Grading Texas

A couple of days ago, University of Texas at Austin President William Powers was telling the Senate Finance Committee how $65 million in budget cuts proposed for UTAustin would hurt the state’s largest campus. Among other things, he testified, UT would have to cut 90 faculty and 200 staff positions and reduce student scholarships.

Powers said the reductions “will erode our ability to compete nationally to get faculty and make student success improvements.”

Students, who may be in line for yet another tuition increase, also were there, both inside and outside the committee room, to speak up against the cuts, the Daily Texan reported.

Powers pretty much reinforced what UT System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa said last month when he warned that proposed budget reductions would have “immediate and future devastating consequences for our students, patients, faculty, staff and the communities of Texas.”

But, today, in the Austin AmericanStatesman, Gene Powell, the new chairman of the UT System Board of Regents, was trying to downplay all the “draconian” talk with a series of mostly meaningless clichés and promises to do more with less.

“The glass is definitely half full here,” Powell said.

But half full of what, besides Gov. Perry’s KoolAid?

Powell, a former UT football player and now a wealthy real estate developer and businessman in San Antonio, certainly is preaching the Perry line. That, however, should be no surprise since he has given the governor more than $56,000 in political donations since 2001 and is, of course, a Perry appointee.

Perry, no doubt, prefers Powell’s comments – he may even have ordered them up – to what people like Powers and Cigarroa have to say. But who do you think the Legislature should believe?

Since Powers and Cigarroa are highly paid hired hands whose futures are dictated by the regents (all of whom are Perry appointees), it will be interesting to see how forthright the two will continue to be in public statements.

Meanwhile, the students who descended on the Senate Finance Committee the other day also may want to march on the regents and offer a reality check the next time the board has a meeting.

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/newutregentschairmansettingglassishalf1296375.html

http://www.dailytexanonline.com/content/powersutgroupslobbygovernmentretainfunding

Sen. Robert Deuell, a Republican from Greenville, made a bit of news yesterday by advocating that the state spend most (perhaps all) of the Rainy Day Fund, close up some sales tax exemptions AND raise the state gasoline tax by 10 cents a gallon to soften cuts to state services.

“We’re a low tax state, and we’ve got people in need,” the senator, a physician in real life, told The Texas Tribune.

Unfortunately, Deuell is not chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which is where any tax bill would have to originate, and Rick Perry, who probably would veto it anyway, is still governor.

But raising the gasoline tax would be an interesting proposition because onefourth of the revenue it generates is dedicated by the state constitution to public education through the Available School Fund. The other threefourths is earmarked for highways.

For the record, a 10cent increase in the gasoline tax would raise an estimated $2.9 billion over the next twoyear budget period, with about $700 million of that going to the public schools. That wouldn’t plug the revenue shortfall for either highways or schools, but it would be a significant step in the right direction, particularly if it were paired with Rainy Day expenditures and other revenue sources.

Deuell’s proposal reminds me of the effort that thenGov. Mark White took to increase education funding in 1984, the year the Legislature (with his support) enacted House Bill 72, the landmark reform law that included, among other things, the important 221 class size cap for kindergarten through fourth grade.

White enlisted the support of local officials, highway contractors and others in the business community to win a fivecentspergallon increase in the gasoline tax (which doubled the rate at that time). It was a winwin. County judges and contractors got money for new highways, and the public schools got a muchneeded boost in funding.

White helped move Texas forward. Perry is stuck in reverse.

-From The Texas Tribune

Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, which wants to shrink state government so small that it can be drowned in some fat cat’s bathtub, obviously is no friend of the public schools. Strange as it may seem, however, TSTA can find some limited (very limited) common ground with the group, which has been making thousands of phone calls to targeted households, trying to deny the impact of pending budget cuts on teacher jobs.

Part of the group’s recorded message states, “The classroom must be protected.” TSTA agrees with that, and we believe that school districts should root out bureaucratic waste before they even think about touching teachers’ jobs or salaries.

The problem with the conservative group’s overall message, however, is that it pretends there are no such jobs as school counselors, teachers’ aides, school bus drivers, cafeteria workers, maintenance workers and campus security guards.

The group and its leader, Michael Quinn Sullivan, are among those who like to note that teachers account for only half of the public education workforce, implying that the other half consists only of overpaid superintendents and other administrators.

