The Mexico Public Schools Board of Education approved the district’s budget for the 2025-26 school year at its June 17 meeting. 

The board also approved the 2025-26 salary protocol, which includes base pay salary for teachers - $42,700 - and many various adjustments, such as for extra duty and the support staff pay schedule.

Superintendent Troy Lentz discussed the budget changes this year with the board.  

“We do predict that the feds are stepping back in a significant way,” Lentz said during the meeting about funding.

But he said he expects state funding to improve this year.  

Salaries and benefits make up 80% of the operating budget, which does not include the debt service or capital projects fund, Lentz told the Ledger in an email. The district has budgeted $31.3 million in operating expenditures for the 2025-26 school year. 

A look at the percentage of revenues provided by the federal government to Mexico has dropped from 20.5% in Fiscal Year 24 to 11.5% in Fiscal Year 26. State revenues are expected to grow from 25% in FY 24 to a projected 31.2% in FY 26.

The budget for the 2025-2026 school year includes the district operating for the first time in several years without federal Covid relief funds. The budget calls for deficit spending in operations and capital improvement funds. 

“The deficit in the operating budget is driven by the board policy goal of maintaining a fund balance between 20% and 30%,” the budget report stated. “Compensation schedules were designed to recruit and retain staff while spending down reserves while allowing future budgets to responsibly adjust as reserves drop below 30%.”

The report stated the deficit in the capital improvement budget is driven by construction schedules developed after passage of the April 2024 bond issue. 

“The 2025-2026 fiscal year will likely see the majority of the $21 million voter approved work completed; however, some work will continue into the 2026-2027 fiscal year,” the report stated. Issues affecting the revenue projections for the operating budget were the elimination of federal Covid relief funding; the increase of the state adequacy target for formula funding to $7,145; the impact of returning to counting summer school ADA for state funding; and the reassessment of local real and property taxes after implementation of state statute 137.1050.

The budget report also included considerations affecting expenditure projections for the operating budget, which were implementation of step increase on certificated salary schedule;  $700 increase to the base teacher pay; a $20 increase to daily substitute teacher rate; a $40 increase to long-term substitute teacher rate; a 3% increase to non-certificated staff pay; a minimum wage increase; and an increase in board paid health insurance to $709.23 a month.

Lentz said in an email to the Ledger that for the 2024-2025 school year, the district’s assessed value was $239,661,041. 

“As the budget was being developed for the 2025-2026 school year, a conservative projection of $239,661,041 was used to project local revenues,” he said. “If the state tax commission forces an increase to the assessed value, we will likely have a lower tax rate ceiling approved by the state auditor.”

Also at the meeting, among other agenda items, the board reviewed a first draft of the Continuous School Improvement Plan, with the final plan to be adopted in August.

“I’d like to get feedback over the next couple of months,” Lentz told the board. 

The CSIP was developed through a collaborative approach during the 2024/2025 school year, the agenda document stated. All stakeholders were engaged during the work as teachers, administrators, parents, students, and community members participated through community forums and surveys. During the community forums, teams reviewed MSIP 6 data and the district’s climate and culture survey data, and CSIP goals were proposed and refined. The board of education considered a draft of the revised CSIP. Additional feedback will be gathered and the final CSIP will be presented in August.

Board Member Jon Calhoun asked whether there was something goal-based in how the district communicates to the public and something goal-based in the discipline enforcement of students. Lentz said he thought the ideas could be strategies or goals that could be achieved. Calhoun said he understands the district has to follow laws on what can be divulged in a disciplinary case but thinks there should be a standard form of communication for parents, that they are given some kind of idea as to what has happened with their child. He also floated the idea of a committee that could study the issue over the next couple of years.

“I’m just trying to alleviate parental stress,” he said.

Assistant Superintendent Julie Lower said the district can work with campus principals on communication with parents to tell them as much as possible to try to alleviate worries.

Board President Jessica Ekern encouraged trustees to examine the CSIP document and come up with ideas.