Spring Branch ISD Featured News

Spring Branch ISD Board of Trustees response to former Superintendent Dr. Duncan Klussmann's OP-ED

 

Former SBISD Superintendent of Schools Dr. Duncan Klussmann authored an opinion piece in the Houston Chronicle on February 24, 2024. Board President Earnest’s response on behalf of the SBISD Board of Trustees is below.

March 8, 2024

Dr. Duncan Klussmann’s opinion piece regarding recent Spring Branch ISD (SBISD) budget decisions contains inaccurate statements. It has been nearly a decade since Dr. Klussmann has been affiliated with SBISD. He neither lives in the district, nor has children in the district. Furthermore, he has not attended an SBISD Board meeting in person in at least the past three years.

We wish to correct the record.

Over the past decade since Dr. Klussmann led SBISD, both the public education landscape and the composition of the Texas Legislature have shifted dramatically. To give context, Dr. Klussmann left in 2015. That was two years before Hurricane Harvey, three years before the mass shooting at Santa Fe ISD, five years before the COVID-19 pandemic, and seven years before the mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde ISD. All of those events significantly impacted our community and school districts throughout Texas. In addition, since 2019, inflation has been 19% per the state comptroller’s office, with no new state funding for public education. The state has enacted sizable unfunded mandates for safety and security, among others. Dr. Klussmann benefited from the opposite economic picture; in fact, the district was able to build two additional facilities under the 2007 bond program due to deflation and falling costs.

This is not the first time in recent years that the district has been forced to make significant budget cuts.  The last time came in 2011, under the tenure of then superintendent Dr. Klussmann. Dr. Klussmann reported in his piece it was 2008. That is incorrect. Dr. Klussmann made the decision in 2011 to eliminate 350 positions, decimating our district’s intellectual capital and instructional expertise, with our entire academic team cut to the bones.

Academics

The results then?

In 2015, Dr. Klussmann’s last year as Superintendent, 26 SBISD schools (67%) and the district were in some level of state accountability monitoring, including all four of our comprehensive high schools. Ten of these schools also were on the federal requirements monitoring list.  STAAR data for 2014 affirms that 15 of 17 elementary and middle school measures were below the state and region. It's taken nearly ten years to fully recover.

The results now?

SBISD’s elementary and middle school student performance on the 2023 STAAR exam meets or exceeds the region and state in 14 of 15 elementary and middle school categories, the exact opposite of 2014 performance levels. 

Finances

With regards to our financial statements, Dr. Klussmann incorrectly asserts the level and purpose of the district’s fund balance. As noted in both our external auditor’s annual board presentation and a February 12, 2024 CFO presentation to the Board, SBISD’s unassigned fund balance for the 2023-24 school year is $70 million. The fund balance is NOT a savings account. As Dr. Klussmann’s own letters to the community asserted in 2011, “[T]he district’s fund balance does not replenish – once spent, those funds are gone.”

Had Dr. Klussmann carefully studied our financial statements and approved budget documents, he also would have known that the Board did make the difficult, but prudent, decision to approve a budget that projected a $36.5 million use of fund balance to maintain programming and staffing for the current school year. This decision was made knowing the 88th Legislature had the largest budget surplus in state history and that $5 billion had been allocated in the state budget for education. We cannot, however, continue to use this level of fund balance year after year.  As Dr. Klussmann noted in 2011, once the fund balance is spent, it is gone. 

Spring Branch ISD maintains the highest Superior rating in the State’s FIRST financial integrity rating system.  Per the preliminary 2024-25 budget document presented to the Board at the February 12, 2024 Board Workshop meeting, even with the $35 million in budget reductions taken for the 2024-25 school year, SBISD will continue to use its fund balance next year. Had the district not taken $35 million in budget reductions for next year as Dr. Klussmann suggests, the resulting lowered fund balance could jeopardize the district’s FIRST rating. Our bond ratings also could be negatively impacted. In turn, this would negatively affect our taxpayers through increased interest rates on future bond sales.

