State lawmakers are trying to scrap an almost universally loathed school finance system that essentially locks school districts into 2005-06 funding levels.
But the effort to make school finance simpler and more fair while spreading the pain of an $11 billion budget cut more equitably has a long way to go.
Looking at some different school funding plans this week, Texas Deputy Associate Education Commissioner Lisa Dawn-Fisher bluntly told a Senate committee the latest idea “would make (school funding) exponentially more complicated to explain. Your ability to explain to the public, to school boards to superintendants why some school districts get more becomes completely incomprehensible.”
The Senate Finance subcommittee on school finance was supposed to wrap up its work this week. Instead, lawmakers will take more time
Sen. Education Chair Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said more computer runs showing the impact of new school funding models on the state’s 1,030 school districts will come out next week, “and then we will see what elements we need to put into that run to make it more palatable.”
The first district by district computer runs showed the political difficulty in trying to shed the target revenue system.
But any new school finance plan is expected to dramatically affect public schools and the 4.8 million Texas children who attend them.
The Legislature is still a long way from approving a new state budget, but everyone inside the state Capitol understands that a $27 billion revenue shortfall – the amount needed to keep current levels of state services – cannot be closed without public education taking a major whacking.
It’s premature to know whether tens of thousands of Texas school teachers will lose their jobs as some reports have speculated.
But schools may be forced to furlough teachers. They may be unable to provide new textbooks. Physical education for middle school students may get cut. Pre-kindergarten programs could get slashed. Anti-school dropout programs remain on the chopping block. And school class sizes could get larger.
“I would say, ‘school districts brace yourself,’” said Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, a member of the Senate Education Committee. “School funding is so severe that the cuts will be felt at the classroom level and at your neighborhood schools.”
Getting rid of the target revenue system would save the state at least $5 billion over the next two years. But doing so would sock school districts that have received higher per student funding under the target revenue system, which provides funding to school districts based on 2005-06 conditions. It’s a system that struggles to honor the state Constitution requirement for lawmakers to provide a free and efficient public education.
The system, for example, provides the Austin Independent School system with about $100 million a year more than what the Fort Worth school system gets despite both having roughly the same enrollment.
The first school funding runs last week would have been painful for many school districts. For example, Alamo Heights ISD would lose $1,171 per student, or $6.2 million. San Antonio ISD would lose $43 per student, or $2.3 million. Northside ISD would lose $452 per student, or $52.9 million.
Shapiro said she doesn’t yet know how the struggle with school funding will end.
“We want to get rid of target revenue and put more school districts into the funding formula,” she said. “At the same time, you have to have a fairer way of making the cuts. You can’t just cut the top (school districts) and forget the bottom.”
Gov. Rick Perry has complicated the Legislature’s work by instructing lawmakers to close the budget shortfall with cuts to services and programs. Raising revenue is not an option, said Perry. He also has told lawmakers not to touch the state’s $9.4 billion Rainy Day Fund.
“If we continue down a path where we’re not going to use the (Rainy Day Fund) and don’t put new money into this budget, schools are looking to cut about $30,000 from each typical classroom in every classroom around the state,” said Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, vice chair of the House Public Education Committee.
Texans tell Hochberg to spare education cuts by taking money elsewhere in the budget.
That’s not possible, he said, because “this budget is cut severely all across the board,” he said.
Dipping into the Rainy Day fund could help public education but health and human services, higher education and other state agencies also will compete for any money that lawmakers pull out from that fund.
School administrators need to get creative to do more with less, said Rep. Alma Allen, D-Houston, a retired educator and member of the House Public Education Committee.
“This is really going to tear up education in the state of Texas,” she said. We have proposals to get rid of early childhood education on the front end. We know how important that is for children and the development of children in terms of their education. We have simply gutted education in the state of Texas, so districts will have to tighten their belts even more so.”
Shapiro speculated that lawmakers may have to phase out the target revenue system over time, although doing so would bite into the savings.
“If we were to just delete it, it would be a tremendous hit for school districts,” she said.
Hearing all the stories of need while sitting on the House Appropriations Committee “is like a long, slow funeral procession,” said Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock, R-Killeen.
The veterinarian also sits on the House Public Education Committee and is a former school board member in Killeen. Aycock said he had been hopeful that public education cuts in the neighborhood of 25 percent could be reduced to about 10 percent. But finding more money to accomplish that is looking less optimistic, he said.
“We’re certainly not going to do any good (for public education),” Aycock said. “We’re trying to find places to do the least damage. Pray for us.”
School superintendents and the education community are gripped by worry, fear and despair, said Wayne Pierce, head of the Equity Center, an education consortium that represents nearly 700 school districts with low and moderate property wealth.
“We believe that no district should be funded above a level that the state is not willing to bring the bottom (districts) up to,” Pierce said.
The proposed cuts in public education cannot be accomplished, he said, “without letting people go. If you start reducing the jobs in education, it’s going to hit the economies of every community.”
House Public Education Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, noted that the state can’t “manufacture new money. We need to look for a way to flow funds to school districts fairly and adequately and simply with transparency.”
School administrators and school finance lawyers privately say they likely will be forced to file a lawsuit to compel the Legislature to finance public education adequately and efficiently.
“No matter what we do, you might as well get ready just because of the funding situation,” Eissler said of potential litigation. “There’s going to be people that want to sue us by what they consider the adequacy and fairness. At least we’ll be simpler and transparent.”