Education
BY HANNAH NORTON
Amid high operating costs and stagnant state funding, public school districts across Texas have adopted budget shortfalls for fiscal year 2024-25. Last year, public education advocates urged lawmakers to increase the basic allotment— which is the base amount of money schools receive per student and not changed since 2019, when it was raised to $6,160. Community Impact interviewed Bob Popinski, the senior policy director for education policy nonprofit Bob Popinski discusses Texas public school funding challenges
$1,400 deficit from where they were in 2019. When you look at the basic allotment—[which is] kind of the building block for our school funding for- mula—it’s at $6,160, and that hasn’t been updated since 2019. Federal stimulus funding is ending. And school districts knew that ... but it doesn’t mean that the post-pandemic student achievement loss has gone away. What kind of staffing issues are schools facing, and what can the state do to help? The state needs to implement a lot of the recom- mendations that came from the Teacher Vacancy Task Force report that was issued prior to the last legislative session. There were about 24 recommen- dations in there. A lot of them focused on salary; a lot focused on training and retention of teachers.
Raise Your Hand Texas, to learn more. Why are so many districts facing high budget shortfalls?
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For a longer version, visit communityimpact.com .
Since 2019, the last time we saw any increase to our school funding formulas, inflation has gone up 22%. School districts are operating at roughly a
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