Basic Issues That Affect Texas Public School Finance

My list of 3 basic issues that affect Texas public school funding are:

Structural deficit due to the 2006 reduction in property taxes and failure of the Texas Franchise Tax.

• The Texas Franchise Tax revision that was enacted in 2006 was designed to:
•  Align the tax with a modern economy,
•  Create a simpler business tax,
•  Eliminate tax planning opportunities, and
•  Raise roughly $3 billion in annual new state revenue.
• The reality, 6 years later is that tax collections have been much lower than anticipated.  The lack of projected collections has created a “structural deficit” that fails to meet the needs of Texas public education.
• The shortfall directly contributed to the current education funding crisis in Texas.

Texas’ growing ELL population results in increased cost for schools when meeting requirements for ELL education.

• Recent estimates suggest that 20% of public school students are English-language learners (ELL).
• Texas public schools are mandated under law to provide multilingual classrooms, research-based programs, and sheltered ESL course sections for ELLs (dependent upon additional factors such as age, years in U.S., etc.).
• The cost of educating ELL students is higher than for non-ELL students
• While weighted formulas are used to increase funds based upon the number of ELL students within a district, the weights are inadequate and not based upon actual costs.  The situation creates an increase in school funding, but the increase is typically inadequate to meet the needs of a growing ELL student population.
• Texas public schools add 80,000 students per year.  The rate of ELL student growth is estimated to be twice the growth of non-ELL students (38.4% to 17.4% according to expert testimony on 11/23/2012 by expert witness, Delia Pompa, at the school funding litigation in Travis County).

Murkiness of the term “Adequate” fails to adequately quantify the level to which schools must be funded.  When the Texas Supreme court last ruled on school funding, it referred to the term adequate when determining appropriateness of funding.

• Who can determine the adequateness of funding?  What IS adequate?  Who decides?  Is adequate included in our definition of equitable? 
• Adequate is an ill-defined term that has no set of measurable standards for comparison.  To rely on the term adequate is inadequate.

I certainly can see how so many issues are involved in school finance formulation and estimation.  One thing is very clear to me, though…

With Texas involved in its sixth school funding litigation since 1984, we can no longer look for a “quick-fix” or “Band-Aid” approach as we have done in the past.  I see that it is time for the State of Texas to completely overhaul her system of school finance to reflect the needs of an increasingly diverse population.