Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other lawmakers have promised they will tackle “school finance” in the 2019 legislative session, but it’s already clear that not everyone is talking about the same thing. Those folks are all signaling an urgency, but their priorities differ:
Property tax relief?
Leveling the state and local shares of public education spending?
More money for schools?
Some want more than one of those answers. Some have other goals. This much is clear: They don’t have the money on hand to do much of anything with even one of those questions. That raises another question: How will they pay for whatever they decide to do?
The problems are immense, and the political stars aren’t yet aligned. They’ll have a couple of studies — maybe more — analyzing the problems. There’s a school finance commission studying the issues here; it’s set to vote out a draft this week and to have a final report ready when lawmakers come to town. And Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar, whose office has the best and most legally enforceable numbers in this thorny financial puzzle, is also poised to make some recommendations.
School finance in Texas comes around every decade or two, as each set of reforms gradually slips out of balance. That said, two ingredients that have preceded the past big realignments don’t exist here.
First off, there isn’t a court ruling that says school finance is so out of whack that some of the state’s students are being cheated out of the education the state constitution guarantees them.
Threats of court interference in public schools have always been sufficient to force reforms, however temporary. That hasn’t happened this time around, however: In its latest ruling, a little more than two years ago, the Texas Supreme Court concluded the state’s school finance formulas were a complete mess, but not foul enough to be called unconstitutional.
The Legislature didn’t do anything to fix them.
The other common way to force big reforms through is to get a mandate from voters. George W. Bush’s 1994 campaign for governor provided an example. Bush’s push for reforms to education, juvenile justice, welfare and civil justice were repeated and repeated enough that his victory over Gov. Ann Richards was read by voters and lawmakers alike as a mandate, a set of marching orders.
His campaign agenda became the legislative agenda as soon as he took office.
That hasn’t really happened this year either, at least not in the same way. Bush’s win came as part of a Republican wave in then-President Bill Clinton’s first mid-term election. Abbott’s reelection was a mixed bag, overshadowed by President Donald Trump’s first mid-term. As usual, Republicans won all of the statewide offices, but by smaller margins than they had come to expect, and at a time when Democrats were picking up seats in the state’s congressional delegation and both houses of the Texas Legislature.
So state leaders will start 2019’s school finance effort with no court ruling to force their hand and no electoral mandate to guide it. That leaves those reports, and the governor’s ability to rally lawmakers around a politically prickly subject.
He’s going to have to figure out how those three questions get answered. His initial proposal favors property tax relief over school spending. It would raise the state’s share of public education spending, while leaving local property taxpayers with the larger burden.
Even if it’s possible to line up the priorities, the numbers are daunting. Local taxpayers will be on the hook for 55.5 percent of the cost of public education in 2019, according to estimates by the Legislative Budget Board. The state will be responsible for 35 percent, and the federal government will make up the rest.
Bringing the state and local numbers in line would cost the state around $5.7 billion annually at current spending levels. That would knock down two of the questions, but it would require a price-sensitive Legislature to raise taxes, create new taxes, remove some exemptions from current taxes or find some other magical new source of money. And simply bringing those numbers into balance wouldn’t satisfy the folks whose priority is to increase what Texas spends educating its kids.
It’s hard to sell tax bills or other “revenue enhancements” unless politicians and their voters feel like they’re getting something better in return. And it’s hard to do that unless you can get everyone to agree on the problem they’re trying to solve — through court orders, electoral mandates or persuasive leadership.
It might be about public education. It might be about property taxes. Maybe it’s about the state’s financial responsibilities.
At the moment, it depends on who you ask.
The cost of schools cannot continue to grow faster than the economy, population, incomes, inflation. If it does this doesn’t bode well for the future.
It’s not politically correct to look at the man behind the curtain (ISD) and just accept ever increasing school budgets, bureaucracies, demands, but we must for the survival of the schools.
Voters may be more willing to have higher taxes if they were convinced the money the school districts have now is being used effectively.
Local school districts have posted recently about having programs to curtail excess utility usage. It mostly has to do with energy, but also extends to water usage. How many times has anyone seen a school district irrigating after or during rain? How many times do the coaches need to test the stadium lights? Once a week or before every game?
Local school districts have been fairly transparent on what they are spending on programs and educational software, technology and supplies. What they are not too transparent on is how well are they maintaining the school’s infrastructure. How many systems are not running efficiently? How many systems run all the time because of mechanical issues? How many campuses have “sick building syndrome” due to not cleaning the ductwork?
Our children are cash cows for the districts to keep public education afloat. There are districts and individual campuses who do not enforce the state law of “No Shots…No School.” There are districts and individual campuses who keep violent and abusive kids in schools to keep the average daily attendance up. There are districts and individual campuses the will not actively discourage parent’s from keeping sick children at home because it would lower the average daily attendance.
Perhaps if the voters and the state do a better job of keeping the districts honest about how healthy their campuses are we would not see districts using sick, violent and unimmunized children as a tool to increase state revenue.
Ditch the property tax and fund education through a sales tax. Too many people are being taxed out of their homes.
Stop subsidizing professional sports and get them to pay for school sports. They make billions off of taxpayers funding their farms.
Consolidate school districts. San Antonio has eleven of them. Eleven superintendents, assistants, etc. , very wasteful. It’s time to stop saying I don’t want my money being spent on some minority kid.
Schools get money based on attendance but lose that money when students don’t come. The money then goes to the state general fund. The money needs to stay with the schools regardless of attendance.
The biggest problem with education is the state mandates a 90% graduation rate. Teachers can only fail 10% of their students or risk losing their jobs. Then they are called bad or ineffective teachers because their students can not pass the STARR exams.
I’ve been saying for decades that the state of Texas needs to implement a state tax solely to fund schools. The tax could apply to people making more than $50,000 or something like that, and it would only have to be a half a percent.
Do that, and consolidate the school district in each municipality, and the money will be there.
Now, how that money is used? That’s a whole ‘nother issue. Accountability needs to be a thing from the top down – from the governor clear down through the individual districts.
I believe Larry hit the nail on the head. Too many separate and unequal school districts. Funding based on attendance and taking of standardized exams is a very poor way to adequately fund our school system. Teachers have told us that the priority of school bureaucrats is funding, not quality education.
Larry, with all due respect but I believe there are 16 school districts in the San Antonio metropolitan area.
When politicians, parents and school officials acknowledge that racism has always played a significant role in the funding of our public schools, maybe just maybe the real solution will be reached.
Why don’t we review the states with the best public school systems and figure out what positive changes can be made to our system to make it better?
1. What does the system look like in Massachusetts and why is it so successful?
2. Would it help to update the “1984 standards?”
3. Does it make more sense to control schools at the local level (thru property taxes) than thru the state budget?
4. We all see the incredibly expensive stadiums that are built, and how nice some of these school buildings are. Perhaps we should consider building more “utilitarian-style schools” and take the extra money and invest it into teachers and resources?
5. How can we reduce the overhead in school districts? There is a large amount of technology available, and if a school district went thru a true “lean/agile management review/analysis, I’m sure it would identify some duplicate positions, antiquated ways of operating, and other opportunities for efficiency improvement, which translates to improved fiscal performance.
6. Can we Identify which school districts “manage” their money the best and emulate that across the state, and provide incentives to achieve “best-in-class” results?
https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-best-schools/5335/
https://www.google.com/amp/www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2011/06/06/School-Budgets-The-Worst-Education-Money-Can-Buy%3famp