Grading Texas

A few school teachers and parents out there actually may be able to remember that some, probably most, of the Republicans now running the Texas House of Representatives – and running the teaching profession and the public schools into the ground – campaigned last year as “friends” of education. Even those drinking the antigovernment tea mostly avoided avert political attacks on the classroom.

Their records, of course, tell a different story. This is the most antieducation, antiteachers, antischool kids legislative majority in Texas in at least a generation.

First, to offer a quick rehash, all but a handful of the Republican House members voted to slash $8 billion from public school budgets. Then, moderated somewhat by the Senate, they settled for $4 billion in school finance cuts, approving the first budget in 27 years that doesn’t fully fund school finance formulas and meet enrollment growth. And they did all that while leaving $6.5 billion of the taxpayers’ money unspent in the Rainy Day Fund, the state’s emergency savings account.

Any teacher – except, perhaps, a couple of legislative spouses – who still was willing to give the scorchedearth bunch the benefit of the doubt surely gave up on this misdirected crew yesterday.

That’s when the Republican House majority – caving in once again to antigovernment ideologues reversed course and nixed a contingent proposal to spend as much as $2.2 billion of the Rainy Day Fund on school enrollment growth if its balance exceeds the projected $6.5 billion.

And then it approved Senate Bill 8, a punitive bill against teachers (furloughs, pay cuts, repeal of employment rights) that does absolutely nothing to address the budgetary crisis.

“I’m married to the prettiest teacher this side of the Atlantic,” bragged Rep. Randy Weber, RPearland, as he joined most of his Republican colleagues in trying to make life miserable for every other teacher in Texas.

TSTA is taking names and will be active in next year’s legislative races, beginning with the March Republican primaries. Every other educator who cares about the future of public education in Texas – not to mention his or her own job – had better start doing the same.

Rep. Sylvester Turner, a Democrat from Houston who fought hard against the attacks on teachers, said legislators who supported the budget cuts and Senate Bill 8 shouldn’t be allowed to call themselves “friends” of education. He is right.

With very few exceptions, the current Republican members of the Texas House who campaign for reelection next year as “friends” of teachers or public schools will be prevaricating through their teeth.

This is a tale of two North Texas school districts, both victims of Gov. Rick Perry’s educationslashing policies and his Tea Party allies’ backwardthinking ideology. Each has laid off dozens of employees and taken other costcutting steps because the governor and the legislative majority have abdicated their constitutional responsibility to adequately fund public education.

But one, the Keller ISD, one of the fastest growing districts in the state, is trying to stem the bleeding and preserve what’s left of its educational quality by asking local voters to approve an increase in property taxes. The other, the Plano ISD, which sits in one of the wealthiest communities in Texas, is resisting higher local taxes, even though its tax rate for school operations is well below what could be imposed with voter approval and its overall tax rate is lower than Keller’s.

Keller ISD, which has scheduled a tax ratification election for June 18, is battling the Tea Party, the same folks who assured Perry’s reelection and gave Texas a legislative majority that slashed $4 billion from the state school finance budget. This is a loosely knit, ideological group intent on shrinking government, including the public schools, regardless of the impact on school children and the state’s economic future. Some Tea Partiers mistakenly believe that millions of dollars can be cut from school district budgets without harming the classroom. Others simply don’t care.

Plano ISD has fired more than 300 employees this year. The district recently sponsored an employment workshop for the dismissed workers but is shying away from asking some of the wealthiest voters in Texas, on average, to pay higher local taxes to offset state budget cuts. Plano apparently would rather risk damaging educational quality than take on the Tea Party, which was instrumental last year in at least one legislative race in that community.

Both Keller and Plano have tax rates for basic school operations of $1.04 per $100 valuation. This is the maximum districts can impose without local voter approval. With voter approval, districts can increase the rate by another 13 cents per $100 to $1.17. This is what Keller ISD is asking voters to approve in its tax ratification election.

Keller’s total tax rate is $1.53 per $100. That includes 49 cents, previously approved by voters, for debt service. Plano’s total tax rate is $1.35, including $1.04 for operations and 31 cents for debt service.

Suburban population growth has prompted Keller to build 22 new schools since 2000, according to the Keller Citizen, and local voters have approved bond packages in 2000, 2005, 2006 and 2008.

Before scheduling next week’s tax election, Keller already had cut more than 200 jobs, increased class sizes, reduced the number of athletic teams and taken other steps to save about $16 million. Now, it is asking for higher taxes to cover the remainder of an anticipated $31 million shortfall for each of the next two years, according to the newspaper article linked below.

The 13cent increase would cost the owner of a $200,000 home an extra $22 a month.

Is that too high a price to pay for educational quality? No.

