House Bill 3 includes increases to the “basic allotment” of per-student funding every school district receives from the state; “compression” of districts’ local property tax rates; reduction of the amount property-wealthy districts have to return to the state via recapture; and formula changes that send more state money to local schools for their English-language learners, economically disadvantaged students, and students with special needs. That works out to a different bottom-line number for each of the state’s more than 1,000 school districts, as modeled by the Legislative Budget Board – these “runs” were calculated before the floor vote on HB 3. The amounts shown are the anticipated increases in per-student funding for each Central Texas district in the 2019-20 school year if HB 3 becomes law in its current form.
This article appears in April 26 • 2019.