Grading Texas

Sen. Dan Patrick is so interested in shoving Texas into reverse, you would think he could remember at least what happened in our state’s recent past. But his memory apparently is as bad as most of his ideas.

The Republican senator from Houston was on that city’s Fox TV outlet (Channel 26) yesterday blaming teachers’ unions for the teacher layoffs now plaguing Texas’ public schools. His reasoning, if you want to call it that, went something like this. Teachers’ groups convinced the Legislature a couple of years ago to enact a law prohibiting school districts from lowering teachers’ pay. So, now, budgetstrapped school districts have to lay off many teachers because they don’t have the option of saving money by forcing all teachers to take pay cuts.

It is a moral crime to fire teachers, even in the current budgetary climate, and it is a moral crime to cut their pay, since Texas teachers, as a group, already are vastly underpaid. Texas ranks a miserly 31st in average teacher pay among the states, with average pay here trailing the national average by $6,941.

And whose fault is that? It belongs to the same folks who dug much of Texas’ current budgetary hole. That would be the governor and the Republican legislative leadership, the same people who would like everyone else to think that only the recession is to blame.

The state has been underfunding the public schools for years. Texas ranks 37th among the states in average expenditures on perpupil instruction. The problem was compounded in 2006, when Gov. Perry and the Legislature ordered large reductions in local school property taxes without fully paying for them. That “structural deficit” in the public education budget – the fault of the state leadership, not teacher unions – amounts to $10 billion for the upcoming budget period and is a significant part of the state’s overall revenue shortfall.

Granted, Patrick wasn’t yet a member of the Legislature in 2006, but he was on his way, knew all about the property tax cuts, and, had he been in charge, probably would have made the shortfall even worse.

Now, though, it’s easier to blame unions than to make the difficult choices – raise more state revenue – necessary to straighten out the mess. Instead, Patrick wants to sacrifice educational quality by passing legislation to make it easier for school districts to fire teachers, as well as cut their pay, and cram thousands of kids into overcrowded classrooms.

And, as if this budgetary crisis weren’t bad enough, Patrick has other legislation pending in the Senate that would all but guarantee that the public schools, health care and other critical state needs remain underfunded for years to come.

His SJR12, awaiting action by the full Senate, would require a twothirds vote of both the House and the Senate to increase the rate of any existing state tax or create a new state tax. That would make it next to impossible for the Legislature to deal effectively with future budgetary crises. It would shut the door on Texas’ future, leaving Patrick to find someone else to blame.

Some of the biggest supporters of educational improvements are, of course, business executives whose own continued success depends in large part on the quality of our public school classrooms. So, it is no surprise that some of Texas’ top business organizations are very concerned – to the point of handwringing about the severity of the looming budget cuts to education and other public services.

But, so far, they aren’t raising their hands, offering to take on a little extra tax burden themselves – for their own future prosperity and the good of the state as a whole. My good friend and former, longtime colleague R.G. Ratcliffe presents a good summation in the article linked at the bottom of this post. It’s a wellwritten contribution he made to Burkablog a week ago and which I finally got around to reading.

R.G. points out, among other things, the strong Republican leanings of the business community, which, of course, can’t be dismissed as a factor in their lack of constructive input.

Yes, these are some of Gov. Perry’s biggest supporters and campaign contributors, the people who have helped keep him in office for a record 10 years. But they are afraid to tell the governor that his slashandburn policy for state government has no clothes.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/blogs/burkablog/?p=9822#more9822

Basic math is hard enough for many people, but it becomes impossible when political considerations are thrown into the computations. Consider, for example, the impossible problem of saving educational quality while cutting $7.8 billion (as the Republican majority of the Texas House has done) from the public education budget.

We at TSTA believe that every penny of administrative waste in every school district must be eliminated before any teacher’s job or education support position (such as bus driver or cafeteria worker) is eliminated. Many of the Republicans who voted for the budgetslashing House Bill 1 on Sunday claim to agree, but, unfortunately, they can’t do the math.

Several of the same Republicans, for example, voted last night to move House Bill 400 out of the Public Education Committee, allegedly to give local school officials more “flexibility” over their shrinking budgets, to make it easier for superintendents to prioritize spending. In truth, however, this bill, if enacted, will serve to help many superintendents and school boards protect wasteful spending, rather than force them to eliminate it.

Why?

The answer is simple. House Bill 400 doesn’t attack waste. It attacks classrooms and teachers and thus attacks educational quality. It raises the 221 class size limit for kindergarten through fourth grade, which will make classes in the lower grades larger, undermining the critical learning environment for our youngest students.

Larger classes mean superintendents will be able to fire more teachers. HB400 also makes the teacherfiring task easier by permanently eliminating teachers’ basic, due process employment rights. The bill also would allow districts to order furloughs and pay cuts for teachers they don’t fire.

Fewer teachers plus more crowded classrooms equal poorer educational quality. That bit of math isn’t complicated.

If legislators really want school districts to cut waste while protecting teachers’ jobs and educational quality, why pass House Bill 400?

The truth of the matter is that veteran legislators know they can’t cut $7.8 billion (or even half that amount, as the Senate will propose) from the public education budget without sacrificing teachers and classroom quality. House Bill 400 is their way of passing the buck (and the blame) to local school officials, instead of raising the state revenue necessary to protect the classroom.

The Republican House members who voted for House Bill 1, a budget plan that would practically dismantle public education and destroy Texas’ already weak safety net for the poor, offer the mealymouthed political excuse that state government needs to “live within its means.” They deliberately are being disingenuous. (I say Republican House members because no Democrats voted for the bill.)

State government does need to live within its means, but the problem with using that as an excuse for abdicating a legislator’s responsibility is that state government’s means is entirely up to the governor and the Legislature. Slashing and burning important state services – as House Bill 1 would do – is a political decision, not a fiscal necessity.

Texas legislators have a vast amount of potential resources at their disposal, beginning with the $6.2 billion remaining in the Rainy Day Fund, which Gov. Perry has declared “untouchable,” strictly for political reasons, and which was left unspent on HB1.

And, there are numerous options for increasing tax revenue, which the governor and House leadership also refused to consider, even though most options would have only minimal effect on the pocketbooks of the vast majority of Texas taxpayers.

Even without creating new taxes, there are multiple billions worth of exemptions to existing taxes, mainly the sales tax and business margins tax, which can be reviewed, and I am not talking about taxing groceries or prescription drugs.

The Senate is looking for additional revenue, and senators eventually will replace House Bill 1 with a budget that attempts to soften some of the House cuts. But news reports indicate that the Senate Finance Committee is still looking at unacceptable cuts of $3 billion to $4 billion in the public education budget.

The fight for a responsible budget is uphill, folks, but it isn’t over yet.