How we measure success in Texas public schools? Right now, standardized testing and an A-F accountability system that assigns grades to campuses is used almost entirely to grade our schools. 

Accountability, and the transparency it brings, is essential. We need to make sure the 5.4 million students in Texas public schools are provided with the tools they need to eventually enter the workforce, and that taxpayer money is being put to good use. 

But what if we had a system that looked at more than how students do on one test on one day? What if we decided that what makes a “good school” goes beyond test scores and we evaluated how districts prepare students for life and career through things like early childhood education, dual language, fine arts, and extra-curricular programs? Or the many crucial resources public schools provide to ensure the well-being of their students, like meals, mental health services, and campus security?

This is a wholly achievable idea — and one that had momentum and bipartisan support during the most recent legislative session. But, like so many other worthy public education issues, accountability and assessment reforms went down in the battle over private school vouchers during the 88th Session.

In this episode, hear from Lori Rapp, Superintendent at Lewisville ISD; Jacqueline Martinex, Former 4th grade teacher at Canutillo ISD; Daniel Saenz, CEO of Nieto Technology Partners; Paola Gonzalez Fusilier, School Board Trustee at Pasadena ISD; and Dr. Libby Cohen, Senior Director of Advocacy at Raise Your Hand Texas, each discusses assessment and accountability from their unique perspectives. 

The 2023 legislative session started with a lot of promise. Lawmakers had a historic $33 billion dollar budget surplus, and there was energy and consensus to address a number of public education issues. Instead, lawmakers failed to give Texas public schools enough funding to even keep up with inflation, much less provide teacher pay raises to help stop the exodus of educators from the classroom. They lost efforts to improve our accountability system so that teachers could focus on their students’ learning instead of their performance on standardized tests. They did not pass any policies to help recruit and retain high-quality teachers. 

There was one tentative win for public education advocates. Thanks to a bipartisan group of determined House lawmakers who withstood enormous pressure from Gov. Greg Abbott  —  no private school voucher program passed. 

In this episode, hear from Raise Your Hand Texas’ Libby Cohen, Senior Director of Advocacy, Will Holleman, Senior Director of Government Relations, and Bob Popinski, Senior Director of Policy, alongside Georgia Polley, public education advocate from Spring Branch ISD, as they discuss their views on the 88th Legislative Session, and why a victory to stave off vouchers is far from certain, and came at a great cost to Texans. 

Morgan Smith: Welcome to the Intersect Ed Podcast, where the stories of public education policy and practice meet. I’m your host, Morgan Smith.

Today we are talking about something that could make a positive difference in the lives of many Texas teachers and their students: high-quality mentorship.

The formalized practice of having more experienced teachers coach those newer in the profession could help with a major challenge facing Texas public schools — teacher shortages. It also benefits everyone involved — from the experienced teachers acting as mentors who now have a chance to learn new skills, to the newer teachers they are supporting, and to the students who now have confident, calm educators in the classroom.

So why aren’t high-quality mentoring programs more common in Texas public schools? Well, as is often the case, the reasons for that mostly come down to time and money.

Right now in Austin, some lawmakers are trying to change that by expanding an existing pilot mentorship program. Two proposals to would do that — House Bill 11 and Senate Bill 9 — have both passed their home chamber but are currently stuck in limbo waiting for hearings in the second. With less than two weeks left in the legislative session, time is running out for either of these bills to make it.

Morgan: While teachers can sometimes find peers to reach out to organically, research shows formalized, high-quality mentorship programs deliver the best results — especially when it comes to teachers working with vulnerable student populations. And those programs have specific characteristics.

Mario Piña: A high-quality mentorship program has a lot of components. I think first of all, it has time for teachers to reflect with their mentors, and usually this really needs to happen during the school day. And it needs to have the time for the mentor to observe their mentee and vice versa, because if they're not being able to see what's happening or how something can be done, they're not going to be able to execute that in the way that's most effective.

Morgan: Mario Piña is a Regional Advocacy Director with Raise Your Hand Texas. Before joining them in 2022, he spent nine years in Austin ISD as an elementary and middle school teacher, and instructional coach.  

Mario: And I think definitely making sure that we're paying people. A lot of times in school districts, people are being asked to be mentors and are not being compensated and not giving the time to mentor their mentees, and so it becomes really difficult for them to find the time during the day to really help each other out, and so it becomes more of a chore rather than a real mentorship process.

There's so many other things that teachers are worried about. They're worried about grading. They're worried about making sure that their students are okay. They're making sure they have high-quality lessons. And so having time to go talk to their mentor is probably at the very bottom of their list a lot of times.

And I think the other part of it is training for the mentors themselves. A lot of times, teachers are being asked to be mentors but are provided no training, and we have this idea that just because you're a really good teacher, you're going to be a really good mentor, and that's not always the case. I know that when I was a teacher, a lot of the times my mentor would come and ask me, "Hey, what do you need help with?" And unfortunately, as a first- or second-year teacher, you don't know what you need. And so asking me what I need help with or how am I doing isn't always the most helpful, because I don't know what I don't know. And so we really need teachers to have that training of how to ask the questions, setting those goals and working on those goals together, and really guiding that novice teacher.

