Texas Republicans refused to increase funding for the state’s struggling schools in the 2023 legislative session, despite sitting on what was, at the time, a $30 billion budget surplus. Parents like Daphne Hoffacker continue to be astounded at the choice.
“I feel like we’re working so hard here in Texas,” said Hoffacker, who leads advocacy for the Austin Council of PTAs. “But if your kid is going to school in Massachusetts, they’re getting twice the resources in every classroom, at every age, at every school. They have more teachers, they have smaller class sizes, they have more course offerings.”
Hoffacker will join school district administrators and public education advocates from across the state this January to once again try to pry money loose for teachers and schools. She’ll take parents to the Capitol and show them how to advocate. She’ll testify before House and Senate committees and speak with legislators. She wants to see a variety of improvements, but her core message is the money: Our leaders must increase the basic allotment, the dollars the state provides per student, which sets the budgets for Texas schools.
Texas politicians last raised the basic allotment in 2019. Since then, inflation has shot up 22% – a dollar today buys only 80 cents of what it did five years ago. As a result, schools, particularly those in urban areas like Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio, are facing deficits. Austin ISD cut $30 million last year but still faces a $92 million deficit. Trustee Lynn Boswell said the cuts so far have had little effect on teachers and classrooms.
But how long can that continue without additional funding?
“It’s a massive problem,” Boswell said. “We’ve seen school districts increase class sizes. We have seen districts lay off teachers. We’ve seen schools eliminate transportation routes, which creates chaos for families who rely on that transportation. We know districts that have gotten rid of librarians, gotten rid of really treasured programs.”
Various projections show that to match the national average that states spend on public education, Texas would have to increase the basic allotment – currently set at $6,160 per student – by $1,000. But first, state leaders must deal with the effects of inflation. For that, they will need to provide at least $1,300 more per student.
“We’re working so hard here in Texas.” – Daphne Hoffacker of the Austin Council of PTAs
Public school advocates will be asking legislators this session to solve the inflation problem by changing Texas’ education funding formula so the basic allotment automatically rises with inflation. They also want the state to allocate more money for what they refer to as the Legislature’s unfunded mandates – shortfalls in funding for special education, transportation, and security, which cost school districts over $4 billion annually. And they want to modify the basic allotment so that it provides money for each student enrolled in school, rather than those who actually attend. Hoffacker said the current attendance-based approach penalizes the schools that need the most help, those which serve economically disadvantaged students and have higher rates of chronic absenteeism.
“It’s one of the social and cultural failures in our state,” Hoffacker said. “And you see it literally neighborhood by neighborhood.” She explained that some schools struggle with attendance, while in wealthier areas attendance is consistently higher because kids aren’t staying home to watch siblings, working to provide extra income, or caring for sick family members. “There are myriad issues that magically disappear with resources and money,” she added.
Hoffacker and Boswell also want to reform the recapture process that partially funds the public schools. Recapture essentially takes property tax revenue from wealthier districts and redistributes it to poorer ones. Texas combines that revenue with taxes from the general revenue fund – like sales taxes – to fund schools. The result is that when property taxes rise, as they continually do, the state doesn’t have to kick in as much from its general fund.
Education advocates say that roughly $10 billion of the $30 billion budget surplus in the last legislative biennium came from higher recapture revenue – and $10 billion is about the same sum that Texas Republicans have spent on their anti-immigrant program Operation Lone Star over the last four years. Boswell and her colleagues at AISD want legislation to stabilize the amount the state pays into public education from the general revenue fund, so that when property tax revenue rises, kids and teachers get the money.
“One thing we know in Texas is we have seen massive property value growth,” Boswell said. “We’re all living that. And we haven’t seen a corresponding increase in the funding for our schools. We could use it to supplement what’s already there, rather than supplanting it.”
This article appears in December 13 • 2024.