Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, and Speaker Dade Phelan today announced the release of $11.2 billion in new federal funds to help public schools address student learning loss and costs incurred as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. These one-time funds are intended to support a comprehensive learning recovery effort in Texas over the next three years. Due to federal requirements, two-thirds of the funds are available immediately under grants administered by the Texas Education Agency (TEA), with the final one-third to be distributed contingent upon approval by the U.S. Department of Education.
Given the complicated nature of the federal maintenance of effort requirements and the enormity of the education challenge ahead, the decision to release these new funds was reached with the important input of Senate Finance Chair Jane Nelson, House Appropriations Chair Greg Bonnen, Senate Education Chair Larry Taylor, and House Public Education Chair Harold Dutton.
This funding builds upon the roughly $2.2 billion in federal funding already allocated to Texas to help public schools respond to COVID-19 and comes on the heels of the largest single-year increase in funding for Texas public education in the history of the state. The Texas Legislature passed the transformative legislation House Bill 3 in 2019, and during the 2019-20 school year, state funding for public education increased by more than $5 billion from the year prior.