Many of those local Keller voters who think it is can blame themselves, because I suspect most of the Tea Partytypes who bothered to vote in state elections last year voted for Perry. These are the choices Perry gives them – higher local taxes, more erosion of public schools or, in some cases, both.

http://www.startelegram.com/2011/06/13/3148761/battlelinesaredrawninkisd.html

State Rep. Jim Landtroop of Plainview may consider himself a friend of his local school districts, but his voting record says otherwise.

Landtroop was quoted in the Amarillo newspaper over the weekend, claiming to have represented the “best interests” of his 50 or so rural school districts when he voted last week against Senate Bill 1, which distributed $4 billion in state budget cuts among the state’s 1,000plus districts. Landtroop believed they were treated unfairly in the funding distribution, compared to larger urban and suburban districts.

“The vast majority of the schools I represent are those lowtarget revenue rural schools, and my vote was a vote representing their best interests, and that’s what I am here to do,” he said.

Actually, though, Senate Bill 1 wasn’t the main problem. The real problem was House Bill 1, the appropriations bill passed during the regular session, which slashed the school funding formulas (including enrollment growth) by $4 billion. That is what made the perdistrict cuts in Senate Bill 1 so deep.

And, how did Landtroop vote on House Bill 1? He voted for it, the final version cutting $4 billion, AND he voted for an earlier House version that would have cut $8 billion from the public schools. Had the $8 billion reduction held up, I would like to think that many of the school superintendents in his expansive West Texas district would have run him out of the territory.

As it is, the local school officials and all the West Texas taxpayers they work for should be looking for another state representative candidate for next year’s elections. Replacing Landtroop clearly would be in the schools’ best interests.

There were a couple of absurdities playing out in Austin yesterday over the deep budget cuts to public education. One was in the House chamber at the state Capitol. The other was at Austin City Hall not too far away.

I kept reading media reports about the House debating legislation to cut $4 billion from the public schools. Actually, the $4 billion was cut a couple of weeks ago, during the regular session, when the vast majority of Republicans in the Capitol voted for the new state budget. They already had let that horse out of the barn, to dust off an old cliché.

What the House was debating yesterday was Senate Bill 1, a measure necessary to balance that budget and distribute the $4 billion in cuts among the state’s 1,000plus school districts. If the cuts weren’t so potentially devastating for teachers and school kids, it would have been almost amusing to watch the same bunch of Republican lawmakers scrambling about the House floor, trying to change funding formulas so the misery of the cuts hit someone else’s school district harder than their own.

What did they think the impact on their own schools – and school kids – was going to be when they voted in political lockstep to slash $4 billion from school finance formulas? To feign outrage for the sake of their political backsides at the reality of the districtbydistrict distribution runs was absurd.

Not only that, but Democratic Rep. Pete Gallego of Alpine gave them one more chance to redeem themselves when he offered an amendment to Senate Bill 2, another fiscal measure, to spend another $4 billion from the Rainy Day Fund to cover the shortfall in public education. About $6.5 billion in that fund – all taxpayer money – is being left unspent. But, again, like so many robots, the Republicans voted overwhelmingly to kill Gallego’s proposal.

A few minutes later, the House, with Republican support, approved an amendment by Democratic Rep. Donna Howard of Austin, which may end up providing some additional financial aid to schools, if it stays in the bill, but it’s no guarantee. Howard’s contingency amendment would appropriate any additional money that may accumulate in the Rainy Day Fund, above the projected $6.5 billion balance, to school districts to help cover enrollment growth, which isn’t funded now.

Meanwhile, over at City Hall, the Austin City Council was holding a public hearing on whether the city should endorse a Formula One racing venture, which would allow wealthy organizers of the event to quality for an annual subsidy of $25 million in state tax money for the next 10 years.

State Comptroller Susan Combs already has cut a deal, promising the state money to the organizers. It would come from the Major Events Trust Fund, a program administered by the comptroller’s office that spends tax revenue generated by big sporting events to help subsidize the events.

In other words, it is a form of corporate welfare to help rich sports promoters get richer. The Formula One allocation is not a lot of money, compared to the total state budget and the shortfall in public education funding. But $25 million would pay the salaries of about 500 teachers next year, based on the average teacher pay in Texas. And that would be a far better use of the public’s money.

Coming during the worst state budgetary crisis in years, the racing subsidy stinks.

The private investors, who hope to reap big returns from the race, promise big public benefits for the taxpayers’ investment. But the Austin City Council would be foolish to swallow all their hype.

According to the Austin AmericanStatesman, there has been a prediction that 100,000 outoftown fans will attend the race, scheduled for next summer on a track already under construction, and while in Austin will shower the city with cash. That number, most likely drawn from little more than thin air, sounds preposterous. As one expert noted, Austin doesn’t have enough hotel rooms to accommodate even onefourth that many people.

And even if the prediction were true, only a handful of local taxpayers would notice any return on the state’s money.

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/formulaoneracesupportersopponentsunleashopinionsat1530228.html