School Finance and the 82nd Session Discussed During Weekend Conference

“School Finance” and “Lessons Learned from the 82nd Session” were just two of the panel discussions during the Tribune Festival event held over the weekend which focused on issues in education, health care, environment and immigration.

The panel reviewing lessons learned on public education from the 82nd Session offered the following insight:

  • Sen. Judith Zaffirini said that every year we tweak public school finance and school legislation and “we can never get it quite right.” She argued for outcomes based funding and the need to fund early childhood education.
  • Sen. Florence Shapiro said we are funding the wrong end of the student. Instead of funding for students in the seat, we should fund for the output of the student, what is coming out of their mind. “There is not one child that is not paid for,” said Shapiro in regards to public school financing, “there is more to public education than throwing money at it.”
  • Rep. Rob Eissler said there is a need to integrate relevant technology into learning and the classroom; furthermore, instructional material allotments will go a long way toward funding that goal. He argued the need for data driven decisions/rankings.
  • Rep. Dan Branch said the most important need for Texas is an educated workforce in a knowledge based economy. He further argued the need for funding outcomes and to incentivize completion. 

When discussing tapping the rainy day fund, Zaffirini said she would have liked to tap more of the fund to add to the education budget. Branch countered that the collective macro rainy day funds of all the school districts was over $7 billion.

After a review of what Texas paid for/did not pay for during the 82nd, another panel turned its attention to how Texas can pay for education in future years.

F. Scott McCown, executive director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, during his panel discussion on how to pay for Public Education, argued the need for revenue to pay for education expenses; he suggested taxes. On the same panel, Sen. Dan Patrick argued the need for a higher sales tax rate by raising the rate by 2 cents. He further cautioned that now would not be a time to raise taxes on business with a recovering economy. McCown extended his argument that Texas needs to fix the margins tax and costly exemptions in the tax code. He was concerned about raising the sales tax, noting there would be a need for an exemption for the bottom 20 percent in income.

In response to schools not having to make significant cuts as initially predicted, McCown cautioned that the real problem with layoffs is going to be in the second year of biennium when most districts are making their deepest cuts. “We have to put more money on the table,” he said, because we are not meeting the challenge of educating our kids.

The complete discussion of this panel and all education panels can be viewed on the Texas Tribune Blog: http://www.texastribune.org/texas-education/public-education/public-higher-education-texas-tribune-festival/