Latest news with #JohnKuhn
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
‘This is where we start': Superintendent responds as Abilene ISD anticipates ‘C' rating
ABILENE, Texas () – On Tuesday, families of students in the Abilene Independent School District received a letter from the Texas Education Agency, announcing the district's accountability rating for the 2023-24 school year. The letter confirms that Abilene ISD will receive a rating of '72' for the 2023 school year and is likely to receive a rating of '70' for the 2024 school year. Their rating for 2022 is also expected to be downgraded from 75 to 69 due to new grading criteria. District officials sent a letter to parents on Tuesday morning, ahead of the TEA ratings, which will be released on Thursday. Abilene ISD Superintendent Dr. John Kuhn said this 'C' rating is the district's baseline under the new state grading criteria. 'This is the new grading system. I'm a new superintendent, so this is where we start from,' Kuhn said. Abilene ISD says district 'has work to do', as another 'C' rating expected from TEA The grade is an accumulation of different areas of learning, including STAAR test scores, which Kuhn said the district looks at differently. 'Student testing data should be used by educators to analyze what we're doing well and what we need to improve on. It should be used like that, not to rank and rate schools,' Kuhn said. 'Now, when the state comes out and says, 'Oh, everybody, here's their grade,' that's fine. We want better grades, but our goal is to provide our kids with an excellent education. Then that's going to translate into an A or B rating. But our goal is not to play a game. Our goal is to educate kids well.'The district's main goal moving forward is to have 75% of its students attending an 'A' or 'B' ranked school within the next five years. 'What we're doing is reimagining how we do things to get different results. We've already done a lot of that at the elementary level with the building broader futures model, with the circle's model, with the change in how we field our instructional coordinators,' Kuhn shared. Abilene ISD receives $1.7 million grant for learning acceleration strategies Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Learning Patti Blue said reaching their goal is a multi-step process, including converting some campuses to specialized ones. 'We're looking more and more at specializations for our elementary campuses. A lot of this has not been decided about what the specializations are going to be. That will be some discussions we have as a community going forward,' Blue said. The district aims to continue the dialogue with the community, as Kuhn states, they plan to measure success beyond just test scores. As they undergo various changes, the district said it wants to continue having these conversations with the community about what they would like to see implemented in their students' education. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Lancium's potential impact on AISD: Taxpayers could see reduction due to 'eye-popping' numbers
ABILENE, Texas () – The Lancium Campus, part of the Stargate Project, is projected to bring revenue into the county and Abilene Independent School District Superintendent Dr. John Kuhn says the school district could also benefit. Roundtable: The opportunities & challenges of Abilene's new AI data campus 'The estimates that I've seen and the things that I heard talked about on a federal level really are pretty eye-popping numbers as far as the eventual value of that project,' Kuhn said. The project's tax will go toward the AISD's interest and sinking fund, which repays voter-approved bonds for major capital improvements. However, Texas law prevents the district's maintenance and operations budget from benefiting directly from the artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. Kuhn stated that the anticipated financial impact could significantly alter the situation. 'Any type of massive project like this is going to have a positive impact on the school district's ability to especially raise funds through bond elections, which is how we construct facilities, new schools, and things like that,' Kuhn explained. Abilene City Council weighs large tax abatement for Lancium The district has already initiated internal discussions regarding the potential next steps. Various options are being considered to address the community's future needs. 'We, at some point, do need to figure out a way to make some physical improvements, particularly to our secondary schools, our high schools especially, but also our middle schools. Those types of improvements require money that we currently don't have, so a future bond election would be a consideration for sure,' Kuhn said. The potential benefits not only extend to the school district, but also to local homeowners who stand to gain. 'In the short term, as this project comes online, it will save taxpayers money because it will reduce the tax burden on residential homeowners. Because the Lancium project has such high value in it, they will be paying school taxes,' Kuhn said. As for when the district could start seeing those financial benefits, Kuhn says that remains to be seen. 'Informally, I've heard that the idea is to ramp up this project really, really quickly. We feel like we're going to see immediate increases to our tax base because there are already structures going up right now,' Kuhn said. 