Senate plan to address issue was misguided from the start
REP. Dan Huberty, R-Houston, authored House Bill 21 to address the school funding system, which the Texas Supreme Court called “byzantine” and an “ossified regime ill-suited for 21st century Texas.” HB 21 may not have been perfect, but it did provide significant additional funding to help schools through the next two years — until the system could, hopefully, be “upended” by the Legislature, as suggested by the court.
But in the hands of the Senate and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, HB 21 became nothing more than a vehicle for passing school vouchers, a major political item on Patrick’s “to do” list this session. He has claimed to be appalled that the House would not vote for the Senate version, but was he really surprised that the House rejected his version of HB 21? Didn’t he know, like the rest of us, that when two-thirds of the House passed a budget banning the use of funding for school vouchers, they would reject a voucher bill in any form? If he knew this, then who is truly responsible for killing funding for public schools?
Patrick blames the House for the death of HB 21, but it is he who administered the poison. The lieutenant governor poisoned the process from the beginning when he said he would not pass school finance without vouchers. I personally heard him say before the legislative session started that there would be no more money for public schools. Wasn’t this his plan all along? With the special ses-
sion looming next month, and more funding for education not on the agenda, how can he now act as if he bears none of the responsibility?
Let’s set the record straight. Patrick claims:
• The $1.85 billion that House leaders said HB21 would provide in additional funds for education would have come from current funding. He called it a “phony plan,” even as Patrick himself supported just such a plan in 2011. The House was simply delaying payment of the $1.85 billion from August 2019 to September 2019, a tactic the Senate enacted in the past. Why is Patrick against the tactic this session?
• Districts receiving Additional State Aid for Tax Reduction — supplementary funds initiated in 2006 to offset a property tax cut — are not as affected as some in education claim. The fact is, based on Legislative Budget Board property value estimates and the Texas Education Agency, of the 264 ASATR districts, 43 will have total revenue losses (state and local) of more than 10 percent, 12 will have losses of more than 20 percent, and four will have losses over 40 percent. 114 ASATR districts will lose nearly $239 million this year without ASATR.
• The reason the House rejected the Senate version of HB 21 “is simply because it included a program that might allow some disabled child somewhere in Texas to attend a private school that his parents believe would be better for him or her.” The fact is, a voucher will likely provide a child with a disability an education in a segregated, disability-only school; the majority of regular private schools will not accept them. Vouchers for students with disabilities allow the Legislature to continue to shirk its constitutional responsibility of ensuring an adequate education for all children, especially those who have been denied an adequate education for so long. A better focus this session would have been on fixing the broken system.
• The “House members who voted against HB 21 ignored the needs of disabled children.” The fact is the House stood up for my child with a disability and I thank them. I have worked too long and too hard for her education with her typical peers for us to slide backward into another form of statefunded schools for the disabled.
• Vouchers are “supported by a strong majority of Texans in every demographic group and both political parties.” The fact is, according to a February 2017 University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll, 44 percent of registered voters in Texas oppose vouchers and only 35 percent support them.
• Instead of supporting Texans who want vouchers, “those House members buckled under the demands of education bureaucrats.” The fact is, supporting public education — where 94 percent of Texas children are educated — does not make us bureaucrats, nor does it make us wrong. We are Texans, too, Mr. Patrick. You may not agree with us, you may not even like us, but we are your constituents and we have a voice.
The bottom line is, without the additional $1.85 billion in HB 21, the state is shifting more of the cost for public education to local taxpayers. The truly disheartening piece of this is that Patrick and his like-minded lawmakers are completely uninformed about the challenges those of us running school districts are up against. Across the state this month, school boards are evaluating next year’s budgets, and the outlook is grim. I want Patrick to look at the detail of the $750 million budget I was elected to govern so he can truly understand the financial challenges we face. Instead, he makes simple, generic statements about the state’s budget that don’t tell the whole story.
The Supreme Court called on the Legislature to provide Texas’ more than 5 million school children with a “revamped, nonsclerotic system fit for the 21st Century.” The court stated that Texas’ school children “deserve transformational, top-to-bottom reforms that amount to more than Band-Aid on top of Band-Aid.”
The House took steps with HB 21 to follow the court’s advice. But the lieutenant governor and the Senate instead plowed forward with a misguided political agenda and left Texas’ school children with the same complicated, unworkable funding system that now provides less funds to education than it did the previous two years.
Patrick refused to listen, and now that HB 21 is dead, he has no one to blame but himself. But it is Texas’ schoolchildren who really pay the price. Tassin is president of the Fort Bend ISD Board of Trustees.