Back in 2011, three San Antonio school districts were left without 50% of their funding until two months before the school year ended.
They made due by pulling from their fund balance, a rainy-day fund they have grown accustomed to using given their unique funding situations.
Randolph Field Independent School District, Fort Sam Houston ISD and Lackland ISD are confined entirely to their respective military bases; only seven districts like this exist in the country.
Unlike other public school districts, they receive no money from property taxes.
In 1950, President Harry S. Truman established the Impact Aid Program to fund local school districts that lose property tax revenue because they include tax exempt areas, like Indian reservations, national parks or military bases.
But the last time the Impact Aid Program was fully funded was 1969. Despite being the nation’s oldest K-12 federal education program, it is one of the only major K-12 federal education program that is not funded at the start of each fiscal year.
Impact Aid funding contributes to roughly half of these district’s budgets, creating somewhat of a precarious situation as they hope the funds come through each year.
“If we didn’t have those funds, we’d have to shut our door,” said Gary Bates, superintendent of Fort Sam Houston ISD.
Badgering Washington
Each year, the superintendents of the three districts find themselves in the same position: begging lawmakers to continue to fund the program they desperately rely on.
“There have been presidents and Congresses that have tried to either eliminate Impact Aid altogether or just severely reduce it,” said Burnie Roper, superintendent of Lackland ISD.
“That’s one of the reasons why we go to D.C. at least twice a year to advocate for Impact Aid, because without that funding piece, we won’t be able to survive.”
Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald Trump have all attempted to cut the program in one way or another.
It currently has a $1.6 billion price tag. Under Trump administration changes to the Department of Education, it was recently relocated to the Department of Labor.
Roper said that though other cuts to the Department of Education have hurt the district, it has not yet felt any negative impacts from the department shift, in part due to its own advocacy in Washington.
“We fought to make sure that the Department of Education Impact Aid team stayed in place,” he said.
Public school districts typically rely on the federal government for about 10 percent of their funding, compared to these districts’ 50 percent.
Brian Holt, superintendent of Randolph Field ISD, described the Impact Aid fund as a pie divided up among all the eligible districts. When the federal government is functioning on a continuing budget resolution, like right now, the money is distributed in prorated amounts and flows to districts with the greatest need first.
Districts often do not get the full amount of Impact Aid funding they are due each year. There are 26 districts in Texas receiving the basic support payments, and the average percentage of fiscal year 2026 Impact Aid payments they received out of their full funding allocations was 87.79%. Nationwide, even less funding expectation was met.
“That’s how much Congress appropriated, enough to meet 56.7% of need across the country,” said Anne O’Brien, the director of communications at the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools.
Some districts, like Comal ISD, received as little as 2% of the funding they would have gotten if the program were fully funded. And when the government is in a shutdown, like it was for parts of last year, the districts get nothing.
“It absolutely stops when the government shuts down. Our funding stops,” Roper said.
Bates said the districts go about spending very carefully, maintaining a healthy fund balance so that when Impact Aid payments are delayed, they can still pay teachers and expenses.
Impact Aid dilemma
A district’s Impact Aid allocation is calculated via a formula, but not every student is weighed the same.
These districts are primarily composed of two groups of students, those with active-duty parents who live in base housing, and “transfers,” students with active-duty parents who work on base but who live in civilian housing.
Students on base who attend school bring in significantly more funding for the district than those off base, Holt said. On-base students are essentially weighed at 100%, compared to 20% for off-base students, or 55% in districts where less housing on base is available, like Randolph Field ISD.
Numbers differ between districts, but for reference, Lackland ISD receives about $7,879 for students who live at the installation and about $1,575 for students who live off, according to last year’s funding for Impact Aid.
At Randolph Field ISD that number is more like $13,956 for on-base students and $7,675 for off base.
When houses on base sit vacant, the school district loses out on valuable funding. The superintendents said it’s an incentive to keep the quality of housing on base high, to attract families and retain them. Base housing is limited, and Bates said there is a waitlist at Fort Sam Houston.
Holt said all students should bring the same funding for the district, no matter where they live, and that military students especially benefit from attending a school that understands the unique challenges they face.
“Having those kids in a smaller environment where we understand things is a huge benefit to those military families because we’re good at it, and so we don’t feel like them having a difference between active duty kids who live off and on base is a good thing,” he said.
“We want every active-duty student to be looked at the same way and to be fully funded.”
While the current formula remains, the districts are facing a new hurdle: school vouchers.
Impact of vouchers
The state’s new private school voucher system has a unique impact on the three school districts.
The program allows families to use Texas Education Freedom Accounts to pay for the costs associated with private or home school, prioritizing low-income and disabled children in this year’s first wave of the program. The state pays school districts based on how many kids show up to class each day, so a loss to the voucher program is a loss of funding.
