Grading Texas

Robin Hood needs some school finance help from the Legislature

My state representative, Donna Howard of Austin, has pre-filed a piece of school finance legislation that probably would be very popular with local property taxpayers. But it won’t be as popular with the legislative majority or with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, despite all the crocodile tears Patrick sheds over local property taxpayers.

Howard’s measure, HJR27, proposes a constitutional amendment that would require state government to pay for at least half of Texas’ public education costs. At present, the state pays for only about 43 percent of school costs, leaving the remainder – about $26 billion a year — to local taxpayers. The local portion includes all those Robin Hood payments that taxpayers in districts classified as property wealthy, including Austin ISD, kick in to help support poorer districts.

Constitutional amendments have to be approved by Texas voters, and I believe most Texans would vote for this one – if given the chance. But they may never get that chance because the amendment first has to be approved by two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate during next year’s session.

Many members of the legislative majority, including Patrick, don’t want to spend more state funds on public schools, which is what Howard’s amendment would require the Legislature to do. Patrick already has made it known that he isn’t interested in trying to fix the school finance system during the upcoming session. He and his accomplices at the Capitol would rather brag about keeping limits on state spending, while the local cost of education funding and inequities among districts continue to increase.

Nevertheless, they will spend a lot of time pretending to be concerned about the plight of local taxpayers. Patrick has declared that property tax “reform” will be one of his priorities. That means he will try to pass laws to make it more difficult for school districts to raise the tax revenue they need to fill the shortfall in state funding that Patrick and other legislators helped create.

And to make matters even worse for school districts and their local taxpayers, Patrick will try again to divert public education money to private school vouchers. Patrick, in short, is a disaster for public education.

Howard, on the other hand, has an excellent idea. Property owners who really want some relief from their local school taxes and a better school finance system need to demand that their legislators support her amendment. Even if nothing else is accomplished on school finance next year, Howard’s amendment would be a start in the right direction.

School funding will require adult leadership

As the next president of the United States tries to figure out what his new job will be all about, Texas already has a leader who is prepared to move the state forward. And one of his top priorities will be public education.

You already know I am not talking about Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, whose idea of “leadership” is to fan the flames of an ideology that will keep Texas in reverse. I am not talking about Gov. Greg Abbott either. Living in a perpetual state of fear that he will be outflanked on the right by either Patrick or Ted Cruz is not leadership.

The real leader in Texas right now is House Speaker Joe Straus, a Republican who actually believes in governing, in trying to improve the lives of all Texans, instead of selling snake oil.

Two days after last week’s election, Straus was in his hometown San Antonio, laying out his priorities for the upcoming legislative session in an address to Hispanic business leaders.

“I believe in limited government. I also believe in functional government, that public services should be delivered well with efficiency and accountability,” he said, as reported by the Austin American-Statesman. “Emotional, divisive issues get the attention, and they get the television ratings. But remember, state government is really about basics – education, public safety, infrastructure.”

The speaker said his top priorities were protecting Texas children at risk of abuse and neglect, reforming school finance, repairing the mental health system, securing online data and promoting business.

Unlike Abbott and Patrick, Straus has made it clear that he wants to improve the school funding system. About all Abbott has had to say about school finance was to applaud the Texas Supreme Court for reversing a lower court order for more funding.

Patrick’s idea of addressing education funding is to take tax dollars from under-funded public schools and spend the money to help a small group of families send their children to private schools. Patrick also promises to keep peeking (figuratively, anyway) into school bathrooms, discriminating against transgender kids who pose a threat to absolutely no one.

If educators and students are to see real progress in funding for their classrooms, it will be only after Straus and a House coalition of Republicans and Democrats who truly value public schools have taken the lead during the legislative session. That’s what adult leaders do.

What kids are learning from the election

A presidential election can be a teaching object for young kids, offering a civics lesson in simple terms. Students at the Austin elementary school with which I am most familiar had an election night assignment to color the states on a U.S. map red or blue as returns were reported and the electoral scorecard was tabulated.

Few, if any, of those kids were awake when the election was finally settled, but for a couple of hours some of them felt engaged in a crucial civics exercise. Others were simply bored. One thing they were not supposed to be was afraid of the results.

But across the country many children were fearful as they went to school the next day, according to reports on social media from parents and teachers. Hispanic students of immigrant parents, Muslims, gay kids, even a boy with Autism expressed fear of what a Donald Trump presidency might mean.

Educators — including at least one principal, probably more, in Austin — took extra care to try to assure students that they and their families were safe.

Trump obviously had a strong appeal to Texas and American voters, but his campaign was a horrible example for school children, mocking, defaming or ridiculing, as he did, virtually every minority group in America. Even before Election Day, there were reports of increased bullying and racist comments among school kids mimicking his style.

Trump’s victory speech was conciliatory, much more gracious than his campaign, as he began the transition, we hope, to becoming presidential.

It remains to be seen what he will do about his campaign pledges to build a wall on the southern border, round up undocumented immigrants and crack down on Muslim refugees trying to enter the country.

Texas school kids and their parents will be waiting, and many will be apprehensive. More than half of Texas’ 5.2 million public school children are Hispanic, and many are legal citizens but the children and grandchildren of undocumented immigrants. Many other Texas children are Muslims. Who can blame them if they are wondering who they will find at home at the end of the school day?

I am not sure I believe in anyone’s poll anymore. But according to exit polling conducted for the Associated Press, more than 7 in 10 Texas voters, including many who voted for Trump, believe that immigrants working in the United States illegally should be given the chance to apply for legal status and not be deported.

Trump should consider that a civics lesson and take it to heart.

TEA’s excuses on special education not convincing

The Texas Education Agency tried to cover its bureaucratic posterior and transfer the blame to school districts for leaving tens of thousands of special education students without the required services to which they are entitled under federal law. But all the rhetoric in TEA’s “don’t blame us” letter to the federal government doesn’t change the fact that the agency was in the very middle of the mess.

TEA denied that its “Performance-Based Monitoring Analysis System” for special education was a cap on enrollment, but the fact remains that it resulted in districts limiting special education enrollment to 8.5 percent of students, a significant drop from the 12 percent of students receiving such services when the monitoring system was started in 2004.

The agency also said that the policy was not designed to save money, even though 2004, not so incidentally, was one year after the legislative majority had imposed budget cuts to deal with a budgetary shortfall. The legislative majority followed those cuts with $5.4 billion in additional education cuts in 2011, and millions of school children – including special education kids – continue to suffer the consequences.

TEA told the U.S. Department of Education that it “does not have any specific evidence indicating there has been a systematic denial of special education services to eligible students with disabilities.”

Yet, an investigation by the Houston Chronicle, which broke the story about the shameful policy, determined that as many as 250,000 children with autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, epilepsy, mental illnesses, speech impediments, blindness and deafness have been denied needed services.

The agency’s explanation doesn’t look like it will change the resolve of House Speaker Joe Straus and other legislators to address the issue. State Sen. Jose Menendez of San Antonio, for one, still plans to file legislation to force an end to the policy.

“I think it’s preposterous that they refuse to own up to this arbitrary cap,” Menendez told the Chronicle. “And if they can’t own up to it, how can I trust them when they say they’re going to eliminate it. If they can’t admit that it was wrong, how can I trust that they’ll fix it?”

Ending the policy is a good step. Lawmakers also need to increase education funding to discourage similar bureaucratic moves in the future.

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