Deer Park ISD — the largest slice of your tax bill, decoded: revenue, spending, debt, promises, reserves, direction.
The thirty-year story of the district’s money
Where has it been, where is it, where is it heading?
Start here: for thirty years, Deer Park ISD has sent money away. Texas school-finance law requires a district whose local property-tax share of its basic funding runs above its formula entitlement to give up the excess, and Deer Park ISD’s does: under the state’s recapture (“Robin Hood”) system it hands part of what it collects locally back to the state. It is the single most important fact about the district’s finances, so the page leads with it.Tex. Educ. Code §48.257and ch. 49 (ch. 41 before 2019); TEA lists Deer Park ISD as a Chapter 49 district for SY2026 (Recapture Paid by DistrictCDN 101908)
The shape tells the story. Through the late 1990s the district sent $34–42 million a year to the state. Then, after 2010, recapture collapsed: $4,024TEA Recapture Paid by District 1993-94 to 2025-26 (Nov 2025 in SY2011, $0TEA Recapture Paid by District 1993-94 to 2025-26 (Nov 2025 in SY2012. It has since settled near $4,572,286CDN 101908, sheet FY94-FY26, SY2026; re-derived 2026-08-10 a year (SY2026). Across the full run, 1994–2026, the district has paid ~$624,022,726source addedsum FY94-FY26 — more than six hundred million dollars raised in Deer Park and sent to the state. Next door, La Porte’s district has paid $834,463,458CDN 101916 over its own run, versus Deer Park’s ~$624,022,726source addedsum FY94-FY26.
Every point on the chart is a row in the state’s own ledger.per-year: $34,430,961…sy2026 (TEA Recapture Paid by District, CDN 101908)
By the numbers — the six views
What it takes in
~$204,477,673derived — -$817,688
Total revenue, government-wide. General-fund revenues were $142.5M.
What it spends
$205,295,361Total Expenses 100%
Total expenses across the whole district — instruction, plant, debt service, depreciation.
What it owes
$387,921,238decreased $21,961,772 / 5%; Moody's Aa1 GO
Bonded debt outstanding, down 5% on the year. General-obligation debt rated Moody’s Aa1.
What it has promised
-$41,761,538Deer Park ISD ACFR FY2025 (year ended June 30, 2025)
Net pension liability’s effect on net position; the OPEB (retiree-health) effect adds -$46,787,495Deer Park ISD ACFR FY2025 (year ended June 30, 2025).
What it holds in reserve
$178,482,515Deer Park ISD ACFR FY2025 (year ended June 30, 2025)
Governmental-funds fund balance. The general fund alone holds $85.2M — 56% of its expenditures, a strong cushion.
Which way it’s heading
-$817,688current-year activities; plus a restatement of -$6,622,304
Change in net position this year. Roughly flat — a well-reserved district drawing down capital funds on construction.
What the money buys
The district enrolls 12,026 studentsTexas Tribune Schools Explorer (TEA enrollment data) across 14 schools — a count that has fallen 9.4% since 2016. 46.2%https://schools.texastribune.org/districts/deer-park-isd/ of students are economically disadvantaged. General-fund spending runs $12,604100 per student.
Read that per-student figure carefully. For a recapture district it bundles dollars sent to the state, so it overstates what reaches a Deer Park classroom — comparing it head-to-head with a non-recapture district is a mislabel trap. It also excludes debt service and construction outright — see The cost structure below. How well the young are served for what is actually spent is taken up in The yield, further down this page.
Tax rate & debt
The tax rate has come down as the state compressed school Maintenance & Operations rates: from $1.5567 per $100maintenance and operations $1.2367 + debt service $0.3200 in 2016-17, to $1.1213 per $100printed p.117 / PDF p.125 in 2024, to $1.138900 per $100M&O $0.8689 + Debt Service $0.2700 adopted for 2025 — with Debt Service held flat at $0.270000 per $100DPISD Resolution for Levying Ad Valorem Taxes 2025-2026. Behind that I&S rate sits $387,921,238decreased $21,961,772 / 5%; Moody's Aa1 GO of bonded debt, rated Moody’s Aa1.
A full year-by-year rate series and the bond-issuance history (Texas Bond Review Board) are a further pull — named, not yet on this page.
The property base
Industrial property — the state’s F2 and L2 categories — totals $11,077,496,246derived — Texas Comptroller PVS 2024 (F2 + L2 sum) on the district’s roll, about ~61%derived — F2 $7,168,775,633 + L2 $3,908,720,613 of its $18,254,455,953Texas Comptroller School District Property Value Study (PVS) gross local tax roll and ~82%derived — F2 $7,168,775,633 + L2 $3,908,720,613 of its net taxable value (Texas Comptroller PVS, CDN 101-908, 2024). TEA lists Deer Park ISD as a Chapter 49 (recapture) district for SY2026(Recapture Paid by DistrictCDN 101908, Chapter 49 Designation SY 2026).
