Education
BY HANNAH NORTON
Bob Popinski discusses Texas public school funding challenges Amid high operating costs and stagnant state funding, public school districts across Texas have adopted budget shortfalls for scal 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 nonprot
experiencing enrollment decline. Think of it this way: if every student draws down about $10,000 to pay for teachers, and you lose 10 kids, that is $100,000 that the school district doesn’t have to pay for a teacher salary. But you still have to have a teacher in the classroom, and you still have to have a bus driver, and you still have to be able to turn the lights and the air conditioning on. So those are big, kind of xed costs that a school district doesn’t necessarily control. What kind of stang 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. School districts are struggling to nd certied teachers. In the 2022-23 school year, approximately 15,300 teachers were hired in Texas without certication. That’s a drastic increase, about a 650% increase, from 2010. And it’s especially acute in rural and small towns, where nearly 75% of teachers were uncertied. The Texas State Board of Education will soon approve new textbooks that districts can begin using during the 202526 school year. What does this mean for districts and students? It’s a big decision for school districts, whether to opt in to the statewide curriculum program. The idea behind the law is that the state [can identify] high-quality instructional materials and make them available statewide. If a school district opts in, they can get an additional $40 per student and another $20 to print the materials. [The State Board of Education’s] job is to deter- mine the criteria and quality of those materials. There’s a lot of back and forth with the publishers and with stakeholders [regarding] what needs to be in that program. Once that is fully formed, it really is up to the local school boards and school administrators to see if that is the right t for their district. And if it is, you can draw down additional funding in a time when budgets are tight. But if you have di¢erent community needs and di¢erent community wants, and you’ve spent decades developing your own curriculum and you think it’s high quality, it may not be the right t for [your district]. What should Texans be aware of before the 89th Legislature convenes in January? School funding is going to be one of the priorities of the Legislature. The Texas Comptroller [said July 17] that there’s over $21.2 billion available in
Raise Your Hand Texas, to learn more. How are Texas public schools funded?
Right now, Texas is in the bottom 10 [states] for per-student funding. We’re about $4,800 below the national average, according to a new National Education Association report. [Texas uses] what is known as an equalized sys- tem. It means that the Legislature sets the amount of per-student funding and a district is guaranteed that amount. [District] revenue comes from local school district property taxes, and it comes from general revenue from the state. On average, when you look at per-student fund- ing across the state, the funding that actually gets down into the classrooms—that pays for day-to-day operations like teachers and cafeteria workers and bus drivers and school principals—is roughly $10,000 per student, on average, across the state. Why are so many districts facing high budget shortfalls? Since 2019, the last time we saw any increase to our school funding formulas, ination has gone up 22%. School districts are operating at roughly a $1,400 decit from where they were in 2019. When you look at the basic allotment—[which is] kind of the building block for our school funding formula— 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. There’s still a lot of programs that are in place to help students with their academic progress that school districts would like to continue, but because that federal stimulus funding is going away, it may not be available to them. In addition to those two major driving fac- tors, there are some school districts out there
COURTESY RAISE YOUR HAND TEXAS
additional state revenue right now. That includes $4.5 billion that wasn’t spent on school district funding formulas, because nothing passed last legislative session. We’re $8,800 below the national average in teacher salaries, so that’s going to be important. Special education is going to be an important issue. Are we still identifying the kids we need to identify; are we funding our special education for- mulas the right way? Last time I looked, there was a $1.8 billion shortfall in special education funding. That’s putting pressure on kids. As we’ve seen over the last election cycle and last legislative session, there is going to be a huge push to get school vouchers across the nish line next legislative session. And what [Raise Your Hand Texas] hopes is that Texas is learning from other states on why this is still bad policy for our state. If you look at Arizona, they’re facing over a $1 bil- lion budget shortfall. Most of the kids that are using those universal vouchers already attended private schools the previous year—anywhere between 70% and 80%—depending on which state you look at. So there’s a lot of things and a lot of guardrails that I hope our legislators look at when they’re consider- ing a voucher program.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For a longer version, visit communityimpact.com .
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CYPRESS EDITION
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