AUSTIN (KXAN) – At the Austin Independent School District board meeting Monday night, the Superintendent released the preliminary budget for FY 2013, showing no job cuts, but a possible pay raise for teachers.

By dipping into the reserve funds, $32.5 million could be extracted, some of which could go towards a one time three percent increase for teachers.

Because the budget could still be troublesome over the next several years, the school board also heard talk of a possible property tax rate increase.

AISD currently has the second lowest tax rate in Central Texas.

The property tax rate increase could go to voter’s in November. The budget should be approved sometime this summer.

Also, in a unanimous vote, board members voted to delay the 15-percent rule for the new STAAR exams until the 2012/2013 school year. However, students will still be required to pass the exam this school year.

“They are still held accountable for their performance for graduation purposes. But, it does provide
a little more, ease of transition,” said Christy Rome, with AISD.

board members had the initial discussion last week on whether to defer the 15-percent grading rule for the new STAAR, or State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness Exams until the 2012-2013 school year.

On Friday February 17th, Robert Scott, Commissioner of Education for the State of Texas, announced he would defer implementation of the new 15-percent grading requirement for this current school year, after concern came in from many parents, teacher and state leaders that there wasn’t enough prep time for students.

Each school district in the state now has to decide whether to include the end-of-course exam scores as part of the student’s overall graduating grade for this year, or wait until the next school year.

“There’s not a lot of funding out there,” said Beth Thornton, who owns a local tutoring business called Tutoring Austin . “There are some schools that don’t have the practice materials. They don’t have the preparation in place to start having this not only be an annual system that districts are accountable for, but also something that the students are accountable for.”

“We’ve been getting a lot of phone calls specifically for STAAR with parents saying, ‘We don’t really know what to expect.’ They’re a little nervous, or their kid’s (are) a little nervous,” she said.

Instead of four exams previously administered through TAKS, STAAR requires students grade 3 through 11 complete 12 course exams, which are also timed.

“They’re supposed to be a little tougher. And they wanted to make students a little more accountable,” Thornton said.

The new end-of-course exams scores were expected to start counting for this year’s 3rd through 9th graders. But, with the new adjustment to the state law, individual school districts can decide to push the 15-percent rule to start the 2012-2013 school year instead, affecting 3rd through 10th graders that school year and giving more prep time to this year’s students, which AISD voted to do on Monday night.