Scurry County educators responded with a mix of optimism and caution to the education topics Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wants the state legislature to address in its upcoming special session.
Among the education-specific issues Abbott wants the legislature to address are providing more money to teachers, a voucher proposal so some special education students can attend private school, giving administrators more flexibility in hiring and firing teachers and creating a commission to study ways to fix the public education financing system.
For now, Snyder ISD Superintendent Dr. Eddie Bland is adopting a wait-and-see approach to many of the issues the legislature was asked to address when it convenes in special session July 18.
For example, Bland supports more pay for teachers, but is wary about just where the money will come from to pay for the raises.
“Obviously, teachers deserve a raise,” he said. “But the thing is, there will be no funding coming with that from the state. The way the governor worded that is that schools would be required to ‘reprioritize’ their funding. Another way to read that is ‘unfunded mandate.’”
Unfunded mandates — programs the state requires but does not provide funding for — is a major sore point for school districts and other taxing entities across Texas.
“If the state requires it, they should fund it,” Bland said. “Over the past 11 years, the state has decreased its portion of school funding from around 50 percent to about 30 percent, but they keep adding more and more for us to do.”
Ira ISD Superintendent Jay Waller agreed, but said the bigger picture needs to be addressed.
“If they are looking to increase teacher pay, they should look at all of the other things (concerning school finance),” he said, adding he was pleased a commission could be created to study school finance.
When talking about the governor’s call for a special commission to study public education financing, Bland’s attitude shifted from wariness to outright skepticism.
“I don’t know if anything is going to come of that,” he said. “When ASATR (Additional State Aid for Tax Reduction, a program that gave districts revenue relief when the legislature reduced property tax rates by one-third in 2006) was put in place, it was labeled as only a temporary fix until the legislature put a permanent solution in place, and they still haven’t fixed it. So, when you talk about a commission to study the school funding system, they’ve been studying it for 11 years.”
Waller, who has been one of the state’s most vocal superintendents about ASATR’s expiration, said he is still hopeful that funding will be extended during the special session.
“As long as they bring something back, there’s hope. I am hopeful,” he said.
The major problem with public school financing, Bland said, is that there’s no “one size fits all” solution.
“Across the state, we are so diverse that it’s hard to devise just one formula to fit all the school districts,” he said. “There’s got to be a funding option put in this for local control.”
Extending ASATR was addressed during the regular session, but did not reach a consensus between the Senate and House.
“In the Senate, we passed House Bill 21, which would have included $532 million in additional school funding, including $150 million to help bridge the funding gap for ASATR districts for the next two years. There was also additional facilities’ funding for charter schools and traditional school districts,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said. “However, House Bill 21 also included $50 million for a small school choice program for children with disabilities. The Texas House killed that proposal, too. The House turned down over a half-billion dollars in additional school funding rather than use a tiny percentage of school funding to allow a disabled child somewhere in Texas to attend a private school.”
Waller said Abbott understands that school districts are not the same when it comes to funding.
“He understands we are tied to volatile funding,” he said of mineral values in West Texas.
Bland and Waller declined to make any comment on the governor’s proposal to give administrators more flexibility in hiring and firing of personnel until they have more time to study the measure.
Bland had reservations about the idea of providing vouchers for special education students to attend private schools. His biggest fear is that the program will take away money from already cash-strapped school districts.
“As a whole, educators are not opposed to vouchers,” Bland said. “What we’re opposed to is that the state is talking about taking funding away from local school districts which are already under-funded.”