The other half, however, also includes the aforementioned counselors, classroom aides, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, maintenance people and security guards, all of whom play important roles in getting kids to and from school safely and contributing to a safe, healthy learning environment.

I’m sure there are some antigovernment types who think teachers can perform all of the above support jobs as well as turn out future Nobel laureates. I doubt, however, that many parents would agree.

While a growing number of school districts are taking steps to lay off large numbers of teachers, TSTA is encouraged that some legislators are looking at how to trim the educational bureaucracy. There was even a brief discussion last week in the House Appropriations education subcommittee about capping or regulating school superintendents’ salaries.

But Texas’ school finance system is so underfunded that it will be impossible to balance the new state budget without laying off large numbers of teachers and other district employees, overcrowding classrooms and closing neighborhood schools – unless the Legislature spends the Rainy Day Fund and finds new revenue sources. Remember, about $10 billion of the state’s $27 billion revenue shortfall is the structural deficit in the school finance system, the result of the 2006 school property tax cuts that weren’t fully funded by lawmakers.

Wonder, meanwhile, what your school superintendent makes? Check out this link to The Texas Tribune and find out:

http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/texassuperintendentsalaries2010/?&cbResetParam=1

Although every school district around the state is getting ready for the legislative budget ax to fall, Austin ISD seems more eager than most to fire teachers.

OK, OK, maybe “eager” is too strong a word. But AISD administrators seem to be chomping at the bit to decide how many teachers and other employees to lay off to help close an anticipated budgetary shortfall, even though they don’t know for sure yet how big their financial hole will be.

The AISD board tonight will be looking at a preliminary budget proposal, prepared by the district administration, which calls for eliminating 1,153 jobs (including 571 teachers), cutting programs and increasing class sizes, which is what happens when you reduce the number of teachers. Board members also are being asked to declare that AISD is in a state of financial emergency, which is what they have to do under current state law to make it easier to eliminate teaching positions under contract.

The Austin AmericanStatesman has a fuller account of the meeting’s agenda in a story linked at the bottom of this post.

Rae Nwosu, copresident of Education Austin, the TSTA affiliate that represents more than 4,000 district employees, has urged the board to postpone a vote on the financial emergency until AISD has a clearer picture of what the Legislature will do about the state budget. Rae is correct.

Under the current statehouse leadership, there is little doubt that the public education budget will share in spending cuts that will be made to close a state revenue shortfall as high as $27 billion. But with a little luck – and a lot of growing outrage from parents and other concerned citizens throughout Texas – the reductions won’t be as deep as the initial cuts included in the initial legislative budgetary proposals.

For one thing, the initial budget plans don’t contemplate spending any of the state’s $9.4 billion Rainy Day Fund because that’s the approach demanded by Gov. Rick Perry and the vocal Tea Party advocates who want to shrink state government, even if it means gutting the public schools.

But support for spending at least some (maybe most) of the Rainy Day Fund is growing among key legislators. They know that is the right thing to do, and they realize that passing crippling budget cuts will jeopardize their reelection bids among the vast majority of voters who care about public education and other critical services. TSTA, meanwhile, will continue to urge the Legislature to spend all of the Rainy Day Fund and seek new revenue sources as well.

The AISD board also has another financial option. They can ask local voters for a modest increase in property taxes. For the past three years, AISD’s tax rate for school operations has been about $1.08 per $100 valuation. That’s about 9 cents below the maximum allowed by the state, if voters approve. School board members obviously fear a political backlash if they propose a tax increase. But they should ask local voters if they would rather see their kids crammed into overcrowded classrooms and some neighborhood schools closed – or pay a few more cents on their school taxes.

AISD parents already have made it clear they don’t want to see neighborhood schools shut down.

Under current state law, AISD has until April 15, six weeks from now, before it has to notify contract employees if their jobs are being cut. And, a bill has been filed in the Legislature, with bipartisan support, to give districts more time before final termination decisions are made. The bill would keep the April deadline (45 days before the end of the school year) but allow districts to postpone final decisions on whether to retain or lay off a notified teacher until after the school year ends in June.

The idea is to minimize employee layoffs as much as possible.

The AISD board needs to take a deep, collective breath and slow down.

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/AISD_budget_crunch/austinschooltrusteestoviewbudgetmullfiscal1286694.html