'AI is the new global arms race': Expert says Abilene is a key player in worldwide AI growth Kuhn also provided a statement that offers additional insights into this revenue. EDITORS NOTE: Any estimates included in the statement below are based on the partial and unverified information that Kuhn has seen regarding the potential total project value of Lancium and should not be interpreted as guarantees. In the old days, when a multi-billion dollar project like Lancium arrived in a school district, the school district essentially won a lottery and would be flush with cash for maintenance and operations (M &O), which is the main portion of ISD costs. (M&O is used for everything from staff salaries and benefits to bus fuel to paying the electric bill.) A famous example of this olden-days windfall is Glen Rose ISD when the nuclear power plant was built there. The district's budgeted revenue rose greatly because of that project's impact on taxable value in the ISD. Unfortunately for Abilene ISD right now, such a windfall on the M&O side is no longer possible. Here's why: starting in or around 2005, the Texas legislature changed school funding formulas so that ISDs are locked into a funding reality where local revenue and state assistance are combined to create a fixed total funding level. As a result of this change, when local tax receipts rise due to a massive increase in local property value, the state of Texas reduces the level of state-provided funding directed to the ISD. The district's total M&O revenue remains static. When local revenues rise, state revenues fall by the same amount. Nevertheless, even though the Lancium project won't result in a windfall for AISD on the maintenance and operations side, it will still greatly benefit AISD. There is a second side of our tax rate that isn't the maintenance and operations (M&O) side. It's called Interest and Sinking (I&S). This is the portion of local school taxes used to repay voter-approved bonds that fund major capital improvements, like the LIFT. The current total AISD tax rate is $0.9924 per $100 valuation. (This means that for every $100 of value of a property, the property owner pays a bit over 99 cents on school taxes.) Of that total, $0.689 per $100 valuation is for maintenance and operations (M&O) and $0.3034 per $100 valuation is for interest and sinking (I&S). (You can find our historical tax rates here: The Lancium project can help AISD in two big ways. First, the I&S tax rate that must be levied to cover bond payments will fall significantly as the full value of the project comes online. The school district did not abate the property taxes for this project, so the business entity will have to pay full school taxes. As a result of this, the property value is so high that it will cover a large portion of the I&S revenue needs. In other words, the portion of I&S taxes paid by residential homeowners and non-Lancium business owners will drop as Lancium pays its very large share. This project will almost certainly reduce AISD taxpayers' school taxes by a nontrivial amount. In fact, based on early estimates of the maximum value of the project, it is possible that the school taxes on an average home in AISD could decrease by over $100 per year when the Lancium project reaches its full valuation. (Note that this is based on valuation estimates I've seen in the media and should not be taken by anyone as a guarantee, as those values are not at all official.) The second major way this project can benefit AISD is, put simply, it can create enough bond capacity to allow us to finally address our aging facilities, especially our high schools. Our current I&S rate is just over 30 cents per $100 valuation. The statutory maximum rate that an ISD can set for I&S is 50 cents per $100 valuation. This means there is an absolute limit on the number of dollars an AISD bond can possibly generate. When valuation rises significantly (as it will as a result of the Lancium project), the absolute limit on dollars that can be generated also rises. Right now, AISD cannot generate enough I&S revenue—even if we were to max out our I&S rate to 50 cents per $100 valuation—to build a single state-of-art-high school…much less two. The Lancium project changes that calculus dramatically. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Abilene ISD continues to reduce staff with hopes of cutting $12.9 million from payroll
ABILENE, Texas () – Abilene ISD is continuing to reduce staff with hopes of cutting $12.9 million in payroll expenses. Dr. John Kuhn spoke on this issue during a school board workshop February 6, saying 'my powers of persuasion have failed me thus far on convincing people that this is real, and I'm not just being a jerk. We have to fix our staffing.' It has been one of Dr. Kuhn's missions since his hiring in April 2024 to balance the district's budget, largely by ensuring staffing levels match enrollment. Currently, Dr. Kuhn says he's trying to tackle this issue the easy way by offering early notice of retirement incentives (46 employees have agreed to this thus far), implementing a hiring freeze, and closing two elementary schools. If this doesn't allow Dr. Kuhn to reach his goal of cutting the budget's deficit in half, he'll have to start cutting the payroll the hard way, by a Reduction in Force. Dr. Kuhn says he doesn't want to go this route, 'because you are literally calling people in and saying, hey remember how you had a job, well you don't have it anymore.' Implementing a Reduction in Force would also require Abilene ISD to declare fiscal exigency, which would hurt their bond rating. Dr. Kuhn hopes to cut at least $7 million of the needed $12.9 this school year, while figuring out the remainder next school year. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
