At least one local school district is at risk of significant state funding cuts after the Tarrant Appraisal District board of directors gave final approval to sweeping changes surrounding the property appraisal process.
Under the new reappraisal plan, given the green light Aug. 9, the appraisal district will freeze residential market values in 2025, switch to a two-year residential appraisal schedule, and establish a 5% threshold to raise residential values in the future. Each policy will result in greater value stagnation for residential properties.
For Carroll ISD, which covers Southlake and parts of northeast Tarrant County, the 2025 value freeze could spell trouble. The taxable property values in the district are about 11% below market value with three months of sales data, chief appraiser Joe Don Bobbitt told board members at the Aug. 9 meeting.
He cautioned the data is preliminary. But if that value trend remains through the rest of the year, freezing values in 2025 means the district could fail the state’s property value study and lose millions of dollars as a result.
The study is conducted every two years to determine education funding distribution. If the appraisal district’s property value estimations for a school district are outside a 10% difference threshold from the state’s, a school district would immediately lose funding. Schools between a 5-10% threshold have a two-year grace period to rectify values.
“Other school districts are much closer to the range there,” Bobbitt said. “Most of them are within 5%, there’s three or four that are 6%.”
Carroll ISD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“That’s the gamble you run,” appraisal district board chair Vince Puente said. “You can lock (property values) in any given time, and the market can be going up and that benefits the taxpayer, or the market can be dropping dramatically because there’s a real estate drop, etc., and the taxpayer is going to stay there. And so it is a challenging issue, trying to help the taxpayer always and yet, trying to have the best school districts and the best cities.”
Bobbitt told the Fort Worth Report his staff will continue to work with school districts to assess the impact the appraisal changes are having, and help run numbers to get a better sense of the financial reality. In the case of Carroll ISD, the appraisal district wouldn’t know until January 2026 — more than five months after 2025 tax rolls are certified — if the school district failed the state property value study.
School districts make final plea to pause reappraisal plan
The circumstances facing Carroll ISD represent the fears other school district officials expressed initially at the July 22 meeting, where the changes were first put forward by the board, and again at the Aug. 9 meeting, where they were officially approved. School officials across the county previously told the Fort Worth Report that stagnant property values will disrupt the complicated state funding formula schools are governed by and make it harder to complete infrastructure investments.
Superintendents, chief financial officers and school board members packed into the early morning meeting to make a final push against the changes. Representatives from Castleberry, Eagle-Mountain Saginaw, Fort Worth, Hurst-Euless-Bedford, Mansfield, Northwest and White Settlement ISDs all urged the board to at least pause and conduct a study on how the reappraisal plan would affect schools before they approved it. Northwest ISD estimated it could lose up to $10 million in revenue under the plan, while Mansfield estimated up to $15 million in losses.
“Public schools have taken quite a hit financially, particularly in the last several years,” Mansfield ISD Superintendent Kimberley Cantu said. “Frankly, I’m not sure that they can take one more hit, and this will definitely be a hit to public schools.”
Initially, appraisal district staff presented a reappraisal plan that explicitly stated school districts who failed the state property value study would have their properties reappraised the next year. The move was intended to provide some level of comfort for the districts, which have a two-year grace period to fix values so long as they aren’t more than 10% out of alignment with the state’s findings.
By the end of the meeting, which spanned seven hours, board member Eric Morris made a motion to strike that language and proceed with all of the previously proposed changes. That motion passed 5-1. Bobbitt said the board could still authorize a reappraisal of school districts that fail, but the approved language made it so that reappraisal would require board approval.
“People are literally getting taxed out of their homes, and without taxpayers, you don’t have a school district,” board member Callie Rigney said in support of the changes. “So we have to look out for the taxpayers.”
Board member Gloria Pena also made an earlier motion to pass the reappraisal plan without the 2025 value freeze in the hopes of helping districts like Carroll. That motion was rejected 4-2. Other board members have argued that with property values anticipated to remain flat across the county, the freeze should not significantly impact the districts next year. Bobbitt cautioned that because each district is valued separately, some could see sharp value increases even as others remain stagnant.
Board members Matt Bryant and Rich DeOtte, as well as tax assessor-collector Wendy Burgess, were absent for both votes.
Residents ask for more out of reappraisal plan
Some residents at the meeting thought the approved reappraisal plan didn’t go far enough. The changes represented a partially met promise by Bryant, Morris and Rigney, newly elected board members who ran on a platform of capping residential appraisal increases at 5% and limiting appraisals to once every three years. The trio, who joined the board last month, were the first TAD board members to ever be elected by voters rather than taxing entities.
Arlington resident Luli Seri, who spoke at both the July 22 meeting and the Aug. 9 meeting, told board members the changes are not good enough for taxpayers. She pointed to homes with homestead exemption caps, which will still see a 10% appraised value increase annually until they reach market value.
She also said the board should have approved a once-every-three years appraisal cycle, instead of once-every-two years. A motion at the July 22 meeting to switch to a three-year process failed, with Bryant, Morris and Rigney the lone yes votes. Other board members heeded concerns that a three-year process would place the appraisal district out of sync with the state’s property value study.
“I would have hoped that you guys would have voted against the two years to stand your ground and fight for the taxpayers,” Seri said.
She also criticized school district officials who spoke at the meeting, motioning to those seated and remarking “it’s good to see our tax dollars at good work here.” The school districts, she said, will have to deal with growing pains that come along with increased transparency and better appraisal methods.
Forest Hill resident Jessica Mang, who also spoke at the July 22 meeting, echoed Seri’s criticism of the school districts.
“There are so many paid ISD employees here arguing against three-year or two-year (appraisals) even, and it makes me upset,” she said. “How can unpaid citizens compete against that pay? If they’re worried about their budgets, they should be behind their desks right now, because if you counted up the salary in here, it’d probably be quite a bit.”
Mary Stone, a North Richland Hills resident, recalled watching her mother cry when she couldn’t get the appraisal district to lower her home’s property value. Decades later, Stone said, she’s representing her fellow neighbors, relatives and church members who struggle financially amid increasing appraisals.
“Most of them do not file protests to lower their TAD values because it’s too onerous, too cumbersome, too burdensome,” she said. “Their homes tend to be older and therefore need more repairs. These people struggle to afford major repairs such as foundation, plumbing, roofing, electrical and water damage.”
Stone pushed for the district to consider a three-year appraisal cycle.
“TAD appraisals do not represent these struggling people,” she said.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.