Welcome to Texas.
An early projection has Texas decreasing state funding to public education, and largely using local taxes to fill the gap.
In its preliminary budget request ahead of next year’s legislative session, the Texas Education Agency projected a drop in the state’s general revenue for public education by more than $3.5 billion over the next couple of years, in part because the revenue from local property taxes is expected to skyrocket. General revenue only makes up part of the state’s education funding.
Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath confirmed this projection in front of a state budget panel Wednesday morning as he laid out the state agency’s budget request through 2021.
The Foundation School Program, the main way of distributing state funds to Texas public schools, includes both state general revenue and local property tax revenue. Local property values are expected to grow by about 6.8 percent each year, and existing statute requires the state to use that money first before factoring in state funding.
Just a reminder, it doesn’t have to be this way. There are lots of things that could be done differently, but they all require legislative action, not to mention state leadership. There is one thing we can all do to facilitate this kind of necessary change, and that’s to vote for candidates who want to make that happen. Start with Mike Collier, who has plenty of ideas for how to fix this mess, but don’t stop there. We have a years-long record to tell us what we’re going to get if we have the same old same old in government next year. Vote to do something different or quit complaining when you don’t get it. The Chron editorial board has more.
