AUSTIN — Four in 10 Texas school districts are using “rainy day” reserve funds to balance their current budgets. More than half the districts are expected to do so next year.
Growing resource inequity among the districts could lead to another school finance lawsuit against the state. Public school enrollment grows by some 80,000 students each year, and in the past decade, 97 percent of that growth came from low-income families.
Experts largely agree these are the most pressing problems in public education. But the candidates running for Texas governor haven't addressed them unless asked by reporters.
“The school finance system is broken. The problem is real ... and it's not going to go away,” said Richard Kouri, public affairs director of the Texas State Teachers Association. “How do we deal with low-performing schools against a student enrollment that's increasingly low socio-economic, increasingly non-English-speaking and increasingly more expensive to educate?”
Last year, 57 percent of the state's 4.7 million public school children came from low-income families. About 800,000 were considered limited English proficient, up from 533,741 a decade ago.
“If the proper resources aren't invested in the changing student population in this state, a grim economic future for Texas is inevitable.” said Amy Beneski, associate executive director of the Texas Association of School Administrators. “Studies have shown that it takes additional resources to ensure these students stay on track and succeed.”
She and other education leaders, asked last week to spell out the state's biggest education problems, complained about more rigorous standards coupled with inadequate state funding.
The gubernatorial candidates rarely discuss the nuts and bolts of education funding. They don't address it on their Web sites and were not directly asked about it during recent televised debates.
They did, however, respond to recent questions from the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle about the funding pressures of growing numbers of the most expensive-to-teach children.
• Gov. Rick Perry disagrees that funding is an underlying problem for public schools, said his campaign spokesman, Mark Miner. The campaigns of Perry and his major challengers were asked to respond to the experts' concerns.
“Per-pupil spending, by itself, is not a measure of quality education. If it were, Washington, D.C., schools, which spend almost $17,000 per student — more than any school system in the nation — would have the top test scores (instead of the lowest),” Miner said.
Texas leads the country in college and career-ready curriculum, and Texas is the first state in the nation to hold schools directly accountable for preparing students for those goals, Miner said, adding: “You can't talk about funding public education without talking about accountability.”
• U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, one of Perry's two GOP challengers, cited studies showing school dropouts cost Texans $9 billion a year and called the trend unsustainable.
In a prepared statement, she disagreed that state funding is the underlying problem facing public schools.
“However, it is an issue that will need to be addressed,” she said. “‘Robin Hood' has kept us largely out of the courts during the last decade, but it is a band-aid and not a cure. It is complicated, and has bizarre effects.”
Shrinking the gap between high-cost and low-cost districts “can squeeze billions out of the current system, without sacrificing student performance,” Hutchison said. “In time, we will need to find ways to equalize public school funding through a greater state contribution, leaving the local property tax for local needs, but that day may be a long way off.”
• Debra Medina, Perry's other Republican opponent, said the fundamental problem isn't how much money is available but that Texans have shunted too much responsibility for educating children onto the government.
“The people of Texas need to revisit and better define what is included in the ‘general diffusion of knowledge'” mentioned in the Texas Constitution's requirement of “an efficient system of public free schools,” she said in a prepared statement. “It probably includes reading, writing, and arithmetic, but it does not include high-dollar sports stadiums, social skill indoctrination and layer upon layer of bureaucracy.”
• The campaign of former Houston Mayor Bill White, a Democrat, acknowledged school funding pressures are endangering the future of children and the state's long-term economy.
“Bill believes the school finance system must be addressed. It will likely take more than one session to resolve all the issues, and we must work toward a stable, sustainable finance system,” White spokeswoman Katy Bacon said.
The Texas school funding system, last overhauled in 2006 in response to a state Supreme Court order, resulted in a new business tax designed to ease property taxes, but it “did not perform as advertised, and the amount of money the state contributes to the foundation school program is decreasing,” Bacon said.
• Democratic candidate Farouk Shami, in a prepared statement, said Texas should scrap its entire school funding system.
He said the state must increase its share of public school funding and distribute it equitably, and to that end proposes collecting sales taxes from Internet retailers making more than $100,000 of annual sales in Texas, opening casinos at existing racetracks and creating three destination casino zones in the state.
Educators said they were frustrated at the lack of attention to school funding by the candidates.
“Lawmakers are right to require the state to reduce the dropout rate and better prepare students for post-secondary success, but doing so requires a proportionate investment beyond the additional funds needed every two years to account for student enrollment growth,” said Sam Spurlock, president of the Association of Texas Professional Educators and a science teacher in the Olney school district.
The candidates, he noted, say they want a quality education system to prepare children to compete in a world economy, and nearly everyone agrees — but, he asked, how will Texas reach this goal?
“It takes money to run our schools. And, each year, it takes more money than it did the last year,” said Jacqueline Lain, associate executive director of the Texas Association of School Boards.
“Already, one school board after another is making personnel cuts and/or eliminating programs,” she said. “And, more and more boards are having to dip into their reserve funds this year to cover their operating costs.”
It's also important to focus on how resources are allocated, said Holly Eaton, the Texas Classroom Teachers Association's director of professional development, who said teachers can be overwhelmed by local practices “such as the layering on of one curricular program or education initiative after another.”
More than 900 of the state's 1,030 school districts have tax rates for operations of at least $1.04 per $100 property valuation. Voters must approve anything higher, even to keep up with inflation, said Joe Smith, a retired school superintendent who now runs TexasISD.com
Some districts that already have reached the state-imposed maximum rate of $1.17 per $100 generate less money per student than districts with lower tax rates, Smith said.
“State mandates and inflation hurt those districts with the lowest funding and their taxpayers often have the highest property tax rates. This is a huge fairness issue that every politician should have at the top of his or her list of concerns,” Smith said.
In the San Antonio area, Southside ISD gets $5,011 per student while Alamo Heights ISD gets $6,198 per student. San Antonio ISD receives $5,105 per student. Northside ISD, the largest school district in Bexar County, gets $5,402 per student.
The Texas Federation of Teachers views the state's “inadequate” school funding system as the top public education issue, though it ranks “an overemphasis on testing and our punitive, unproductive accountability system” right behind it.
“Add to the mix that the state is facing a crunch in 2011 because the Legislature didn't pay for property tax cuts, and that we're not likely to get the infusion of $3.3 billion in stimulus money again that filled the gap last year, and you'll see that we are in quite a mess,” said Linda Bridges, the head of the teacher group.