House gives initial OK to school finance study panel,

The Texas House on Monday tentatively approved, by a vote of 142-2, Senate Bill 16, which would create a 15-member commission to study and make recommendations on the state’s beleaguered school finance system.

The commission would be composed of lawmakers, teachers and school officials as well those from the business and civic communities. The commission would be tasked with studying tax rates and policy changes to reflect the geographical and racial diversity of the state, and making recommendations to the Legislature on how to fix the finance system by next legislative session.

“This is about school finance, how we pay for schools, what’s adequate, what’s equitable, how it’s divided out. That’s our primary focus,” said Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, who presented the bill Monday on the House floor.

SB 16, originally filed by Senate Education Chairman Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, has been a priority for Gov. Greg Abbott and Senate Republicans, who have opposed pumping large sums of extra money into schools without first making wholesale changes to how the state funds schools.

The House has been less inclined to pass such a bill, with some members saying that lawmakers have studied the system enough.

“We really know what we’re supposed to do to start fixing the problem. It’s just we have to have the will do that,” said House Public Education Chairman Dan Huberty, R-Houston.

The House had prioritized House Bill 21 over SB 16; the version of HB 21 that passed out of the House would have pumped $1.8 billion into public schools, increasing the base amount of money schools get per student from $5,140 to $5,350.

The Senate has since stripped HB 21 of $1.5 billion and lawmakers from both chambers worked toward a compromise over the weekend. One of the contingencies of the negotiations was that the House needed to pass SB 16 for the Senate to pass HB 21.

Huberty said that he expected the Senate to pass a version of HB 21 late Monday and that both chambers would go into a conference committee to work out their differences.

House members added more than a dozen amendments to SB 16 to expand the issues the commission would study, including teacher retention, gifted and talented programs, cost of education and eliminating the use of property taxes to fund schools.

Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington, unsuccessfully attempted to tack on an amendment that would have required the commission to study the effects on school districts of payroll deductions of union dues.