AISD staff to testify on school finance

Nicole Conley, chief financial officer for the Austin Independent School District, is scheduled to testify at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 28 in front of a joint meeting of the Texas House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations and the House Committee on Public Education. State representatives are set to discuss Additional State Aid for Tax Reduction (ASATR), the Cost of Education Index and the state’s recapture program. AISD is the single largest payer of recapture in the state. Its payment accounts for 13 percent of all state collections. During the next five years, AISD is projected to pay nearly $2.6 billion in recapture payments to the state. Although recapture was created to help property-poor districts, Austin is in a unique position in that it is considered property-wealthy, yet nearly 60 percent of the district’s students live in poverty.