On School Funding, ‘No Guarantees’ Anymore (TX)
June 2, 2011
A long-standing pact between the State of Texas and its public schools could soon be null and void.
For about 60 years, Texas lawmakers have afforded public education a special status in terms of state funding.
Written into law is a guarantee that schools would get enough money to provide a basic, foundational education for each student. That obligation has dictated what the state has put into the Foundation School Program to cover growing enrollment and a changing student population.
But the school finance plan now under consideration by legislators wipes that guarantee out and makes future appropriations dependent upon how much money is available rather than how much is needed.
“The commitment to fund current law would cease to exist as a legal commitment,” said Lynn Moak, a school finance expert and consultant. “Public education has lost its special status.”
State Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, said the school finance change “is a true cut in an entitlement” and an essential cut at that.
“There are no guarantees, and for a Legislature to say we can guarantee this forever is not being straightforward to the people,” said Patrick, who was deeply involved in the Senate’s school funding discussions.
The school finance changes were supposed to have been a done deal as of Sunday. Both chambers were scheduled to take up a mammoth budget-related bill that included the school finance compromise struck late Friday.
The House approved the bill. But a filibuster by state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, forced the Legislature to return to finish its work on the budget bill, as well as other issues.
That work will begin today with public committee hearings on both sides of the Capitol.
Most of the public discussions of the school finance changes have focused on how the state wi ll apportion a $4 billion reduction in aid among the school districts over the next two years.
The House and Senate compromise now in Senate Bill 1 docks school districts 6 percent of what they are owed under current law in the first year of the budget.
The next year, districts that have been getting more in terms of per-student funding take a bigger hit. Austin, for instance, gets an 8.5 percent reduction, while the statewide average is 5.6 percent.
On Sunday, state Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, highlighted the shift in Texas’ future obligation to schools during an exchange on the House floor with Public Education Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, one of the House negotiators on the compromise.
Eissler had already acknowledged that the change would mean that school districts would no longer be legally entitled to a certain amount of state aid.
Hochberg asked him if that change would allow the state to routinely short school districts.
“That would allow us to,” Eissler said, “but I don’t see that happening.”
“This is not a good year to make that argument, Mr. Chairman,” Hochberg responded.
In the House budget introduced back in January, funding for the Foundation School Program came in $9.8 billion short of what current law requires. That amount is at $4 billion under the final budget.
Legislators still have to change the law to reduce the state’s obligations, otherwise they would have to pay up in 2013.
Indeed, the entire $37 billion appropriation for the Foundation School Program in the 2012-13 budget is contingent upon their enacting such a change. That is, in part, why they are back this week for a special session.
But in the future, a specific vote to change the law would not be necessary. Lawmakers would simply put less into the budget than the fundin g formulas call for, as is the common practice for higher education funding.
“That is a very, very big change in the way that we do funding for the schools,” Hochberg said.
Patrick agreed that it is a significant change to how the state has done its business.
“I think it’s a change that is needed as we move forward. We need to have real cuts,” Patrick said.
The state can no longer afford that level of education funding, and school districts can absorb the cuts without affecting the classroom, he said.
“Times have changed,” Patrick said. “We have an obligation not to give easy answers but to give straightforward answers.”