Texas school administrators’ worst fears about the sweeping school finance legislation approved during the last legislative session are about to become a reality.
House Bill 3, which carried a $6.5 billion price tag for the biennium and included an additional $5 billion in property tax relief, was hailed as one the best things to happen to Texas public education in a long time.
But even as educators and administrators applauded the move, they also fretted there were no designated revenue streams to underwrite the plan beyond 2021. The 86th Legislature relied on nonrecurring sources of revenue to fund full-day care for qualifying 4-year-olds, expand dual language and dyslexia programs, provide teacher raises and increase services to low-income students.
There were well-founded concerns among educators — who have struggled to operate an inadequately funded public school system for decades — that the increased funding would be short-lived. What would happen in the next biennium when the cost for the 2022-23 budget would increase to $13.5 billion, they asked. What was Plan B in the event of an economic downturn?
Those questions remain unanswered as school districts prepare their budgets for the next school year in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Forced business closures have substantially reduced local and state government budgets. Plummeting gas and oil prices are painting a grim economic future. Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar is expected to issue a revised revenue estimate for the current state budget, which runs through August 2021, in July. The only question is, how awful will these numbers be?
School administrators are preparing for the worst. As they look to the 2020-21 school year, they are eyeing slower expansion of pre-K programs, elimination of pay raises and even the possibility of layoffs, the Express-News reports.
All this comes at a time when public schools are facing a great need and have emerged as key community centers, providing meals, checking on students and scrambling to bridge the digital divide. School administrators should be focusing their energies on dealing with the expected learning slide due to COVID-19’s disruption of regular classroom instruction. The digital divide and parents’ inexperience in home-schooling have made online learning an unequal experience and left many students behind.
Instead, school officials are having to figure out how they can stretch budgets even further. They have been down this road before. In 2011, lawmakers cut $5.4 billion in public school funding to balance a post-recession revenue shortfall.
That slashing of funds left school districts reeling and resulted in a lawsuit, marking the seventh time since 1984 school districts looked to relief over the level of state spending on public education.
In 2016, the Texas Supreme Court found the state’s public school finance system is constitutional but deeply flawed.
“It is safe to say that the current Texas school system leaves much to be desired. Few would argue that the state cannot do better,” wrote Justice Don Willett in the 100-page opinion issued almost four years ago.
State leaders vowed to address the inequities. Now, it looks like all the public education funding gains made last legislative session will be lost, and once again the state’s budget will be balanced on the backs of the state’s public school children, and at the expense of the future.
San Antonio Express-News