Districts get help amid enrollment dip
State extends funding as schools face loss of thousands of students during pandemic
Gov. Greg Abbott announced Thursday that school districts will continue to be funded on the number of students they had projected to educate this year instead of the number who actually showed up to classes, providing a financial lifeline for districts that have lost thousands of students since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
There is a caveat, however: to keep being funded at originally projected levels, on-campus attendance rates cannot decline this semester, or the percentage of students learning in person must be at least 80 percent.
Only a handful of districts in Greater Houston have more than 80 percent of their students learning face-to-face, including Dickinson, Friendswood and Conroe ISDs.
At the same time, a Chronicle survey of 10 local districts in January showed all had seen more students sign up for in-person classes each time they were given the option during the last three grading periods.
Houston ISD, which began the school year missing about 13,000 students, did not respond to a request for comment.
In a press release, the governor said the TEA and other state leaders are ensuring schools will not be penalized for lower attendance rates due to the pandemic while providing an incentive for districts to expand in-person instruction.
“Providing a hold harmless for the remainder of the 2020-2021 school year is a crucial part of our state's commitment to supporting our school systems and teachers and getting more students back in the classroom,” Abbott said.
Thousands of students have dropped off districts’ rolls across Texas this school year as the pandemic has continued, leading some parents to keep their kids home out of fear of the virus or move after job losses. Statewide, enrollments were down about 3 percent, or more than 156,500 students, in January. In CypressFairbanks ISD, officials said Thursday that enrollment is down by more than 2,000 this month compared to last March, which could have cost the district an estimated $29 million.
Some districts have seen much larger enrollment drops, particularly in urban districts that serve higher rates of lower income students and students of color.
Last fall, the Texas Education Agency announced it would fund districts based on the number of students they projected would attend before the pandemic through what they called a holdharmless guarantee. That agreement expired in January, leaving districts to wonder whether they would receive millions less in state funding due to ongoing enrollment
declines.
Before Thursday’s announcement, some state lawmakers and Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath questioned whether the state should require districts do more to find those missing students in order to be eligible
for an extended hold harmless agreement. Sen. Larry Taylor, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, told the Texas Tribune in January that a blanket hold-harmless extension could take away schools’ incentive to find more students. While that left many to question whether he or the Senate would support the extension, he said in a statement Thursday that the Legislature was “already dedicated” to funding schools at the levels prescribed last session.
“The financial stability provided by this hold harmless will further support our schools in their efforts to help our students meet the challenges brought on by COVID-19,” Taylor said.
That school systems offer five days a week of in-person instruction since the fall or risk losing their state funding. They also required districts to give families a choice to switch from virtual to in-person every grading period.
In Alief ISD, where enrollments have dropped by about 3,000 students, only about 52 percent of students are learning on campuses. That is up from about 34 percent of students who opted to learn in person in October, said Superintendent HD Chambers, which still would qualify the district for the holdharmless extension.
Without it, finance officials in the southwest Houston district said they could have lost $30 million in state funding.
“We all agree that we want as many students as possible back learning face-to-face. We also realize there are still families where COVID is still a significant health and security issue, and we recognize that there has to be some flexibility in the districts’ efforts to increase the number of students attending face-to-face,” Chambers said. “I think what they put forth now is fair and reasonable.”
However, he worried that if there was another spike in COVID-19 infections, or a new variant made the situation more dire in Houston or Texas, more parents would opt to keep their kids home.
Texas State Teachers Association President Ovidia Molina echoed those concerns.
“What if there is a spike in COVID-19 cases after spring break or because of Gov. Abbott’s decision to end the mask mandate and relax other safety standards?” Molina wrote in a statement. “Districts that could lose on-campus attendance to online learning because their communities become COVID hotspots shouldn’t be penalized for attendance losses either.”