Legislature should know our schoolkids are worth it

It’s easy to get lost in the hubbub of the recently convened special session of the Texas Legislature. There’s the political theater unfolding as backdrop for Gov. Greg Abbott’s re-election bid and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s crusade to privatize education, mandate bathroom choices, restrict local government and harass immigrants. What shouldn’t be forgotten are the 5.3 million schoolchildren of Texas. Roll that number around in your mind for a moment: 5.3 million. That’s more people than inhabit any of the smallest 28 states in the Union. That’s 10 percent of all the schoolchildren in the United States.

When Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback went to war against public (and higher) education a few years ago, slashing funding, and promoting privatization, the 300,000 public school children of that state suffered. In Texas, we are adding 300,000 new students to our state’s public schools every four years! What happens to Texas public schools and to our 5.3 million schoolchildren must be a matter of utmost importance to all Texans and most especially to the men and women we elect to our state Legislature and statewide offices. Too much is on the line for our state to dither when so much is at stake.

There is no getting around the numbers that point to the profound challenge faced today by our state, where fully half of all the enrollment growth in public schools’ students in the nation occurred in the last decade. Rice University professor Steve Murdock, the former director of the U.S. Census Bureau and former state demographer of Texas, warns of deep economic trouble ahead if current educational trend lines for the state’s fastest-growing subgroups remain unaltered. Texas will become less economically competitive and our population poorer, he forecasts. In plain terms, our state’s current K-12 students — 60 of them economically disadvantaged, one-sixth English-language learners, a third with at least one immigrant parent, and more than 70 percent “non-white” — will need to achieve at much higher levels than socioeconomically similar students in the past if we as a state are to maintain our economic and civic strength.

Murdock’s original analysis dates back to the early 2000s, and a decade and a half later, our circumstances remain dubious. Since the early 2000s, funding for public education in Texas, adjusted for inflation, has been flat. Texas remains near the bottom of state rankings (36th nationwide) in classroom spending, more than $2,300 less per pupil than the national average.

The Texas Legislature has no time to waste on bathroom-use edicts, voucher schemes that divert scarce taxpayer dollars to subsidize unaccountable private schools, or state interference with local revenue and policy decisions best left to local voters and the people they elect to local office. State lawmakers should focus instead like a laser on state responsibilities that have been too long neglected: increasing state funding for public schools and relieving pressure on local property taxpayers by increasing the state share of school funding. “Reprioritizing” existing school dollars already stretched thin, as both the governor and lieutenant governor have proposed, will not get the job done.

Abbott’s call for yet another study of school finance just puts off until tomorrow what needs to be done urgently today. The Legislature should stop the ongoing shift of school operating costs onto local taxpayers, which has dropped the state’s share of per-pupil funding to just 37 percent, and instead add funding for students with special needs, English language learners and the economically disadvantaged. Lawmakers could start by passing a bill like HB 21, the per-pupil funding increase that already passed by a huge margin in the Texas House this spring. Increasing state aid to school districts along these lines would ease the strain on local property-tax payers and help stave off harsh benefit cuts looming for school retirees.

Texas is a wealthy state with a massive reserve fund, the Economic Stabilization or Rainy Day Fund, which is flush with more than $10 billion. Texans want action now, not more rhetoric and political gamesmanship.

This is one time when the numbers do add up.

The Legislature has the wallet to jumpstart real solutions to the pressing challenges facing our public schools. The only question that remains is do they have the will? We think the kids are worth it.