House Bill 3, passed during the last legislative session, required FDISD to conduct a special election for Excess Revenue to paid back to the state. State calculations using local property values, enrollment and attendance, and other state revenue funds placed FDISD into the "rich" Chapter 49 status, requiring a certain amount of locally collected taxes to be sent back to the state at the end of each school year. This special election was orginally scheduled for May 2, 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced the election to be postponed and rescheduled for May 1, 2021. The order for the election may be found HERE.
If this election passes, then the district simply sends these calculated excess revenues back to the state at the end of each school year. No other elections would be necessary. The amount of funds sent back to the state would be dependent upon several intricate calculations each year.
If this election fails, however, then the Commissioner of the Texas Education Agency would select certain property(s) located within FDISD for detachment to a totally different school district elsewhere in the state. That means that some taxpayers would be paying county taxes to Jeff Davis County and school taxes to somewhere in East Texas, the Panhandle, or South Texas. Neither FDISD, nor the local taxpayer(s), would have any choice on the detachment. This detachment process could, conceivably, continue to happen every year until such an election is successful.
Early voting begins on Monday, April 19, 2021, from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm each weekday. The last day of early voting is Tuesday, April 27, 2021. Election day is Saturday, May 1, 2021. All voting will take place in the FDISD Administration Building.
Feef free to contact the Superintendent's office for more information.