Where the Funding Fight Stands 

After Gov. Greg Abbott and his allies in the Texas Legislature hijacked $4.5 billion in additional public education funding in a failed attempt to force the passage of universal private school voucher legislation in the 88th legislative session, public schools across Texas have paid the price as communities have seen a wave of mass layoffs, school closures, and growing budget deficits. 

School finance is one of the most important topics that will be taken up by the Texas Legislature in the upcoming 89th legislative session that starts on Tuesday, Jan. 14. 

As we wrote about in last week’s Hotline update about where the voucher fight stands, Abbott is now taking a more conciliatory tone on education funding. Rep. Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock), a candidate for speaker of the Texas House, has also expressed support for “public education funding and increased support for teachers.” And we have heard from allies in the Texas Legislature that additional school funding and raises have significant momentum on both sides of the aisle. 

Legislators across the state are hearing urgent concerns from their constituents regarding their failure to fully fund public education, and it is clear that they are afraid of facing political consequences in the 2025 elections if they fail to fulfill this responsibility once again. 

However, some of the most extreme voucher proponents both inside and outside of the building are pushing back. They make the false claim that public education is actually overfunded. They argue that public schools receive plenty of funding but are misusing it instead of using it to support students, educators, and school employees. The facts do not support these unfounded claims. 

In the 88th legislative session in 2023, advocates pushed for a $1,000 increase to the basic allotment – the base amount of funding per student that school districts are entitled to – to account for the impact of the record inflation that occurred since it was last updated to $6,160 in 2019. 

Raising the basic allotment creates a multiplier effect that strengthens school funding in three key ways. 

1.  It provides crucial support for educator pay. State law currently requires that at least 30% of any basic allotment increase must go toward raising salaries of teachers and other non-administrative staff.  

2. It automatically increases funding for essential programs like special education, bilingual education, and career and technical education, since these allotments are calculated as percentages of the basic allotment.  

3. Since districts use up to 85% of their budgets for staff salaries, increasing the basic allotment helps schools recruit and retain quality educators while addressing rising operational costs – particularly important given that Texas teacher pay currently falls nearly $9,000 below the national average and districts are struggling with double-digit inflation. 

School districts have testified that they strongly prefer increases in the basic allotment to “targeted investments,” which tie their hands to meet the unique needs of their communities. We agree with this perspective and prefer that the Texas Legislature increase the basic allotment rather than pump even more money into Texas Education Agency grant programs with high overhead and the misguided Teacher Incentive Allotment. 

Advocates are now pushing for an increase to the basic allotment of at least $1,340 given inflation since 2023, the lack of a basic allotment increase last session, and no mechanism to automatically adjust the basic allotment to account for inflation. Fund Schools First has created a website breaking down the impact of increasing the basic allotment on raises, special education funding, school safety and security funding, and recapture. Fund Schools First is a coalition of school districts and business groups committed to public education. 

The Texas Legislature must also take steps to increase funding and reform the funding formulas for special education, emergent bilingual, transportation, school safety and security, and mental health. School districts are facing significant funding gaps – the difference between what districts spend and what they receive from the state – that strain their budgets and compromise their ability to fulfill these crucial responsibilities. 

Some of the 2022-2023 funding gaps are as follows: 

• Special Education: -$2,154,257,810 

• Transportation: -$1,587,209,352 

• School Safety and Security: -$747,359,662* 

In addition to these funding gaps, the state’s unfunded mandates, stagnant funding amid rampant inflation, and the expiration of temporary federal pandemic aid, Texas public schools have recently lost millions of dollars in federal funding for special education services, some of which the state is seeking to claw back. 

Rep. John Bryant (D-Dallas) – a champion for public education and for educators and school employees – has filed an omnibus school finance and raise bill. His bill, HB 1257, would increase minimum teacher salaries significantly based on experience and certification levels, with starting salaries ranging from $40,000 for uncertified teachers to $48,000 for teachers with special designations. The bill creates a new salary structure that provides automatic increases at five, ten, and 15 years of experience, with minimum salaries reaching $60,000-$68,000 at 10 years of experience depending on certification level. Teachers with 15 or more years would receive additional 5% increases for every five years of experience beyond 10 years.  

Critically, the bill requires districts to use at least 40% of any basic allotment increase – up from the current 30% – for employee compensation, with 75% of that amount dedicated to raises for classroom teachers, librarians, counselors, and nurses, and the remaining 25% required to be used for raises for non-administrative staff making less than $100,000 annually. Current law allows but does not require school districts to use this funding to provide support staff with raises. These changes would ensure that support staff and other essential school employees will benefit from increased funding. 

The bill transitions school funding from an attendance-based to an enrollment-based system, addressing the critical issue of uncounted students and helping districts better plan and staff their schools; it also increases the basic allotment to $8,947 per student from the current level of $6,160, which would provide substantial additional funding for staff salaries, special education, and other essential programs. Under the current attendance-based school finance system, over 516,000 students (9.3% of the state’s enrollment) across the state were uncounted in the 2023-2024 school year. 

Bryant’s legislation also creates a new mental health services allotment, increases transportation funding rates to $1.50 per mile for regular routes – up from $1 – and $1.25 per mile for special education transportation, and provides transportation funding for students living at least one mile away from school, down from the current two-mile threshold. 

This comprehensive reform package is particularly significant because it creates automatic inflation adjustments for school funding starting in 2026, helping ensure that education funding keeps pace with rising costs rather than falling behind as it has in recent years and would prevent our public schools from being used as a political football moving forward. The bill would also close the special education and school safety funding gaps by providing districts with additional funding to cover the difference between what they spend and what they receive under the state’s school finance formula. 

There have also been several standalone bills seeking a transition from attendance- to enrollment-based funding. 

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick recently claimed that the Texas Legislature cannot afford to increase the basic allotment by even $1,000. This claim does not hold up to scrutiny.  

According to estimates from last session, a $1,000 increase in the basic allotment would have cost the state approximately $14 billion for the 2024-2025 biennium. The state had a $32.7 billion surplus last session that should have been used to supplement the $4.5 billion appropriated for additional public education funding, not to mention the $11 billion that Gov. Abbott has wasted on border security under Operation Lone Star over the past three years.  

Instead of using the surplus to support public education, legislators spent billions on additional border security funding and modest property tax relief that will be expensive to maintain and that has further increased the share of public schools funding that comes from state sales tax revenue, a volatile funding source that is sensitive to economic downturns. 

Texas does not lack the resources to fully fund public education; our leadership simply lacks the political will. The Texas Legislature is expected to have another $20 billion surplus to appropriate for the upcoming biennium. Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar will provide the final number to legislators in his Biennial Revenue Estimate in early January 2025. 

We need your help holding the Texas Legislature accountable to our public school students, educators, and school employees. We invite every educator, parent, and community member who believes in our vision for fully funding public education – from pre-K through higher education – to join us by signing on to support our Educator’s Bill of Rights and helping us bring it to the Texas Legislature in 2025. 

We also invite you to join our upcoming Organizing Texas webinars, where we will talk about the challenges we face in the Texas Legislature and in our districts and the tried-and-true strategies and tactics that can help us overcome them, and encourage you to stay tuned for opportunities to advocate at the Texas Capitol, both in-person and remotely.