House Speaker Calls For Reforms To State Education Finance System

The Texas Supreme Court last month ruled that the system of financing Texas public education is not unconstitutional and ruled against the school districts that had filed suit against the state. The court’s ruling, however, stated clearly that the system should be overhauled and that “transformational, top-to-bottom reforms that amount to more than Band-Aid on top of Band-Aid” are needed.

But, the judges wrote, that is the job of the legislature, not the court.

Texas House Speaker Joe Straus took that directive this week and instructed the House Appropriations and Public Education committees to get to work on the issue. His instructions to them are to review the financing method that sends money from school districts that are deemed to be property-rich to those in poorer areas. That process is called recapture, or the “Robin Hood plan.”

The legislators will study how local property taxes are used to fund public education, focusing on the system’s effects on both the quality of education and local taxpayers. Straus wants recommendations for how to “reverse the increasing reliance on recapture payments.”

The other mandate he gave to committee members is to review a pending property tax cut that will go into effect Sept. 1, 2017. Straus instructed the legislators to study “how this loss of funding would impact school districts.”

This article was originally published by Strategic Partnerships Inc.