On the state’s wealth-per-WADA yardstick — taxable value per weighted student — the district sits at $906,200CDN 101908, against $1,694,900CDN 101916 (=$15.22B/8977 WADA) at neighboring La Porte ISD, about 1.87× as high.
The institution
Deer Park ISD runs 14 campusesTexas Tribune Schools Explorer — eight elementary, four middle, two high schools — enrolling 12,026 studentsTexas Tribune Schools Explorer (TEA enrollment data), 66%https://schools.texastribune.org/districts/deer-park-isd/ Hispanic and 46.2%https://schools.texastribune.org/districts/deer-park-isd/ economically disadvantaged. It employs about ~827NCES district directory 2024-25 / TEA TAPR classroom teachers among ~1,995NCES district directory 2024-25 total staff — roughly one teacher for every fifteen students.
Day to day, the district is run by 7NCES district directory 2024-25 / TEA TAPR central administrators, with ~91NCES district directory 2024-25 more at the campuses: seven people at the center of a 12,026-student, $205,295,361Total Expenses 100% operation. It is governed by a seven-member elected Board of Trustees serving staggered three-year terms, meeting the third Monday of each month.
What the record shows
The state’s own verdict. Under Texas’s A–F accountability system, the Texas Education Agency rated Deer Park ISD BTexas Education Agency A-F accountability (via Texas Tribune for 2024 — a B across all three domains (Student Achievement, School Progress, Closing the Gaps). That is the state’s grade; the Council reports it and issues none of its own.
Measured against the benchmark. Where the district publishes an outcome, the record sets it beside the statewide number, so you can see above or below and draw your own line:
- Four-year graduation rate ~91%TEA Texas Academic Performance Report 2024-25 — just above the statewide rate (~90%), Class of 2024.
- Average teacher experience 12.9 yearsTEA Texas Academic Performance Report 2024-25 — above the statewide average of about eleven years.
- Teacher turnover 13.3%TEA Texas Academic Performance Report 2024-25 — the TEA-reported rate, below the state’s recent mid-teens average.
STAAR proficiency by subject and grade — including the high-school mathematics signal, the clearest weak point in the district’s testing record — is a deeper TEA TAPR clean-extraction pass: named here, not yet rendered. When it lands, each rate will sit beside the state figure and the reader will draw the line, not the Council. What the state weighs to reach the rating above is set out in The accountability yardstick below.
The yield
Completion. Of the students who were in eighth grade in Region 04 in 2011, 22.5%Region 04, 8th-grade cohort of 2011 held a college credential by the eleventh year afterward. Read that as a regional figure and nothing narrower. Region 04 is the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board's twelve-county Gulf Coast region; no city-level or district-level completion rate is published for Deer Park, and this one must not be read as one.
Attainment, and the inversion beside it. Among Deer Park adults 25 and over, 86%ACS S1501, geoid 16000US4819624 hold a high-school diploma or higher and 26.5% (+/- 3.2)ACS S1501, geoid 16000US4819624 hold a bachelor's degree or higher. Median household income in the city is $100,382ACS 2024, geoid 16000US4819624. Nationally, households headed by a bachelor's-degree holder had a median income of $132,700Census, 2024 and those headed by someone with no college $58,410Census, 2024. Deer Park's degree attainment sits below the national rate while its household income sits between those two national figures — the record the Ship Channel's industrial and trades economy leaves in the census tables.
Two denominators, deliberately not blended: attainment is divided by adults 25 and over, income by households. A margin of error is part of every ACS figure and is printed with it.
The national funnel, for scale. Of high-school completers, 62% (2022) / 63% (2024)NCES CoE, 2022 and 2024 enroll in college the following fall. Of those who start at a four-year institution, 59%BPS:12/17, 2011-12 entrants hold a bachelor's degree within six years; of those who start at a two-year institution, 13%BPS:12/17, 2011-12 entrants do. Among recent graduates aged 22–27, 42%NY Fed, Q2 2026, ages 22-27 work in jobs that do not require a degree, and 5.6%NY Fed, Q2 2026, ages 22-27 are unemployed. ~56%NCES B&B web tables, 2017-407 report their work is closely related to what they studied.
And the path that does not run through college. Unemployment among adults with no college was 4.7%BLS CPS, April 2026. Median usual weekly earnings run $930BLS, 2024 annual averages with a high-school diploma against $1,543BLS, 2024 annual averages with a bachelor's degree. The degree premium is real, it is large, and it is reported here beside the local record rather than instead of it.
These are national rates, from the National Center for Education Statistics, the New York Fed and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They are context for reading the local figures, not Deer Park measurements. Four cohorts — 2022/2024 completers, 2011–12 college entrants, recent graduates 2024–26, and adults 25+ today — do not multiply into a single yield.
Of graduates who work in the field they trained for, the strict measure
Not published here because the only figure available is a 2013 occupation-by-major crosswalk; the self-reported rate the page does carry is current and certified, but the two measure different things and the older one is not published as a current rate.
