This month, the Eanes Independent School District staff presented adjusted budget projections to the Eanes School Board, revealing a $3.3 million budget shortfall for the 2024-25 school year due to lower-than-anticipated student enrollment.
According to the data provided by the district, preliminary enrollment for the 2024-25 school year was adjusted down to 7,594 students, which is 124 fewer than projected four months earlier during the budget adoption process.
To address declining enrollment and resulting recapture payments to the state, the district plans to increase out-of-district transfers from 721 to 749 in 2024-25. Out-of-district transfer students are students who do not reside within the Eanes school district but attend its schools. The district projects that Westlake High School will have 234 transfer students, while 161 will attend one of the two district middle schools, and another 354 will enroll in one of the six elementary schools.
Earlier this year, a parent of Eanes students and then-candidate for the Eanes School Board, Aaron Silva released an article foreseeing the decline in enrollment and suggesting the trend will continue into the future.
The article estimates that Eanes’ "in-district student population could drop from 7,000 to 5,000 over the next 10 years" and posed a choice to readers: "1) do we hope to fill the gap with 2,000-3,000 transfer students to meet our current spending needs? Or, 2) do we have to consider a plan that reshapes the district for the reality of a shrinking student population?"
The paper continued by addressing the financial realities if the trend continues: "the challenge we all face is how do we effectively finance the rebuilding of our school district to accommodate 7,500 - 8,000 students, that could comprise 30% of students from outside the taxable district" when these families will not contribute property taxes toward debt repayment.
"We need and want transfer students in order to defray operational expenses. Every transfer student reduces our recapture payment to Texas by about $7,500… But when it comes to bond debt, the calculus is different," said Silva.
Eanes Chief Financial Officer Chris Scott addressed these issues during the board meeting. "We were really anticipating that we were going to be spending this year starting this type of discussion in January or February," Scott said. He added that they needed urgent action: "We really need to do something in 2026-27 to address this... We don’t have that much time because some things have changed."