The Houston Independent School District may be able to avoid paying part – or perhaps all – of its over $100 million state-mandated recapture payment.
The potential reprieve comes after a school board lawyer found a state law allows districts that suffer storm damage to use recapture dollars to help campuses get back on their feet.
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David Thompson, an attorney for Houston ISD’s Board of Education, said the law is meant to allow districts to use what they would have paid to the state to cover disaster-related costs not covered by insurance or FEMA.
“Think of all the things districts spend money on that you can’t insure or reimburse,” Thompson said. “All the thousands of personnel hours, the transportation costs after all the bus routes are out the window and kids are scattered in different areas.”
Thompson said he doubts the law will allow the district to get out of paying its entire recapture bills for the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 fiscal years, which could be over $200 million next year alone. But he said the law will still allow the district to keep a “significant” amount of its local money.
Well, I’m glad that law, which was passed in 2009 after Hurricane Ike, is on the books, and I’m extra glad that David Thompson was sharp enough to remember it and bring it to the state’s attention. The story doesn’t indicate what the process is for this, though I’d imagine that it’s up to the TEA to decide how much recapture money HISD gets to keep and how many times it gets to apply this exemption. HISD’s total costs for Harvey are higher than a couple years’ worth of recapture payments so it’s not a complete solution, but this sure will help. We’ll have to see how the Board makes up the difference.