But when military families who live on base apply for and use a voucher, as some have, not only does the school district lose out on funding, but one of the limited on-base houses is occupied without providing any funding for the district.
“We would lose more money than the typical school district would,” Roper said of the voucher program.
All three districts have suffered from declining enrollment in recent years, as has been the trend statewide, with Fort Sam Houston currently serving the most kids at about 1,500 compared to Randolph Field’s 1,400 and Lackland’s 900.
The Texas Comptroller’s office, which manages the voucher program, reported that 30 students participated in the voucher program at Fort Sam Houston ISD this school year. While it is not clear how many of those students live on base, Bates said when he talked to homeschool families, the biggest reason behind their decision was flexibility.
There is a lesser known part of the voucher law for pre-K students, a much narrower population of Texans are eligible, but among them are the children of active-duty military members.
On- and off-base families are eligible to apply for pre-K funding, which is the same amount as for most older students, about $10,800 a year. Once families are accepted to the program they do not have to reapply each year, so long as they continue to remain in good standing.
Unfunded state mandates
The districts have also been distinctly impacted by unfunded mandates — those passed by the Texas Legislature that require schools to implement certain programs or services without the state providing funding to do so.
One of those is House Bill 3, which required public schools to have at least one armed security officer present during the school day.
The cost associated with the law has been difficult for districts, but the restrictions for civilian firearms on military bases has made the mandate especially cumbersome for base districts to implement.
“It’s a struggle for us because then we have to work with the installation to try to make that work, and we’re still not there,” Roper said.
The three districts cannot opt for a lower-cost alternative called the Guardian program that allows schools to train current staff to use firearms, as their staff are not permitted to bring guns onto the installation.
“We’re kind of between a rock and a hard place with the state requirement and then the federal restrictions of we can’t arm ourselves,” Holt said.
The districts have been working with Joint Base San Antonio to explore solutions, including having the bases provide officers to meet the requirement.
“It’s been a good partnership with us at JBSA. We meet with them maybe once, twice, quarterly, and they listen to our concerns,” Bates said.
The district’s location on tax-exempt land also leaves them without the ability to use bonds to pay for projects like new stadiums or buildings the way other school districts could.
“We have no money to build anything. We have to save money,” said Lorrie Remick, the chief financial officer and assistant superintendent for finance of Randolph Field ISD.
Instead, for rebuilding things like the district’s Junior ROTC building, school officials have to apply for outside grants and ask for donations from corporations like H-E-B and USAA.
Thriving academics
Despite their unique funding challenges and fluctuating student bodies, the districts excel academically. And they have for years.
In this year’s A-F scores, which capture how effective schools are at teaching students, the districts outperformed their San Antonio peers.
Fort Sam Houston and Randolph Field ISDs were the only local schools to receive A ratings, at 95 and 94, respectively. Lackland ISD was in the B range at 87.
Roper attributes part of this success to the culture on military bases.
“If kids act up and they get into a lot of trouble, their parents can get into trouble because they’re here on the installation, right?” he said.
Bates added that they have found nonmonetary ways to support staff and promote success.
“We invest quite a bit in our teacher professional development because sometimes it’s not about money, it’s about the support they get,” he said.
“We really pride ourselves in wanting to know what’s going to work with our teachers in terms of professional development, and that’s been very successful.”
The districts also experience lower levels of poverty and percentages of children who qualify for free and reduced lunch and higher median household incomes compared to peer schools. Poverty levels have been widely linked to education outcomes.
Another part of their success, Holt said, is acknowledging and meeting the unique needs of their military students. Students move in and out of the school systems frequently, often every two to three years if their parent’s assignments require it.
“Our big thing is, it is in the best interest of the military families that are active duty to have their kids educated with us. It’s a readiness issue,” he said.
“If Mom or Dad are deployed, we understand those. Our kids understand it. Our teachers understand that. We understand the differences when they come from a different country.”
End Goals
While the dream may be a fully funded Impact Aid program, Bates said that’s a “long ways away,” so it may be more of a pipe dream.
“With everything else that’s going on in our world with wars and tariffs and all this other stuff. If it comes, it probably won’t be during my career, or maybe even my lifetime,” Roper said.
But still, they are pushing for full funding.
Cherise Imai, executive director of the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools, likened the situation the schools face to Americans receiving a fraction of their tax returns.
“I think everybody expects to get 100% of your tax return, right? But these school districts are only getting a percentage of their tax return back from the federal government,” she said.
In Washington, the superintendents said they have generally received bipartisan support on their initiatives, but as is often the case in politics, the problem remains getting their funding codified into law.
Imai said she will continue to lead the charge.
“I also am hopeful that school districts, like those in Texas, will continue to work with us to ask Congress for funding because that is what they deserve, and ultimately, it’s the communities, the kids, the families that are paying the price,” she said.
The San Antonio Report’s military and veterans coverage is supported by Report for America.
