LISD Approved New Pay Scales After HB 2 — But the Budget Hole Didn't Close

Your kids' teachers are getting raises. That part is straightforward. What's less straightforward is whether LISD can actually afford the rest of what it takes to run a school district — and Monday's board meeting was a reminder that both things are true at once.

The LISD Board of Trustees held its regular June board meeting on Monday, June 8. The action on teacher pay was made possible by HB 2, the 89th Texas Legislature's school funding bill. HB 2 was signed into law by Governor Abbott on June 4, 2025, and the district has been working through its compensation requirements ever since. HB 2 creates new and expanded allotments to support raises for educators and other non-administrative school employees beginning in the 2025–26 school year.

For teachers with experience, the raises are real. Teachers with three or four years of experience receive a $2,500 raise; those with five or more years of experience receive $5,000. Those numbers flow directly from the state, structured as a pass-through. The statute requires school systems to spend the allotment on increasing salaries for each teacher who generated it — designed to function as a pass-through to those employees, built into base salary. That's not a one-time check. It compounds.

For the 2026–27 school year, LISD teachers and other employees are getting a pay raise and an increase in benefits, with an average salary increase per employee of $2,000 and an annual benefits contribution increase of $4,000. The starting salary for a first-year teacher in Lewisville ISD is now $64,250. For a district that couldn't give raises at all the year before HB 2, that's a genuine shift.

But here's the tension. Despite facing a $9 million to $10 million budget deficit for fiscal year 2026, LISD is providing pay raises to teachers, substitutes, and non-teaching personnel to remain competitive with neighboring school districts. The deficit didn't shrink because of the raises. The state money is largely earmarked for compensation and can't be redirected elsewhere. A majority of HB 2 funding was allotted for the newly formed teacher retention allotment, which is a pass-through of raises to teachers who have taught for three years or more.

Board member Dr. Staci Barker put the frustration plainly. She expressed displeasure in the 89th Texas Legislature for writing HB 2 in a way that she felt took control out of the board's hands, saying: "The legislature did us a real disservice in writing House Bill 2 in the way they did. Everyone knows I'm all for teacher raises, but without the funding to be able to also compensate all the staff around our teachers... it took a lot of control out of our hands to be able to compete and retain those solid teachers."

That's the crux. HB 2 helped teachers. It didn't fix LISD's budget. The bill does not cover teachers with two years or less experience, classroom aides, librarians, nurses, counselors, maintenance workers, or bus drivers — the people who keep a school building running every single day. The district has had to find its own money for those positions.

LISD was unable to provide raises for staff during the 2024–25 school year due to a challenging budget scenario driven by declining enrollment, rising inflationary costs, and the Legislature's inaction to adjust public school funding. The raises approved this cycle are the first meaningful movement in years. That matters. So does the fact that a multi-million-dollar deficit didn't disappear because the state sent money tied to teacher paychecks.

Watch LISD's next financial report. If the deficit holds at $9–10 million while compensation costs rise, the pressure will eventually land somewhere — other programs, staffing levels, or a harder conversation about the local tax rate. The raises are good news for the teachers in your kids' classrooms. They are not, on their own, a sign that LISD's money problem is solved.