Going into this school year, the district had already reduced $20 million in federal ESSER-funded positions and reduced central office budgets by $7 million. The Superintendent's February 16, 2024 budget message to the community affirmed two-thirds of the Phase III staffing reductions were central office positions.

The SBISD Board of Trustees has a fiduciary duty to maintain sound fiscal management and a budget that aligns with the district’s priorities of reading, math and student supports for all 33,500 students.

School and Program closures

The district’s demographic study and enrollment patterns affirm the Board’s decision to close Panda Path School for Early Learning and Treasure Forest Elementary due to the neighborhood shifts rapidly taking place in the areas of our district north of I-10. Gentrification is to blame for these decisions, NOT the SBISD Board of Trustees.

To best protect the educational experiences of all 33,500 SBISD students, we can no longer afford to run expensive programs like the SKY Partnership (SKY) with YES Prep Public Schools and KIPP Texas, Inc. We recognize that the SKY program was started under Dr. Klussmann and is important to him. That does not change the fact that the partnership is no longer sustainable. And, our Northbrook High School (NHS) students are attending the same colleges and universities as their SKY peers and earning millions of dollars in scholarships and grants. Our newly launched, cost neutral RISE College Academy at NHS will enable students to earn an Associate’s degree before high school graduation, saving our most economically fragile students two full years of college costs – something SKY could not do.

Our SKY partner CFOs annually asked for additional funding, which we could not provide, especially given the $11 million price tag for the program serving only 1,521 students. As further affirmation, in their Dec. 13, 2023, op-ed in The Dallas Morning News, the two SKY partner CEOs urged the state to allocate public education funding and noted their own budget woes, stating, “Our networks alone would face tens of millions of dollars of budget shortfalls if the state doesn’t release the approved funds.”

Similarly, Dr. Klussmann’s claim that the Board “decided to eliminate the popular and well established gifted and talented program” is patently false. The Spring Branch Program for Improving Reasoning and Accelerating Learning (SPIRAL) is not being eliminated; rather, the program is being restructured.

Decision-making communication and community engagement

Recognizing the importance of working effectively and collaboratively with our legislators, in Fall 2022, a 70-member SBISD School Finance Advocacy Team (SFAT) was formed to educate community and parent leaders about the SBISD budget, public school finance and positive advocacy strategies. Every SBISD elected official and every candidate for office was invited to participate. SFAT meetings were conducted as board meetings so they could be livestreamed and video-recorded. Trustees and SFAT members held 100+ meetings, phone calls and text exchanges with elected officials in Austin before and during the 88th Legislative Session. We have not attacked our legislators, as suggested by Dr. Klussmann. Rather, we were forced to express our frustration when members of our own delegation who supported us as board candidates refused to meet with us, and when they finally did, they had their facts wrong. The Houston Chronicle Editorial Board twice wrote editorials praising the SBISD Board for its strong, bold advocacy; one of these editorials supported the Board’s Come and Take It vote that shined a light on recapture and the state’s inaction to fund our schools.

The SBISD Board and Superintendent of Schools prioritized community engagement and communication over the past 18 months. The district maintained a robust 88th Legislative website, and this fall added a Closing the Budget Gap website. Budget presentations were made at more than 20 community and PTA meetings. Between March and June 2023, 11 community emails, signed by me and Dr. Blaine, kept the community informed, and 9 emails from October, 2023 - February, 2024 continued the communication. Of particular note is our joint email dated April 12, 2023, outlining exactly what budget reductions were on the horizon if there was no new state funding. Mailers also were sent to more than 50,000 taxpayers and employees apprising them of the budget situation.

Our board members, elected by our community over the past three years by the largest turnouts and largest margins in district history, are making tough, data-informed, intelligent budget decisions based on the recommendations brought forth by SBISD administration to adjust to this new reality. If Dr. Klussmann had better suggestions for how this Board and this district should deal effectively with the financial challenges, he should have reached out to share his thoughts and ideas. He did not do this. Instead, as he should know from his years in the seat as the leader of this district, his grandstanding and op-ed criticism is not helpful to the staff, students and families of SBISD, the district we love and are all proud to call home.

Chris Earnest, President SBISD Board of Trustees