Morgan: A high-quality mentorship program can provide much-needed time for collaboration and support during the early days of teaching, which can be a trial-by-fire for many new educators. Mentors are also around to help new teachers figure out the simple everyday logistics that anyone who’s ever started a new job knows can be quite daunting — like making sure they know how to use the copier, or that there’s a bathroom in the teachers’ lounge. Most importantly, they help their mentees hone their instructional strategies and master classroom management – all skills that translate directly into improving students’ academic outcomes, which also makes mentoring programs an excellent financial investment for the state.

Jerome Johnson: It's like that famous Mike Tyson quote, that everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, metaphorically speaking. And so that's what teaching is like that first year. You have this idea of how your day's going to go, and then boom, a student does something totally not planned. You can imagine the things that we've seen.

Morgan: This is Jerome Johnson, who is in his sixth year teaching English Language Arts in Channelview ISD, a school district of about 9,000 students on the Gulf Coast. He grew up a few miles down the road from where he now teaches – and entered teaching in his mid-thirties after he felt a calling to work with students like the kids he grew up with.

Jerome: The calling kind of hit me and I was like, “I wonder if I can do this and be great at it, and be able to serve the underserved in a way?” I just always wanted to be a great educator in a place where they probably wouldn't get good teaching, more than likely. I think those personal challenges are what drew me originally to teaching.

Morgan: For Jerome, having mentors during his first years in the classroom provided invaluable feedback — both positive and negative — that helped him grow as an educator.

Jerome: I think as a mentee coming into the profession at such an older age, it was important that I got that confirmation like, "You are equipped for this." I remember being in a hallway and my mentor, one of my mentors at the time, just came to me and was like, "You have what it takes to ..." She said, "You have that thing that teachers have to reach and connect with students." And I had no idea what I was doing. I had no barometer, no way to measure it. I think that meant the world to me, just not knowing what to expect or am I on the right path…Because you're in a silo, unless you are in a different culture where collaboration is welcome. But if you are the professional in the room, and you are with a bunch of younger people, younger individuals, you just need those outside eyes telling you both good and bad. Because my colleagues have checked me on some things of like, "Yeah, that's a little above what they're talking about. You're missing them with that language," or, "You need to have this structure in your class to reach them."

So both the critical and the compliments make a difference when you have those relationships. And I think mostly it took me a while, maybe three years in, before I realized amongst teachers it's really a people business, really about investing in individuals and people so they can reach their maximum potential.

Morgan: Most importantly, when teachers feel supported and encouraged, they can provide that same support and encouragement for their students. So in that way, high-quality mentoring ends up providing a safety net for students with new teachers, who are also often the students with the greatest needs. Here’s Mario again.

Mario: Our Title I schools are the ones that have the most revolving teachers, and I can think of, at the last school I worked at, more than half the campus is new. And so how are we going to continue to mentor these teachers when our veteran teachers are still in need of mentors themselves? And so our most vulnerable students are the ones who are suffering the most, and I don't think we talk about that enough – and  it's hard to fulfill a high-needs classroom when you're just struggling to stay afloat yourself.

Morgan: If you are feeling overwhelmed, it’s going to be very difficult for you to be an effective teacher. If you don’t know how to pace your curriculum, it’s going to be very difficult to be an effective teacher. If you can’t figure out how to manage behavior in your classroom, you aren’t going to be an effective teacher. High-quality mentorship shrinks the learning curve for new teachers on all of those things, while increasing student achievement and decreasing teacher turnover.

Jennifer: Most people want to be given an opportunity to help somebody do more, or better, or bigger, or see things through a different lens, or whatever it is in that situation. That's certainly been my experience. Then on the flip side, because I have benefited from mentors in my life, and mentorship opportunities, I also like being a mentor. So I think of it as the same as teaching actually. It's just that you are helping guide a peer versus a student or a child, but the meat of it is still the same. That you are helping someone accomplish something in their life and that's special, that's meaningful.

Morgan: Jennifer Cook is heading into her 10th year in the classroom. She teaches 7th grade English Language Arts in Livingston ISD, a mid-sized school district in rural East Texas. Jennifer says she loves teaching middle school students — an age group she knows can be intimidating to some.

Jennifer: They want to learn, and they want to find their own voice, and their own independence, and all of these things. But they're old enough to where they can handle some pretty deep topics, and some deep conversations. Just their capacity for what they can handle and how much they're able to learn and get from anything, not just literature, but literally anything that you're giving them access to, I think, is really special with this age group, the middle school age group.

Morgan: Jennifer is also a teacher who would not still be in the classroom if not for a mentor she had during a particularly difficult second year of teaching.

Jennifer: That year there were a few days where thinking about going to work brought tears to my eyes. And that's a horrible experience to have, and no one should have to go through that. You should not be crying before you go to work. My co-teacher that year, she had been teaching for probably 35 years at that time, so she had been through everything. She not only helped me maintain a positive outlook, but she also helped me take a stressful situation and do what needed to be done, but also turn it into my own.

