Public Schools Face Funding Freeze
March 15, 2010
"The ice age is here." These wor ds greeted San Antonio area school superintendents last week when briefed by Omar Garcia, the state’s leading expert on Texas public school funding.
He was referring to the state’s current funding formulas, which freeze school district (local and state) revenue at the level (per student) available to each district in 2005. The freeze has exacerbated both equity and adequacy issues.
Regarding equity, the 1,000-plus districts across Texas are "frozen" at significantly different maximum revenue levels, depending on their economic status in 2005. That same year, the Texas Supreme Court narrowly avoided labeling the entire Texas school funding system as unconstitutional. Texas is now on the brink of exhausting its total fiscal capacity for education spending. Our funding system can best be described as an unconstitutional and inadequate state imposed tax with only the barest illusion of local school board discretion.
You may remember that recent state action substantially lowered property tax rates throughout Texas. In most districts, the property tax rate for Maintenance and Operations was changed from $1.50 to a maximum of $1.04. Sounds good, right? In order to compensate for the loss of revenue, the state collected a muscled-up business tax. But since then, those revenues failed to replace lost property taxes- and caused an outcry from businesses. So the state filled the growing funding gap by "robbing" healthy local districts of any increase in their local tax base. How did they do this?
In this column and elsewhere, I’ve often commented on the woes of a "Robin Hood" district. Ironically, under the "freeze" now imposed across Texas, more than 75 percent of the districts are now getting their own version of Robin Hood. As each school distric t gains local property tax revenues each year, the state then sends a corresponding lesser amount of its own funds. So the state is treating local tax revenue growth as a substitute for its own funding obligations.
Adding to these woes, current expert predictions (including the Comptroller’s Office) peg the budget deficit facing Texas lawmakers in 2011 at $13 billion. Even if the state poured the entire Rainy Day fund of $9.5 billion into education, it would not close that appalling funding gap. Remember that our state legislators plugged the previous funding gap in 2009 by appropriating federal stimulus funds. Those funds are not likely to be available in 2011.
Thus, school districts are facing the roughest financial future in decades. The problem is already significant this school year in Boerne and throughout Texas. It will grow worse over the next three years.
Many school districts (including several in the San Antonio area) are on the verge of declaring a state of financial exigency, which is preliminary to laying off substantial numbers of teachers and other employees prior to the 2010/11 school year.
Growing school districts like Boerne are among the hardest hit. In 2009, the Boerne ISD geared up for the "Ice Age" by implementing the conclusions of an extensive staffing study. The result was to open our ninth campus (Boerne High School) with the same total number of BISD staff employed in the previous year, despite the growth in our student population. This meant class sizes grew bigger across the district and people were stretched thinner than ever. An increasing number of teachers at the secondary level are now teaching seven of eight periods, an undesirable situation.
Administrators, counselors, teaching assistants, and food-service em ployees all have had to cover more ground with less help.
Teachers were the only employee group to receive a (small) pay raise in 2009/10 – and that was mandated by state action. School districts are awaiting a decision from the Attorney General’s Office on whether teachers are due a step raise for the coming school year. Although we would like to see teachers receive it, any such raise will be an unfunded mandate – and imposed while the state continues its 2005 freeze on revenue.
I’m not sure if anyone can rightly make the claim that it costs the same or less to live in 2010 as it did in 2005. Utilities, consumer goods, food, gasoline, construction, and many other necessities have substantially higher price tags in 2010. This is as true for school districts as for individuals.
What are the solutions? First, we cannot rely on the state or the federal government to fix the problem in the short term. Though they caused most of it, they are fast becoming insolvent. Instead, and again, school districts must do more with less.
While the state legislature giddily adds new mandates, "higher expectations," tests and lots of feel-good rhetoric, local school districts are expected to magically produce superior results.
As Pharaoh infamously said thousands of years ago, we are "not to be given any more straw (i.e. revenue) yet must produce the full quota of bricks!"
Unfortunately, if we expect higher student achievement, the answer is not "Let our people go!" But since most school districts’ funds are tied up in personnel, most districts cannot afford salary increases and many will be imposing staffing reductions. And these coming lean years have little reserve funds to dra w on.
A recent newspaper article claimed that 40 percent of Texas school districts are already using a portion of their sub-optimum fund balance (savings account) to meet budget needs. Many more districts will dip into their limited savings next year.
Although our BISD board and administration have no power to substantially change the revenue picture, we must continue to reduce expenditures. This will inevitably mean a decrease in the level of services provided – and an increase in the workload.
The longer-term solution to this problem is almost completely unpalatable to state and federal legislators: Find the funding first before translating political rhetoric into local legal dictates. Stop unfunded mandates and repeal those already on the books. The Ice Age is here!
John P. Kelly is superintendent of Boerne ISD.