What Pflugerville can already use
Programs already exist. No permanent tax required.
Before voting for a $23 million a year forever tax, see what Pflugerville students and workers can already use right now.
Start here
Tuition at ACC is already free for Pflugerville graduates.
ACC's own free tuition pilot already covers tuition for Pflugerville graduates: three years free for the graduating classes of 2024 through 2028, and five years for a bachelor's pathway. The affordability annexation is sold as providing largely exists today, with no taxing district and no permanent tax.
Source: ACC free tuition pilot announcement.
Already running, no annexation required
Four programs Pflugerville can use today.
Each of these already serves Pflugerville students or workers without a taxing district.
Workforce Solutions Capital Area
The regional workforce board offers free career training scholarships for high skill, high growth occupations, with help choosing a career path and connecting to employment. Many programs add support like transportation, child care assistance, and mobile hotspots, and paid apprenticeships are available.
It funds in demand, high growth career training drawn from the Targeted Occupations Lists.
ACC Adult Education Career Pathways
ACC's own Adult Education division runs free programs that combine training, financial assistance, and support services: free certificate programs for industry credentials, the Level Up program with free college credit classes, textbooks, and academic support, and the Ability to Benefit program, which gives students without a diploma early access to federal aid while working toward a certificate.
It serves adult education students: high school equivalency, ESL levels 2 to 4, and adults working past other barriers.
PfISD and ACC dual credit partnership
PfISD already has a formal partnership agreement with ACC for dual credit: approved ACC course lists, a signed partnership agreement, and dedicated dual credit contacts at Connally, Hendrickson, Pflugerville, and Weiss high schools. Students earn college credit while still in high school through this agreement, today, without annexation.
It serves high school students earning college credit through the existing partnership agreement.
Pflugerville Education Foundation
An independent nonprofit established in 2006, the Pfoundation awards student scholarships and educator grants for the PfISD community: 25,000 students served and $2.4 million raised to date. It already runs a scholarship pipeline for Pflugerville students, and it is exactly the kind of local partner that could administer a city funded access program.
An established local partner that already runs scholarships and could administer a city funded access program.
The remaining gap
What these don't cover.
Put together, these programs already reach the groups most often named to justify annexation: workforce trainees, adult learners without diplomas, ESL students, and high schoolers. What is left is the out of district fee for a regular degree seeking resident, who still pays $201 per credit hour.
That remaining gap is a $1-4 million a year problem, not worth a $23 million fix, and the city can close it directly without a permanent tax. See how a city program could work.
The real choice
The choice was never annexation or nothing.
It is a $23 million a year permanent tax, or the programs that already exist plus a city program that closes the fee. One of those is a forever tax. The other is not.