Interest

Key facts

• Interest due in 2025-26: about $101 million¹
• Loan amount due in 2025-26: about $51 million¹
• Interest still owed after 2025-26: about $1.4 billion¹
• Interest per average home: about $1,000 a year²
• Share of loan payments that was interest, 2021-25: 63.9%, 2nd among the 11 nearby districts we compared³

In short

Interest is the extra money paid for borrowing. This year the district owes about 101 million dollars of interest.¹ That is about twice the loan amount it owes this year.¹ About 1.4 billion dollars of interest is still to come.¹

Why it matters to your tax bill: most of your debt tax pays interest, not the loans themselves. On an average home that is about 1,000 dollars a year.²

Related: debt · growing loans · refinancing · bond cash waiting

Interest is the extra money you pay for borrowing. Leander ISD’s debt schedule set about $101 million in interest for 2025-26, the school year that ended June 30, 2026. That is about twice the loan amount due that year.¹ Spread over the 41,862 students counted in fall 2025, the same school year, it is about $2,420 per student (our math).¹⁴

A simple example

Say you borrow $100 for a year. The lender asks for $5 extra. That $5 is the interest. The longer you take to pay, the more interest you pay.

Interest in 2025-26

For 2025-26 the district’s schedule set about $101 million in interest.¹ About $51 million was due to pay back the loans.¹ So about $2 of every $3 due went to interest.¹

For an average home, about $1,000 of the loan tax went to interest.²

Interest in 2026-27

This year (2026-27) the district plans to pay about $103.4 million in interest and about $64.6 million of the loans. That makes interest about 61.5% of the year’s loan payment.⁵ In every year the budget shows (2024-25 to 2026-27), interest is bigger than principal.⁵

Counterweight: loans with level payments charge most of their interest in the early years. So a district that borrowed a lot recently will have a high interest share.

Where the interest comes from

Most of this interest is on old loans. Voters said yes to them in 2000, 2003, 2006 and 2007.⁶ Many have been refinanced two or three times.

About $42 million of the 2025-26 interest was on growing loans. Most of that, about $34 million, was money buyers paid up front years ago, now counted as interest.⁶

Interest still to come

After 2025-26, about $1.4 billion in interest is still owed.¹ It is due over the next 30 years.

Compared with other districts

From 2021 to 2025, about 64% of Leander’s loan payments went to interest. That was 2nd among the 11 nearby districts we compared. The middle district paid about 47%.³ In a wider set of 21 districts, three paid a higher share, and the middle was 49%.³

Total still owed

In 2025, the state’s records showed Leander owed about $1.52 billion in loan principal. With interest, the total was about $2.97 billion.⁷

The district’s own audit shows a bit more principal, $1.54 billion, on June 30, 2025.⁸ The two sources count slightly differently. See All school loans.

The other side

A high interest share is partly a sign of old, long loans and growing loans, not new borrowing. We checked four refinancings. None of them pushed the final payoff date later.⁹

Questions to ask

• Will the district post the savings report for its older refinancing?
• Where can the public see the interest still owed on each loan?

Changes to this page

• Nov. 2, 2026: Reworded the counterweight so it does not claim more than the loan math shows.
• Nov. 2, 2026: We took internal document numbers out of the source notes.
• Nov. 2, 2026: We made the source link names plainer.
• Nov. 2, 2026: We re-checked every figure. The yearly interest and loan amounts are now called scheduled amounts, to match the debt schedule we cite.
• Nov. 2, 2026: Rewrote the questions to ask so each is open, neutral and addressed to the public body.
• Nov. 2, 2026: Added questions to ask.

What you can do or watch next

• Watch debt payments in each year’s budget. See refinancing.

What we still don’t know

• We have not seen the savings report for the 2012 refinancing, so we can’t check the audit’s figure for it.

Numbers marked “our math” are our estimates, not official figures. The notes show the inputs and the steps.

Footnotes

1. Leander ISD, Annual Comprehensive Financial Report 2025, debt schedule, page 46. Local copy of the page. These are amounts scheduled as of June 30, 2025, not audited payments. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

2. Our math: average taxable home value of $460,292 (Presentation) times the 33-cent loan tax rate, times the interest share of loan payments. ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Texas Education Agency, PEIMS actual financial data, debt service, fiscal 2021-2025. Our math: interest ÷ (principal + interest). Leander 63.9%; middle of the other 10 nearby districts 46.7%. Wider set of 21: median 49.0%. ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. PASA demographic study in the board packet, Oct. 23, 2025, page 72: enrollment grew “to 41,862 in 2025–26.” Packet page 72. We divide a school year’s money by that same year’s actual count. Our math: $101,215,314 ÷ 41,862 = $2,418. ↩

5. Leander ISD, proposed 2026-27 budget book, Debt Service Fund, June 18, 2026: 2024-25 actual, interest $92,519,068 vs principal $48,939,104; 2025-26 projected, $101,215,314 vs $51,374,253; 2026-27 proposed, $103,392,166 vs $64,613,648 (61.5% interest). ↩ ↩²

6. Our review of each bond’s official statement on EMMA, and the district’s 2009 bond history table. Up-front premium share: ↩ ↩²

7. Texas Bond Review Board, fiscal 2025 (data.texas.gov 6d42-4z7a): principal $1,515,387,419; principal plus interest $2,966,789,575. ↩

8. Leander ISD, Annual Comprehensive Financial Report 2025, page 46: principal $1,538.7 million scheduled as of June 30, 2025. ↩

9. Official statements for the 2010A, 2012A, 2013A/B and 2014D refundings: the new final maturity was no later than the refunded bonds’. ↩