2023 Texas Legislature: What you need to know about public education

Three years right into a pandemic that has upended faculty districts’ funds and amid rising inflation, some districts are dealing with robust choices which may embody closing faculties and shutting down applications.

Lawmakers have already filed some laws that will give more cash to faculty districts.

State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, filed House Bill 31, which proposes basing the state’s public education funding system on scholar enrollment as a substitute of common attendance.

Currently, Texas offers faculties cash based mostly on their common day by day attendance price. If a scholar misses faculty, their district’s attendance common goes down, and so does the sum of money it receives. And in a post-COVID-19 world through which mother and father are faster to maintain their youngsters residence in the event that they’re feeling unwell, some districts’ funds have grow to be extra unstable than ever.

Texas has about 5.5 million Okay-12 college students, however solely about 92% of them frequently attended lessons final faculty yr, which means faculties missed out on thousands and thousands in funding from the remaining college students. Hinojosa’s invoice would assist faculties obtain funding for each enrolled scholar, even when they miss class.

Hinojosa estimates that it will price the state an additional $5 billion throughout the subsequent state price range cycle to change the method from attendance to enrollment. So far, there’s little indication that lawmakers will need to overhaul the school finance system the way in which the 2019 Legislature did.

Other lawmakers would quite see the state improve the sum of money faculties obtain per scholar. Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, filed House Bill 882, which might improve that quantity to $7,075 and would regulate it yearly in accordance to inflation. Educators say inflation has diminished the worth of the greenback quantity they get per scholar, which has been sitting at $6,160 since 2019.

Increasing that quantity would additionally imply more cash for trainer raises, since faculty districts should use 30% of any further income they obtain to improve worker salaries.