Waco Independent School District is not alone in facing school budget concerns, declining enrollment and increasing state pressure.
In a Friday session at the Texas Tribune Festival in downtown Austin, Waco Superintendent Tiffany Spicer joined other public school chiefs from around the state to talk about their common struggles.
Those included superintendents from Dallas, Richardson and San Elizario, which is near El Paso. Superintendents said they want state officials not only to provide more financial aid to public schools but to listen to them and their communities.
Like districts across the state, Waco ISD is seeing a decline in student enrollment, which will affect state funding. Spicer told the crowd that the district has lost about 300 students in the new school year, less than the 500 a consultant had projected.
“I know that’s still a lot of kiddos, but I was like, OK, check. They’re still coming,” Spicer said.
Since starting as superintendent in 2024, Spicer has witnessed families’ generational ties to Waco ISD and come to believe that the district can attract students by communicating what it offers.
Spicer recently talked to middle schoolers who were interested in engineering but unaware that they could study that subject in high school.
“If my kiddos inside our system don’t know, that means my families don’t know,” Spicer said. “That means my communities don’t know.”
She described the district’s new strategic plan, which focuses on student achievement, staff retention and recruitment, and engaging families and communities.
“We’re talking about those things to make sure that they know what we’re doing in our schools and why public education is the place to choose,” Spicer said.
Waco ISD is among several districts across the state that are trying to avoid the fate of districts such as Houston, Fort Worth and Connally ISDs, which the state has taken over because of scores on the A-F accountability system.
The year after Spicer began, the district learned that South Waco Elementary was one failing grade away from triggering a statewide takeover of the whole district. She and the school board to either turn around the school in nine months or pursue a partnership with a charter school that would win a two-year pause on state interventions.
The board agreed to enter a partnership with Third Future Schools, a nonprofit charter founded by Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles, to run South Waco and Dean Highland elementaries.
“I do not want to get into this partnership, but that’s the way I keep us alive,” Spicer said. “That’s the way I keep us in the game. That’s the way we have local control. That’s the way you still get to serve as trustees. That’s the way you still have the partnership with the mayor, with city council members, with every organization in our community.”
The panel of superintendents discussed the challenge of navigating ever-changing state policies that are often made without consulting the school leaders who have to implement them.
“The important issue around any kind of guidance is: engage us, engage our communities,” Dallas ISD Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde said. “Just because you’re at a state level doesn’t mean all of us in this room don’t have something to add from our experiences and being members of the community.”
She said state leaders say they want schools to focus on student achievement, but they load schools with requirements without the state funding to support them.
“If you look at those unfunded mandates, or what I’m now calling fractional funding, how many of those are connected to just student academic achievement and just that? No excuses,” Elizalde said.
San Elizario ISD Superintendent Jeannie Meza-Chavez urgered the state to choose students and continue to invest in classrooms.
“The money needs to be spent directly with the children where they’re going to be impacted the most, and that’s in their communities,” Meza-Chavez said. “They need to come into our school systems and become familiar with what we’re doing. We need to choose, in Texas, we need to choose kids first.”
Richardson ISD Superintendent Tabitha Branum echoed the need for funding. The district has assessed the areas it needs funding, which includes transportation, safety and security, special education and gifted and talented.
“We’re $33 million underfunded,” Branum said. “And so, if we would just have a commitment for an increase in funding in those basic allotments that are foundational to what we do, we would not have a deficit budget in Richardson ISD for the 26-27 school year.”
