By ALBERT VILLEGAS
Special to the NEWS
Parents of children enrolled in the San Benito Consolidated Independent School District (SBCISD) are again urged to remember the importance of ensuring students attend classes during weekly sessions.
At an Aug. 24 public hearing, the SBCISD Board of Trustees discussed adopting the tax rate, sparking a conversation between elected officials and district administrators about SBCISD’s Average Daily Attendance (ADA), which has declined in recent years.
During the public hearing, SBCISD Accounting Director Beto Perez presented the proposed tax rate to the trustees and said the estimated ADA is 7,520. This total has been submitted to the Texas Education Agency (TEA).
“Keep in mind if that actual ADA falls below this number, funding may be lower than projected and could affect our assumption today,” Perez said.
Trustees were told that administrators at each school and the district will strive to keep it afloat. They will know where they stand beginning in early October.
According to the TEA, the PEIMS Six Weeks Attendance Submission is a mandatory reporting requirement where school districts must submit actual student attendance data to the state at the end of each six-week instructional period.
The TEA deadlines for all school districts to submit their ADAs are Oct. 8, Dec. 3, and next year on Jan. 28, Mar. 18, and May 13.
The final PEIMS summer submission is June 17, 2027.
Trustees Rudy Corona and Dr. Ariel Cruz-Vela asked Director Perez ADA-related questions, with Dr. Cruz-Vela asking what happens if SBCISD doesn’t meet the mark.
Director Perez also mentioned TEA’s Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS).
“We’ll probably have to go back and look at the numbers once we’re updating the PEIMS numbers by six weeks,” Director Perez said.
Superintendent Alfredo Perez said SBCISD determined its ADA number for last school year using a “worst day” average.
Trustee Corona’s microphone wasn’t on during the meeting, so his questions or concerns could not be heard.
The ADA topic was introduced to the trustees earlier this summer when Victoria Perez, SBCISD’s assistant superintendent of finance and operations, discussed the scenario and explained that lower annual enrollment has led to reduced state funding.
“This goes back to the conversations we had two months ago during board meetings. I know (Supt.) Perez and his staff are working extremely hard on this ADA and attendance,” Board President Orlando Lopez said.
“That’s one of the biggest factors we have right now when it comes to funding. We can do the best we can to impact this positively. It’s important for our parents to know and understand that kids coming to school affects the finances of this operation.”
PAST ENROLLMENT NUMBERS
In the past 11 years, SBCISD’s enrollment has declined by nearly 4,000 students, further affecting how state funds are distributed locally.
During the past school year, San Benito CISD’s ADA was 7,587 students, with an 89 percent attendance rate.
At the start of the last school year, SBCISD had an Average Daily Membership (ADM) of 8,524 students.
Back in 2015, the average daily attendance was 11,018 students, equaling its ADM, according to the SBCISD Finance Department. SBCISD had a 95.3% attendance rate, which it matched only the following year.
Last April, before the May 2 election, SBCISD’s Victoria Perez presented a budget review and revenue overview for the upcoming school year.
“Attendance versus Enrollment” was only part of what trustees were told, yet it revealed an alarming trend.
She wanted to make trustees aware of these attendance-versus-enrollment comparisons due to the challenges faced by school administrators and their staff.
“This is always a struggle for schools; we prepare for every one of the students we have, but not all of them are here, and that’s where we get (state funding) paid out of,” Perez said. “So, for the past 10 years, there has been a downward trend.”
SBCISD, like all school districts in the state, has its funding affected by the ADM, which is the total number of days students are enrolled, whether present or absent, divided by the total number of school days.
School funding is also affected by the ADA, which is the total number of students in attendance divided by the number of instructional days in the school year.
For the eighth consecutive year, SBCISD, as a whole, will have lower attendance and enrollment than the previous school year, according to the SBCISD Finance Department. In 2025, average daily attendance was 7,876; in 2024, it was 7,957; and in 2023, it was 8,139.
In 2022, SBCISD’s attendance rate fell to 89.6 percent, and over the past five years, it has not risen above that level.
Between 2015 and 2017, SBCISD had an ADA of at least 10,600 students. Even then, the ADA declined from 11,018 in 2015 to 10,621 two years later.
The school district’s ADA was 9,359 in 2018 and increased to 9,411 the following year.
At the end of last school year, trustees were told they would hold meetings and public hearings to introduce the 2026-27 operating budget, with financial figures presented by Victoria Perez’s finance team.
She told the trustees that she would move forward conservatively with the budget, but it’s a “slippery slope.”
“We want to see an increase in enrollment, but if it doesn’t happen, we’ve over-planned for it,” Perez said last spring. “Enrollment can go up and down; we can project it high, keep our budget high, and keep it balanced, or we can be realistic about what we need to do with our budget.”