‘A shocking lack of understanding.’ TAD deliberately defunded schools, districts say

The Tarrant Appraisal District’s Board of Directors deliberately jeopardized school funding when it approved changes that affect property valuations, according to a letter signed by nine school board presidents.

Board members also “displayed a shocking lack of understanding regarding school funding laws” when they finalized sweeping changes to the county’s reappraisal plan on Aug. 9. The changes include biennial reappraisals, a 5% threshold on market value increases and a hold on appraisals in 2025.

Documents the Star-Telegram received through an open records request reveal that elected board member Matt Bryant was well aware before the vote of the potential risks the changes present.

The TAD board’s actions come “at a time when Texas public schools are already facing multimillion-dollar deficits because of political posturing at the state level,” the letter states.

TAD assesses the value of property in Tarrant County for tax purposes. School districts, cities and other entities base their tax rates on the values.

“While it could be argued that the reappraisal plan’s defunding of public education was an unintended consequence, school districts fully informed TAD in specific detail of how public education funding would be decreased by the state,” the letter states.

Were the negative effects to school funding unintentional, the TAD board had enough time to fix the error, the letter states. “Instead, they chose to intentionally harm the funding of public schools in Tarrant County,” the letter reads.

The letter was signed by representatives from the Fort Worth, Castleberry, Crowley, Eagle Mountain-Saginaw, Everman, Kennedale, Lake Worth, Northwest and White Settlement school districts.

School district officials and tax professionals told the Star-Telegram and the TAD board members that the changes could cause districts to fail the Texas Comptroller’s biennial property value study, in which the state office declares its own estimation of property values in a school district.

If the comptroller’s value for a district differs from TAD’s estimate by 10% or more, the district automatically loses state funding. If the property value study is off by 5% to 10%, the district enters a grace period and has two years to align property values more closely with the comptroller’s numbers. Appraising every other year could render districts unable to do so.

The reappraisal plan changes will negatively effect over 380,000 schoolchildren and result in combined funding losses countywide totaling more than $100 million, the letter states. The nine districts estimated that they could lose nearly $84 million collectively.

The districts’ letter also refers to an action taken by elected TAD board member Eric Morris that removed language that could have protected school districts from failing their property value studies by allowing reappraisals on off years in the event of a failure.

“Throughout the meeting, TAD board members expressed no desire to compromise so school districts wouldn’t lose vital funding,” the letter said.

The idea that the board acted deliberately to defund schools is “absurd,” according to appointed TAD board member Gary Losada.

“No such thing was ever discussed in my presence,” he said.

TAD board President Vince Puente called the situation a “Catch-22,” saying that school districts’ concerns exacerbate those of taxpayers and vice versa.

He agreed with the districts’ statement about state-level politics affecting school budgets, saying the “real problem is how the state distributes revenue.”

TAD emails appear to support districts’ claim

Bryant was well aware of how failing a property value study can negatively impact school funding, according to an email the Star-Telegram received through an open records request to TAD.

On July 10, Chief Appraiser Joe Don Bobbitt sent Bryant data from a study by the Texas Education Agency that revealed funding losses by school districts across the state over the last three years because they failed property value studies.

The data include over 235 instances of funding losses from 2021 to 2023. Some of the entries represent the same district, as many lost funding in multiple years.

Over 50 of the entries display losses in the millions of dollars. The Brownsville school district topped the chart with more than $24 million in lost state funding in 2023 because it failed its property value study.

Bryant declined to comment on why he continued to work to get the changes passed after seeing the study. No other TAD board members said they had seen the study before the July 22 meeting.

A week after receiving the study, Bryant said in an email to fellow elected board member Callie Rigney that County Judge Tim O’Hare had “scripted” the agenda items that resulted in the changes to the reappraisal plan, according to documents received through an open records request.

Neither Bryant nor O’Hare denied the county judge’s writing of the agenda items when asked about it in mid-August. O’Hare declined to comment on the issue when approached at a campaign event for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in Fort Worth on Aug. 17.

