Judge Outlines How Public Schools in Texas Are to be Funded

*An important read for all you Taquistas in Texas. For all of you outside of Texas, this is important because it paints a picture of education for Latinos in Texas after 12 years of Rick Perry. VL

By Al Kauffmann, NewsTaco

A Texas district court has declared the Texas school finance system violates the Texas Constitution.

Carefully following the Texas Supreme Court‘s explanation of the Texas Constitution’s standards for our school finance system, the district court held that the Texas school finance system is inefficient, inadequate, unsuitable, arbitrary and denies school districts meaningful discretion to fund schools to meet Texas requirements.

Based on months of trial, scores of witnesses and thousands of exhibits, the district court’s 400-page decision thoroughly and accurately describes the system and its failure to meet the standards set by the constitution and clarified by the Texas Supreme Court in six opinions.

A careful study of the holdings of the court and the legal and factual bases for them give us a better idea of what is going on in our schools and a first outline of what the Legislature could do to design and implement a constitutional system.

The school finance system is inefficient because it does not provide substantially equal access, at similar tax rates, to the revenues necessary to provide an adequate education. Property-wealthy districts raise $1,000 to $2,000 per student more than low-wealth districts. And the wealthy districts can raise the greater funds with lower tax rates.

The disparities are even greater when you consider the amount that would have to be raised by low-wealth and high-wealth districts to provide the funds necessary to meet the state’s standards for schools.

The school finance system is inadequate because it does not ensure that school districts are reasonably able to provide all students with a meaningful opportunity to learn the essential knowledge and skills reflected in the state curriculum so they are prepared to continue in postsecondary education, employment or training.

The funding system provides $1,000 to $2,000 per student less than is necessary to educate our students to meet state standards. Low-wealth districts, with their greater needs, would have to increase taxes much more than higher-wealth districts to pay for an adequate system.

In a state with increasing numbers and percentages of low-income students and English-language learners, and alarming failure rates on state tests, the state system provides $600 less funding per student than in 2009.

In other words, the funding has gone down 10 percent when it should have gone up 20 percent. This deficit is even more damaging because the districts with the greatest needs have the least resources to educate their students.

According to the most respected national study, Texas ranks 49th of the 50 states in revenues per student, when accounting for the costs of doing business in the state. Both low-wealth and high-wealth districts argued this issue. When all of the low- and medium-wealth districts and even some of the wealthier districts cannot meet state standards, the state has indeed not met its constitutional duties.

The school finance system is also inadequate because of its failure to account for the greater costs of providing an adequate education for low-income students and English-language learners. Regardless of other changes to the system, the district court found this inadequacy to be particularly damaging to the state’s future.

The school finance system is arbitrary and unsuitable because of the means chosen to achieve an adequate education. The state has failed to update its formulas to meet the special needs of its students and the changing tax bases, tax efforts and special costs of its school districts.

The school finance system also violates the Texas prohibition of a statewide property tax because it does not provide districts meaningful discretion to set tax rates and raise funds to meet the state’s statutory requirements. Even at the maximum tax rates allowed under Texas law, districts cannot raise the funds they need to meet state mandates.

When the first Texas Supreme Court school finance decisions came out in 1989 and 1991, legislators complained that the court was just finding fault with the system but not suggesting how to fix it. This 2014 opinion, following the outline in the 2005 Supreme Court decision, has given us all an excellent guide to design and implement a constitutional system.

Based on these opinions, the following are some elements of a constitutional system:

 To be efficient, use state and local funds to ensure that every district has access to the same funds at any tax rate allowed, and that those amounts account for the special costs of the students and districts.

 To be adequate, increase state funding to at least the national average levels, accounting for the special costs of Texas students and districts. The evidence at trial put this figure at $1,000 to $2,000 additional funds per student.

To be suitable and not arbitrary, update the formulas for special populations and district costs, including an increase in the weights for low-income students and English-language learners. And reject tying district revenues to the amounts raised in 2005.

To allow meaningful discretion to meet state standards, increase the range of tax rates available to districts to increase their funding, while maintaining the overall efficiency and equality of the new system.

This is just a very brief list of ideas to meet the constitutional standards. I do not work with or for any of the parties or attorneys in the lawsuit, so these are just one old lawyer’s opinions, albeit a lawyer who has spent 25 years working on Texas school finance.

I hope these suggestions do get us talking. Meanwhile, anyone who wants to participate actively in this important effort should, at the least, read the executive summary of the opinion that state District Judge John Dietz wrote.

It is an excellent summary of the issues and law, and will allow us all to enter the debate with informed opinions.

Al Kauffman is a professor of law at St. Mary’s University School of Law. He wrote and filed the original Texas school financing case in 1984 and was lead counsel for the plaintiffs from 1984 to 2002.