Renders when: an IPUMS DEGFIELD × OCC compute against the 2024 ACS 5-year microdata.
The cost structure
The two categories the state excludes are Functions 71 and 81FASRG functions 71 and 81 — debt service and facilities construction.
That is the mechanism, and it is certified to the state's accounting manual. It applies to every Texas district, not to this one in particular, and it means an operating per-pupil figure and an all-in per-pupil figure are two different measurements that should never be set against each other as if they were one.
Deer Park ISD’s operating per-pupil dollars, its total operating spend, and the debt-and-capital dollars the operating figure does carry
Not published here because the figures the Council holds came through an aggregator rather than from the agency that publishes them, and a cost claim on a civic surface is exactly where a second-hand number must not stand.
Renders when: a direct TEA District Financial Actuals pull — all funds, by function.
The all-in adder: what functions 71 and 81 actually cost per student
Not published here because the mechanism is certified but the dollars behind it have never been pulled, so the size of the gap is unknown to the Council.
Renders when: the same TEA District Financial Actuals pull — it fills this and the figures above together.
Until that pull lands, this panel reports the structure and not the sum. The page can say what the headline excludes; it cannot yet say by how much, and it will not estimate.
The accountability yardstick
On the record. In the high-school Student Achievement domain, College, Career and Military Readiness carries 40%Ch.5 Step 2, 2026 manual, the STAAR component another 40%, and the four-year graduation rate the remaining 20%.
CCMR stands for College, Career, or Military ReadinessCh.5 CCMR indicator list, 2026. It is routinely shortened to "college readiness," and that is a mis-statement of what the state counts: an industry-based certification and a military enlistment earn the same credit as a college indicator. In a town whose economy runs on the trades, the distinction is not academic.
The funded half of the same measure is a Per-graduate bonus above an annual thresholdCCMR Outcomes Bonus rule, 2026, most of which must be reinvested in readiness programs for grades 8 through 12. A district that moves the indicator is paid for moving it, and directed to spend most of that money on moving it further.
These are the state's rules, reported as the state writes them. The Council sets no yardstick of its own here and issues no grade; it records what the district is measured on, what that measure contains, and what is paid for it.
The labor market
The federal spine. Labor force participation stands at 61.6%BLS CPS, August 2026 for everyone 16 and over, and 83.4%BLS CPS, August 2026, ages 25-54 for prime-age adults 25 to 54; 80.4%BLS CPS, August 2026, ages 25-54 of prime-age adults are employed. The headline unemployment rate is ~4.2%BLS CPS, 2026. Median usual weekly earnings for full-time workers are $1,251 per week (+0.8% year over year)BLS, Q2 2026, full-time workers.
A seam, shown rather than smoothed. The participation series carries a January 2026 population-control revisionpopulation control, January 2026. Participation before and after that date is not a clean chain, and a trend drawn across it is drawn across a definition change.
Locally. The Gulf Coast region's unemployment rate was 4.4% (March 2026)TWC LAUS, Gulf Coast, Mar 2026; the Houston metro read 4.6% (May 2026) / 5.2% (June 2026)TWC LAUS, Houston MSA, Jun 2026. Both above the metro average (June 2026)TWC city series, Jun 2026 — the direction is what the compiled city series supports, and no Deer Park point rate is claimed. Harris County's average weekly wage moved +2.5% (Q1 2026)BLS QCEW Harris Co., Q1 2026.
What the region's jobs actually are. Construction is 7.7% of jobsQCEW Gulf Coast WDA, Q3 2025 in the Gulf Coast workforce area and manufacturing 7.3% of jobsQCEW Gulf Coast WDA, Q3 2025 — both over-indexed against the Texas shares, and neither requiring a bachelor's degree to enter. That is the economy the attainment figures above sit inside, and it is why the completion rate and the income figure point in different directions.
Functional unemployment — the broader underutilization measure, and the true-earnings series beside it
Not published here because the figure the Council holds comes from a private institute’s synthesis, and a civic surface should not lead on a non-federal ruler when the federal one has not been laid down first.
Renders when: a BLS pull of U-6, involuntary part-time employment and the low-wage full-time share; the synthesis then renders labeled, beneath the federal measures, never as the sole headline.
Average pay in Harris County manufacturing and construction
Not published here because the sector shares the page does carry are certified from the federal series, but the dollar figures reached the Council through an aggregator.
Renders when: a direct BLS QCEW re-pull by NAICS for Harris County.
The headline unemployment rate counts as unemployed only those with no work at all who searched within the last four weeks. Broader measures of underutilization ask a different question and return a much larger number. Both are real; they are two rulers, and this page will print the federal one first.
Who governs — and what you can do
Deer Park ISD is run by a seven-member elected Board of Trustees, which meets monthly — the third Monday, 6:00 PM. The rate, the budget, and the bond decisions on this page are theirs.
This page is the record. If you want to move it — show up, ask a question, organize a neighbor — that is what Think and Act Locally is for. The record names where we are; residents move it from there.