Texas Senate will debate how to spend an additional $8 billion on school finance

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AUSTIN (Nexstar) — The Texas Senate Committee on Education K-16 will hold a hearing Thursday morning to discuss the future of public school financing, nearly a month after the House passed a bill to give public schools an almost $8 billion in additional funding.

The bill being discussed on Thursday is a different version from the bill the Texas House passed on April 17, which is not a surprise. State Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, the chair of the education committee, told Nexstar earlier this month there are differences in how the House and Senate want to finance public schools.

On Tuesday, his office released a one-pager with highlights of his committee substitute to House Bill 2. It details pay raises for teachers with at least three years of experience and an even bigger pay bump for teachers with more than 5 years of experience; provides payment to teacher candidates for in-classroom, pre-service training; and provides an additional $1.3 billion in special education funding, among other things.

Although the two approaches vary, they both have a similar end-goal: additional funding for schools that falls between $7 and $8 billion. The differences in the bill come down to the different avenues and pathways lawmakers want to use to finance schools.

The specific details of the bill will not come out until Thursday morning when it is laid out in committee.

The basic allotment

A huge difference can be seen with the basic allotment. The basic allotment is the base-level funding for each student in public schools across the state. It is very flexible for school districts and can be used for maintenance, teacher and staff salaries, transportation, etc.

The House’s version of the bill, authored by State Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Salado, provided a $440 increase in the basic allotment, which has not been raised since 2019. Texas House Democrats argued that number was far too low to help school districts catch up with the rise in inflation. Instead, they wanted a $1,400 increase.

However, it appears the Senate’s version of the bill only increases the basic allotment by $55 through golden penny yield reforms.

Texas’ Big Three — Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Speaker Dustin Burrows — all praised the proposal from Creighton at a news conference on Wednesday. Burrows said he is “excited” about the bill, and Patrick said he has looked through the legislation and called it a “masterpiece of school finance.”

But the bill is facing criticism before it is even laid out in committee. State Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, issued a statement saying, “Governor Abbott and Texas Republicans are defunding our schools in broad daylight.” He argues the Senate’s proposal removes funding for full-day pre-K, low-income students, and bilingual education programs.

The low increase in the basic allotment has raised the alarm for Stephanie Stoebe, a 4th grade teacher in Round Rock ISD with 21 years of teaching experience. She wants to see an increase in the basic allotment and an increase in teacher compensation. “About 80% of school districts are are operating with a deficit. So we desperately need to have a change to the basic allotment system so that we can function,” Stoebe said.

Mary Lynn Pruneda, the director of education and workforce policy at Texas 2036, said the low increase in the basic allotment is not necessarily underfund a school, emphasizing that the school finance system is complex. “There are 1,000 different ways that you can spend money in school finance. Just because you’re not solely putting money into the basic allotment, doesn’t mean that you’re not doing other great things downstream in the formulas as well.”

Pruneda said Creighton’s approach of creating a designated allotment for teacher pay raises could free up some dollars in the basic allotment for school districts to use toward other costs. “It’s like if suddenly you got 10% more on your paycheck, you put that towards your mortgage, that means that you have more money to free up groceries,” Pruneda said as an example.

How is that money going to be used?

The different versions of the bill is expected to be heavily debated in the hearing on Thursday morning. Public school advocates are already putting a call out to members to show up at the Capitol for the hearing.

Ultimately, Pruneda explains it is not about the final price tag of the school finance bill, but how that money is going to be used to improve the education of Texas students. Stoebe, who has seen generations of students come through her classroom, echoes that same belief.

“If we want to have a great, civilized and responsible society, we need to make sure that we’re educating them in the best way possible, and that can only come about by really ethical conversations about money,” Stoebe said.

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