1. Pre-Preliminary Property Value Study Amounts

 

The Comptroller's office has released pre-preliminary property values related to the 2023 Property Value Study. This email likely went to your superintendent, with the subject of "Pre-Preliminary 2023 SDPVS Information".  If you find an inaccuracy in this data, you will want work with your appraisal district to review the values and notify the Comptroller's office by January 5, 2024.

 

Be careful, as if you have more than one county of tax levy, you will need to select each county individually and then combine the totals to estimate your complete values.

 

Below is a good reminder from Amanda Brownson at TASBO:

 

1. The PVS results may show a T-2 that was lower than you were expecting due to compression of the frozen levy. Before reducing your T-2 in the template, it is a good idea to also consider whether you should reduce your estimated property tax collections. Reach out to your tax office for updated levy information. In general, these two items should move together.

 

2. These results have not been through the study process. Your actual PVS results may well turn out to be different from this, especially if your CAD is found to be under-appraising.

 

3. To see your results, open the "Self-Report Summary" file and select your district from the dropdown box on the first sheet.

 

4. There are estimated T-Values on the sheet called "Local Tax Roll Value". You can see the comptroller's estimate of T-values in column B of that sheet at the bottom of the page. Specifically the T-2 value for local fund assignment calculation purposes.

 

 

2. School Safety Grant Opportunity

 

The Safety and Facilities Enhancement (SAFE) Grant Cycle 2 will award $279.5M from the overall legislative appropriation to local educational agencies (LEAs) through a formula grant process. This funding is designated to help LEAs meet the required safety standards as well as other statutory school safety requirements.

 

LEAs meeting the enrollment criteria below are eligible to apply for this grant program:  

• School districts and open-enrollment charter schools with a reported enrollment of at least one student from the October 2021 PEIMS fall snapshot submission will be eligible for funding.  
• Charter schools that opened prior to January 1, 2024 (the date of grant availability). 
• Note: Private schools are not eligible recipients for funding.

 

As part of the process to receive a SAFE Cycle 2 grant award, LEAs are required to complete a compliance assessment, through the Intruder Detection Audit Dashboard, no later than January 31, 2024.

 

To support LEAs through the Compliance Assessment and Cycle 2 grants process, TEA will be hosting a series of webinars in January. Please click the link below to sign up for a webinar (Note: webinar attendance is optional).

• Register for the January 9th webinar at 3:00 p.m.
• Register for the January 10th webinar at 10:00 a.m. 
• Register for the January 11th webinar at 12:00 p.m. 

 

If you are a SAFE Cycle 1 applicant, or have any additional questions on SAFE Cycle 2, please visit the School Safety page or email safeschools@tea.texas.gov.

 

 

3. Summary of Finance Updates

 

As we get halfway through the school year for most schools, there are a few items to be on the lookout for in the next month or two:

 

• Preliminary PVS updates to the T2 values should be released by TEA in an SOF run late January, or first week of February.
• Compensatory Education tier updates should be released by TEA in an SOF run in late February.

 

These items will have a direct impact on your local share calculation and total FSP funding. As you continue to update your SOF template, you can use these future runs to help verify these numbers from pre-preliminary values (see above) and manual SCE Tier counts (using the 2024 Tier Mapping file) from the Fall PEIMS submission report PDM1-120-022.

 

 

4. Update to Standard Mileage Rate for 2024

 

Beginning on January 1, 2024, the standard mileage rate will increase to $0.67 per mile driven for business use (up 1.5 cents per mile from 2023).

 

Additional information can be found in the IRS Notice 2024-08, as it contains the optional 2024 standard mileage rates guidance.

 

 

5. SOF Template Updates

 

Omar and his team have not yet released a new template, but I would expect one by the end of January which will include updated PVS numbers. Until then, you will need to utilize the methods above to provide a better estimate of your template values.