Before one can fix something, it helps to know exactly what’s broken. This was the dilemma facing the Texas Legislature regarding school finance. We all knew it was flawed, but there were a range of opinions on how to create a system that would be found constitutional.


I was on record as supporting action while waiting on the Texas Supreme Court’s ruling on the current litigation, as some problems seemed obvious. At the top of the list was that the state’s share of total public education funding had dropped to a mere 38 percent.It was also clear local school property taxes were too high, educators should be better rewarded for doing a good job, and that taxpayers needed clear value for their dollars.


I believed it better to act to address some issues when we had a chance, even if it required some modification later. However, a majority of the Texas Legislature thought it prudent to wait for the Texas Supreme Court to provide firm guidance before acting on a plan.


We now have that guidance in a ruling which concludes our current method of financing the public schools violates the Texas Constitution. At the heart of the Texas Supreme Court’s opinion is that an unconstitutional statewide property tax now exists. The ruling concludes that local school districts have lost meaningful discretion to set a tax rate below the current $1.50 cap and still do the job required of them.


The opinion notes when the current system was enacted in 1993, just two percent of Texas’ school districts (representing one percent of students) taxed at the $1.50 cap. This has since increased to 48 percent of districts covering 59 percent of students. The percentage of districts taxing below $1.40 has shrunk from 90 percent (covering 85 percent of students) to 20 percent of districts containing a mere 10 percent of students.


Another factor in the opinion’s conclusion that a statewide property tax exists is an increasing reliance upon moving funds from wealthy districts to those with less property wealth. More than $1 billion dollars annually now flows into the statewide school funding system from 134 districts containing 12.3 percent of students. The ruling notes the number of wealthy districts subject to recapture and the amount of revenue transferred has almost tripled since “Robin Hood” came into being.


The ruling didn’t dictate in detail what should be done to address the problem. This was left to the discretion of Texas’ elected leadership.


However, the opinion did warn that “defects in the structure of the public school finance system expose the system to constitutional challenge” and that “pouring more money into the system may forestall these challenges, but only for a time.” The challenges will “repeat until the system is overhauled.”


In other words, merely tweaking around the edges of what we have in place currently will not keep us out of court. We need to work on a more permanent fix.


The Supreme Court mandated a deadline of June 1, 2006, to see a new school funding system enacted that cured the statewide property tax issue.


Work is already underway to address the constitutional deficiency. Gov. Rick Perry recently created a 24-member Texas Tax Reform Commission, led by former Texas comptroller John Sharp, to suggest new methods of financing public education. At my request, their very first public meeting outside of Austin was held in Bell County on December 8th.


I will be serving as the chairman of the subcommittee on teacher compensation for the House Public Education Committee and will be deeply involved in addressing issues relating to salary, health care, pensions, and incentives. Texas has to be able to recruit, retain, and reward the best in our classroom.


The bottom line is that Texas will be making fundamental changes in how we fund public education. The challenge is to create a new system that is fair, tracks the growth of our modern economy, and supplies sufficient revenue to support a public school system that sees more than 72,500 new students every year.