The state’s public school financing system is not fair and needs to be changed.

The state’s public school financing is not fair and needs to be changed.

Texas has been one of the fastestgrowing states in the nation for decades with property values rising so rapidly that it’s hard for some people to afford their homes.

Many local taxpayers — who are writing ballooning checks to local school districts — are puzzled as to why their local public school system still lacks so many resources. It’s a little-known fact that school districts are not getting the benefit of rising property values. If a district raises more money locally, the Legislature will send the district less money. The Legislature uses the increased local property tax revenue to benefit the bottom line of the state’s budget, rather than directly benefiting education.

Although the current state public school financing system harms districts all around the state, those that have been deemed “property wealthy” by the state are hardest-hit; they are forced to pay revenues to the state under recapture rules commonly known as “Robin Hood.”

The recapture system, originally devised to ensure equitable school funding across the state regardless of local property wealth has evolved into a revenue-collection practice resembling a statewide income tax, which would be a violation of the Texas Constitution.

We’ve talked quite a bit on these pages about the circumstances of the Houston Independent School District. It owes a whopping $162 million to the state in recapture, due in the spring. But Houston encompasses and is ringed by other school districts, many of which also are feeling the pain of recapture.

Spring Branch ISD will send three times more funds to the state this year, $66 million, than it will receive in state funding, $17.5 million. The state is siphoning resources from this district, which it sorely needs to serve a student population that’s nearly 60 percent economically disadvantaged. This diversion of local school property taxes affects the SBISD student body to the tune of $1,883 per student.

La Porte and Galveston ISDs will pay 38.6 and 27 percent, respectively, of their locally generated tax revenues to the state next year. As to Galveston ISD, recapture has hit its pocketbook so hard, the district’s cash reserves may not be sufficient to support its beginning-ofthe-year expenditures. This raises the possibility that the district will have to borrow funds to cover any deficit — just to open school doors in August.

Tomball ISD, north of Houston, with its property values rising at 10 percent annually, will pay $6.6 million in recapture fees. Goose Creek ISD in Baytown, a newcomer to recapture, will pay more than $426,991 next year.

We could go on. Examples of the outrageous inequities generated by this broken system abound throughout the state. School districts in the Austin area — comprising less than 8 percent of the state’s student population — pay more than $583 million each year or 28 percent of the state’s total recapture amount. Yet the districts have less per-student funding than they did prior to the massive budget cuts of 2011, according to AISD Chief Financial Officer Nicole Conley, who testified in September before the Texas House of Representatives’ committees on appropriations and public education.

If you need more proof the system is broken, try on this fact: By 2019, more than half of every tax dollar collected by Austin ISD will go to the state and none will go directly to property-poor school districts that Robin Hood was intended to help.

The state’s policy of siphoning off local tax dollars has the effect of taxing people out of their homes and pushing them into surrounding subdivisions. Districts then lose enrollment, which exacerbates the problem.

As property values increase, so do the costs to operate schools. Yet because the state treats rising property values as another source of state money, Texas schools are left to figure out how to serve children with greater needs and how to meet stricter standards without sufficient funds from the state.

State Sens. Paul Bettencourt who represents parts of Tomball ISD, Cy Fair ISD, Spring Branch and Klein ISD, and Joan Huffman should lead the charge to reset this inequitable and unconstitutional system. There are many ways to do this short of comprehensive reform, which would be optimal. Our legislators could index school funding for inflation so that the state shares in its responsibility to fund basic educational programs, for instance. Or at a minimum, the Legislature could place a cap on the level of recapture that districts have to pay.

Enough is enough. The system is not fair or equitable, and it needs to be changed.