College Station, Texas (KBTX) – Texas public schools are down by roughly 76,000 students this year \u2014 the steepest decline in nearly four decades \u2014 and the effects are reaching College Station ISD.<\/p>\n
Superintendent Tim Harkrider says the district lost about 300 students this past year after more than a decade of steady growth, and he projects losing another 100 next year \u2014 not counting the potential impact of school vouchers.<\/p>\n
The financial hit is significant. For every 100 students lost, the district loses roughly $1 million in state funding.<\/p>\n
Fighting Back With Open Enrollment<\/p>\n
The CSISD board recently approved out-of-district transfers, allowing students outside district boundaries to apply to attend CSISD campuses. Twenty-five students are already approved for the 2026-27 school year.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur state leadership has made it pretty clear that they want competition and parents to have choice. So in our opinion, we need to play the game and not play the victim,\u201d Harkrider said.<\/p>\n
Cuts as a Last Resort<\/p>\n
So far, the district has avoided layoffs and program cuts, relying on attrition and tighter supply budgets. Some central office staff members have been moved to campus positions. Harkrider said closing campuses or cutting programs \u2014 athletics, fine arts, CTE \u2014 remain worst-case scenarios.<\/p>\n
The board is also set to approve a staff pay raise, reaffirming its commitment to retaining educators.<\/p>\n
A Push for Funding Reform<\/p>\n
Harkrider\u2019s bigger concern is the state\u2019s funding formula. Public schools are funded on attendance, while charter schools are funded on enrollment \u2014 a gap he says costs CSISD roughly $4 million a year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think we should be funded on the enrollment piece. We\u2019ve had those conversations before and hadn\u2019t got a lot of traction, but I think that\u2019s something that would help level the playing field and create equity with the expectations for charter schools with public money and public schools with public money as well,\u201d Harkrider said.<\/p>\n
He plans to advocate for the change during the 2027 legislative session.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 KBTX. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"College Station, Texas (KBTX) – Texas public schools are down by roughly 76,000 students this year \u2014 the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-292346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}