EPISODE: HOMETOWN EDITION

yeah so um 12 between 12 and 15 years ago crystal city isd had 2200 kids approximately uh 10 years ago that was 2000 today it's 1384.

And so you can see this huge decline in the number of students that are here.

And that can be attributed to a lot of different factors, right? And I can't tell you why each individual family has moved out of the community.

But the fact of the matter is when you lose 900 kids, you have to make adjustments in the way you staff the district.

And from my perspective, it appears that those adjustments were not made fast enough.

And so what ended up happening, because we get funded based on the number of kids that are in the building, when you lose kids, you lose funding, right? And if you keep paying the same number of employees when you're getting less revenue, you end up being upside down.

And when that happens year after year after year, that consistent deficit ends up being a crisis.

And that's pretty much...

From my perspective, what happened in a nutshell.

Yeah.

And then within that, there were some things that happened, some decisions that were made to try to patch up holes in the ship as it was sinking.

And some of those patches are problems, right? So I've never heard of a district having to get a loan to cover payroll,

right? Yes, sir.

I remember that.

Yeah, and neither had Mr.

Grill, right? That was a very unusual situation that neither of us had seen.

And that's not illegal per se, but it's really not a good situation to be in.

The other thing was that there were some things that shouldn't have happened.

So there was money borrowed from the bond side of the financial pocket to pay payroll.

And that is illegal and it shouldn't have happened to the tune of about $2.5 million.

Oh, yeah.

I think I heard that like they robbed Peter to pay Paul basically.

Yes.

That's a better way to put it.

And because it's illegal, we have to figure out a way to put that money back in the bond side of the pocket.