The Texas Tribune Festival hosted the conversation on September 14 concerning “School Finance and the 87th Legislature” with Chairman Dan Huberty (R-Houston) of House Public Education and Chairman Larry Taylor (R-Friendswood) of Senate Education. They discuss what became of last session’s funding overhaul and the work left undone.
This report is intended to give you an overview and highlight of the discussions on the various topics taken up. It is not a verbatim transcript of the discussions but is based upon what was audible or understandable to the observer and the desire to get details out as quickly as possible with few errors or omissions.
Aliyya Swaby – Texas Tribune, Moderator
Q: What should we think of the future of public education and HB 3?
- Taylor – getting them back open was biggest challenge in interim and funding will be a challenge, but he is seeing from leadership a desire to follow through on commitments made last session
- Taylor – will try to do everything they can to follow through on commitments of HB 3
- Huberty – get campus open in right way, operation connectivity is making huge commitments right now
- Huberty – districts are funded for this year and nowhere near 2011 concerns
- Taylor – coming out of COVID, we have guaranteed funding regardless of attendance when schools start, funding virtual education, have also purchased PPE and doing everything to get schools started safely
Q: How has pandemic affected districts financial health?
- Taylor – have seen some drop in enrollment, heard of number of parents who are frustrated trying to find ways to get their children back in schools
- Huberty – knew there would be budget uncertainty so made a commitment to fully fund districts for first 12 weeks, incumbent on schools to go get those kids
- Hubety – opportunity to change how we do education forever, purchasing laptops will give kids opportunities to do amazing things and opportunity to deliver education in a different way
Q: Cost of HB 3 increases over time, thoughts on new revenue sources to pay for priorities?
- Taylor – have not had time to talk about that all, have been working with TEA and districts getting them open
- Taylor – have not had interim hearings
- Huberty – one interim hearing last year, there are ways to open up funding sources in HB 3; ways to make tweaks in system today
- Huberty – don’t want to change basic allotment, need to work together on bi-partisan level on priorities and thinks everyone agrees public education is a huge priority
- Huberty – if districts are smart and responsible with money thinks it will make a huge difference
- Taylor – commitments were not made with one-time grants, they are in the formula which is much more difficult to change
- Taylor – have been promoting school technology over last few years, now every kid will have one to one devices
- Huberty – recalls SB 6 intent to stop sending textbooks to school, give technology to schools; have opportunity to do something in this crisis
Q: Do you think we will move forward in school finance?
- Taylor – always little tweaks can be made to HB 3 but this is about maintaining, keep integrity of bill in place
- Taylor – will be strongly defending what was put into bill
- Huberty – 100% agree, board worried about budgets going forward and understand consistency going forward
- Huberty – heard from focus group of Superintendents on comp ed weights but it is difficult for them to spend the money, so there are some things in the bill that could provide more flexibility but not interested in tearing down “bones of what we did”
- Huberty – opportunity to make huge difference in kids lives with laptops and connectivity
Q: Mandated pay raises in 2019, should teachers be worried?
- Taylor – fully expect to continue funding the way it was in HB 3
- Huberty – some pay freezes as they deal with health insurance, those should be things they can fix at legislature
- Taylor – some districts are taking advantage of current opportunities like teacher incentive allotments
Q: Full day pre-K mandate, impacts of children staying home?
- Taylor – two more Senate Education hearings for this interim, don’t think as many bills will be filed this session due to reduced hearings, redistricting and getting budget finalized
- Huberty – doing RFIs, commitment was to fund districts and notes districts are all doing it a bit different for what makes sense for their community
- Huberty – important for local school districts to make right decisions for them
Q: State supplanting federal stimulus dollars; impacts to schools?
- Taylor – that money is making sure the state can fulfill their commitment and notes a lot of school districts have “a lot of reserves”; this is time to use reserves to pay for expenses they were not planning
- Huberty – state has provided millions of dollars in PPE; commitment made in HB 3 is working
- Huberty – $15 billion in school’s fund balance across the state in 2018-19, have no idea how much they put in bank accounts after last year, if taxpayers knew how much districts had fund balance they would be alarmed
- Huberty – schools didn’t open so significant savings in closings, etc
Q: Are you saying state needs stimulus funding to pay for other things down the line?
- Huberty – No, State has allocated resources from CARES act, they know exactly what was given and using those dollars to fully meet commitment moving forward