stated as follows: Golden pennies provide tax revenue that is not subject to recapture by the State of Texas. Using golden pennies is an exercise of LOCAL control. Voters decide to access the pennies; all the revenue generated by them stays in the school district.
Compression refers to an intentional act to lower the tax rate which, in turn, reduces what taxpayers owe.
“When this passed we did a resolution to keep five of our pennies,” Ramirez said. “There are still some pennies out there that we could get back. It would go to the voters in November in the general election.”
Beside the golden pennies still available, the district could also reclaim nine copper or Tier I pennies held in reserve totaling $46,875, she said.
(Editor’s note: A Texas Tribune article on school finance explains “copper pennies” as “Any money a district raises with pennies seven through 17 — so-called “copper pennies” — is subject to recapture. If a district raises more than $31.95 of revenue per copper penny, that overage goes back to the state.)
“The golden pennies are the ones that we want more of,” Ramirez said. “We only have three to four but it would bring in over $680,000.”
She said she was unsure whether a tax ratification election to certify reclaiming the pennies and a bond election could be held on the same ballot, a reference to any attempt to remount the district’s failed $32.2 million bond issue in May.
Grandjean said tax relief measures still being considered by the Texas Legislature are expected to compress tax rates an additional 25 cents.
“We need four pennies of the 25 cents the state is about to give (taxpayers) back,” he said. “So in effect their tax rate would be compressed by 21 cents and the way we don’t lose funding is the money we generate and collect off our taxes we just get back from state aid. This is how they are making this all whole.”
Board president Nancy Pepper said that winning approval in the tax ratification election cannot be relied on. Using the budgeted ESSER funds to drive down the expected deficit would be more reliable.
“We can’t even know if this is going to pass,” Pepper said. “I would think we could use the ESSER funds and we would at least be a little bit better off.”
During Monday’s meeting Ramirez reviewed a host of positions at the various district campuses that have been filled, remain unfilled or have been dropped in the effort to further reduce the budget. Other cuts discussed included items such as a $40,000 tractor dropped in favor of several new buses.
Unbudgeted open positions at the high school include one FCS (family and consumer sciences) teacher and one ESSER teacher. High school openings that have remained unfilled all year and are not now in the budget include math teacher, a joint math teacher-coach, science teacher and webmaster teacher.
At the middle school, open positions for an ESL aide and an ESSER teacher/aide are not included in the budget. The elementary and intermediate schools have no unbudgeted positions, according to Ramirez’ PowerPoint presentation to the board.
The budget workshop was limited to discussion only with no action taken.
Ramirez told the board in May that questions over final appraised property values might make it impossible to meet budgeted salary increases for teachers. She cited property value protests, ADA (appraised district appraisals) losses and provisions in state tax law as contributing to the expected shortage.

By Anton Riecher
Uncertainty over final appraised property values might make it impossible for Devine ISD to meet its budgeted salary increases for teachers without additional funds from other sources, school district director of finance Shannon Ramirez told trustees Monday night.
She cited property value protests, ADA losses and provisions in state tax law as contributing to the expected shortage. The expected losses in tax collection and state funding is projected at $2.5 million
“To increase our salaries we need additional funds either by increasing ADA (appraisal district appraisals) or reducing staffing positions,” Ramirez said.
Trustees proposed referring the matter back to the individual campuses to identify possible budget cuts. Trustee Renee Frieda said she would expect strong recommendations in view of the situation.
“It would need to be zero based budgeting where you go in and say ‘I want you to revalidate every position you have and convince us’ or ‘I’ve identified these as improvements we have to have.’ If we are going to make this happen we need an X percent reduction and each campus needs to identify that reduction.’”
The report comes in the wake of the district’s failure to win approval for a $32.3 million bond issue earlier this month.
Ramirez reported that as of April 30, 2023 preliminary district property values show a 25 percent increase in certified value for Medina County. By contrast, neighboring Frio County showed only a nine percent increase from 2022 certified values.
Chief among the issues leaving appraised values in flux are property value protests by landowners, she said.
“We adopt our budget on preliminary values in June taking into account protests under review,” Ramirez said. “When we received certified values in August they were much lower than projected due to the number of protests approved.”
Reductions due to appraisal protests resulted in a $500,000 shortage in tax collection estimates. Add to this another $500,000 short fall expected due to appraised value loses, Ramirez said. Trustees based their 2022-2023 budget on a projected ADA of 1830.
However, as of May 5, six weeks ADA stood at only 1804.993.
A further loss of $1.5 million in state funding is forecast due to the provisions of Texas tax law. For the last three years the state comptroller’s office has ruled Medina County property values invalid based on their own property value studies.
The law provides that after three consecutive years of invalid values a school district must use the state’s values versus those arrived at by the county.
“This creates a loss of over $1.5 million in state aid,” Ramirez said.
As are many other Texas school districts, Devine ISD to appealing the state comptroller’s action. However, proceedings regarding the conflict are not expected to be resolved until August or later.
Devine and Natalia school districts are among approximately 25 percent of Texas districts in which the state comptroller has assigned values after ruling the county appraisals invalid.
Frieda said the two percent “step” increase adopted by the school district in keeping with Texas Education Agency proposals lags far behind the inflation rate of 8.3 percent reported in the United States in 2022.
Board president Nancy Pepper said the salaries increases lag behind those offered in neighboring counties.
“I just don’t like seeing us under surrounding districts,” she said.

The mural is approximately 75 feet long and 16 feet tall. Last Wednesday May 10th, twenty two students worked for 8 hours to paint the mural on the side of the original Devine High School Auditorium, now home of the Devine VFW.
“DHS students in the Art 2 class worked together to design the mural based on the patriotic theme with the purpose to honor veterans,” said DHS art teacher Nicole Hamby. “It is the largest mural in Devine!”
“The mural isn’t quite finished. The plan is to add shading and silhouettes of Service Members on the right side of the mural,” Hamby said.
The final design will be a waving USA flag with silhouettes of nopales cactus to represent Devine.

Any businesses or organizations interested in commissioning DHS students to design and paint a mural next school year are invited to contact DHS Art teacher, Mrs. Nicole Hamby, via email at nicole.hamby@devineisd.org. 
DHS Student Artists on this mural are:
Hector Bernal
D’Angelo Cardenas
Jiselle Corral
Arabelle Davalos
Miranda Delgado
Diego Estrada
Antonio Gamboa
Jayden George
Jesse House
Miranda Jimenez
Carlos Mendez Peralta
Johanna Navarro
Isabell Nuncio
Anahi Ortigoza
Deisy Ramirez
Ashley Rivera
Jordan Roberts
Luciano Rodrigez
Joseyandel Saavedra
Valerie Salinas
Neveah Teniente
Serenity Whitaker