On Monday, Bryant and a representative from O’Hare’s office told the Star-Telegram that O’Hare never “scripted” the agenda items. Ruth Ray, O’Hare’s spokesperson and policy director, said the county judge was “in the room” when the motions were first requested by Rigney at the July 1 swearing in of the three elected board members .

‘Just another way to take funding from us’

One Tarrant County superintendent accused O’Hare and the elected TAD board members he endorsed of targeting school funding as part of a broader political agenda against public education.

“It’s pretty obvious the county judge is very far-right leaning,” said Kennedale Superintendent Chad Gee, adding that the documentation the Star-Telegram’s investigations have produced “support that narrative that’s coming out of Austin, that public schools are bad, that public schools need to be done away with at all costs.”

That narrative includes Gov. Greg Abbott’s campaign for school vouchers , Gee said, as well state lawmakers’ refusal to give schools desperately needed funding even as the state has a record $33 billion budget surplus .

“This is just another way to take funding away from us,” he said.

Ray countered the assertion that this narrative has driven O’Hare’s involvement in TAD policy, pointing out in an email that he “attended public schools and all of his children have from the time they entered kindergarten.”

Arlington school board president Justin Chapa did not sign onto the other districts’ letter or go so far as to call the TAD board’s actions a deliberate attempt to defund public schools.

He did, however, point out how a change to state tax law that went into effect on July 1 prohibits school districts in counties of more than 75,000 people from disapproving of reappraisal plans, as they used to be able to do.

By not appearing to pay heed to school districts’ concerns in these matters, the TAD board displayed what Chapa called “deliberate indifference to the effect this will have on funding school districts in Tarrant County.”

Despite the new prohibition on disapproving an reappraisal plan, the Arlington school board voted last week to do just that. Chapa told the Star-Telegram that the board’s legal team found a provision in the tax code that allows it to reject decisions of the appraisal district.

That resolution may have amounted to what Chapa called a “formality” meant to “express specifically our disagreement with the appraisal plan,” but the board also voted to reject TAD’s budget, citing a lack of justification for a nearly 15% increase.

“If you are going to freeze property tax appraisals essentially until 2027, then why do you need a 15% increase in your budget?” Chapa said.

Seven other Tarrant County school boards have passed similar resolutions following TAD’s approval of the reappraisal plan.

How much funding do school districts estimate they will lose?

Carmen Arrieta-Candelaria, the Fort Worth school district’s chief financial officer, told the school board at a meeting on Tuesday that the reappraisal plan changes could lead to school budget cuts .

Friday’s letter includes a breakdown of how much each signatory district estimates it will lose in annual funding:

• Castleberry ISD: $1.4 million

• Crowley ISD: $7.5 million

• Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD: $11.2 million

• Everman ISD: $1.8 million

• Fort Worth ISD: $45 million

• Kennedale ISD: $2.1 million

• Lake Worth ISD: $1.2 million

• Northwest ISD: $10 million

• White Settlement ISD: $3.5 million

Tarrant County is “gambling with the money of school districts in the revenue that they’re supposed to receive,” said Jonathan Pastusek, chief financial officer for the Northwest school district.

More than 80% of Northwest’s budget goes to payroll, he said, and funding decreases as small as 1% to 2% could have dire consequences on teachers and students.

“That’s going to affect the classroom dramatically,” he said.

Tarrant County Tax Assessor-Collector Wendy Burgess told the Star-Telegram in an email that she voiced opposition to the motion to approve the reappraisal plan and that Bobbitt had notified the board that one school district was already at risk of failing its property value study at its current values.

The changes to the reappraisal plan will not only negatively affect schools, but ultimately will backfire on Tarrant County taxpayers, she said.

“Putting the school districts in further peril will not achieve the intended goal of property tax relief for local taxpayers,” Burgess said. “If values drop, taxpayers will be locked into a higher tax bill because their value will not be reappraised until 2027.”

Appointed Tad board member Gloria Peña noted that she was the only one to vote against the motion to approve the reappraisal plan. Callie Rigney and Eric Morris, who campaigned on promises to reform the appraisal process, and other board members did not immediately respond to a request for comment.