She helped me a lot, and made me understand that not every year is going to be easy, but it's still only a year, and there's really nothing that we can't get through. So you just have to find your voice, and find a way to make it the best you can.

Morgan: Now Jennifer serves as a mentor herself. This year, she had two new-to-the-profession educators under her wing. But even though she knows from personal experience how important mentorship can be, she still struggles with finding time to meet with her mentees, and as the school year closes, has not had an opportunity to observe them in the classroom. There’s simply not enough time in the school day where teachers often have their schedules planned down to five-minute increments. She’s hopeful, though, that can change.

Jennifer: Everyone doesn't have to be best friends, but when you trust each other, and you trust that you can discuss and work through situations, it just makes everyone happier, and more effective. So I really think that in every aspect of life, connecting with and keeping those connections and relationships is really key to growth. So this is one way that schools can try to manage the culture of their workplace through, I think, a pretty minimal amount of work.

Morgan: As the end of the legislative session approaches, Raise Your Hand Texas is pushing for lawmakers to take the framework of what’s already a good program and expand it so that more teachers — whether veteran or new in the classroom — and students — can benefit from it for generations to come.

If you want more details on the characteristics of a high-quality mentorship program, please visit the Raise Your Hand Texas blog post, “Investing in Teacher Mentorship Leads to Stronger Classrooms,” which is linked in the episode notes.

To stay informed on critical education issues, you can sign up online for Raise Your Hand’s Across the Lawn weekly newsletter at raise - your - hand - texas - dot -o-r-g - back slash - get - dash - involved.

To receive text alerts that will allow you to join Raise Your Hand in taking action at key moments this legislative session, text RAISEMYHAND– all one word – to 40649.

Today’s episode was written by me, Morgan Smith. Our sound engineer is Brian Diggs and our executive producer is Anne Lasseigne Tiedt.

Thank you for standing up for our Texas public school students.

 Morgan Smith: Welcome to the Intersect Ed Podcast, where the stories of public education policy and practice meet. 

I’m your host, Morgan Smith. 

Today we are talking about Texas teachers, and how much we pay them. Or I should say: how much we don’t pay them. 

What started as a slow drain — as stagnant pay forced teachers out of the classroom during the hardships of COVID, the economic downturn, and inflation — has now accelerated into a crisis. Texas public schools simply can’t keep the teachers they need in the classroom. It’s hard to overstate the urgency of what’s happening. 

School districts, already operating on skeleton crews, are dropping advanced and elective courses because there are no teachers to teach them. They are combining classes — sometimes even recruiting parents to fill in — because there are no substitute teachers. And the teachers who remain are working second and third jobs just to pay basic household expenses. All of this has led a heartbreaking number of Texas educators to say they are seriously considering leaving the profession. 

Right now in Austin, lawmakers are deciding how to spend a record-breaking $33 billion surplus, with tens of billions more in estimated growth in revenue over the next two years. And, as the hours creep closer and closer to the last day of the 2023 legislative session, they are not deciding to spend it on teachers.

Yes, you may have seen headlines about some major legislation — Senate Bill 9 and House Bill 100 are two of the proposals out there that would increase teacher pay. But here’s what you need to know about those bills: they don’t come anywhere close to moving Texas teacher pay in line with the national average OR bumping their salaries enough to keep up with inflation. 

JoLisa Hoover: I think there's been a moment where some people in society have said, "Teachers, if you don't like it, you can leave," and our teachers have left. 

Morgan: This is JoLisa Hoover, who spent 26 years as a teacher in Texas public schools before joining Raise Your Hand in 2019. She was named the organization’s Teacher Specialist in 2022. 

JoLisa: In the beginning of the pandemic, our teachers just pivoted overnight, and redesigned their entire career. They were making sure kids got fed. They were distributing technology out into the neighborhoods. They were checking in on families, and they were really just lifted up as heroes, only for a few short years later to be villainized for a variety of things and their pay has just been very stagnant. 

Morgan: As a part of Raise Your Hand’s work developing policy recommendations for the 88th Legislature, their statewide team of Regional Advocacy Directors met with Texas educators ahead of the legislative session. They heard from over 697 teachers from 79 different school districts. During the legislative session, JoLisa and the team brought more than 75 teachers on a weekly basis to the Capitol to speak with their lawmakers.

JoLisa: The teachers are talking about how their money just isn't going as far as it used to, and in particular, that's hit teachers hard because their pay had already been stagnant before some of the recent inflation has hit all of us. And so they're already in a job that penalizes them for choosing teaching, financially, and then to have the pay stay quite stagnant, it's been really hard for our teachers. 

Morgan: JoLisa says there’s one word that keeps coming up over and over again, when teachers talk about the state of their profession: stress. The stress of not being financially independent. The stress of working a second job, and still not being able to meet the needs of their families. The stress of not being able to pay for medical procedures, home repairs, or make their rent. The stress of driving long distances to work each day because they can’t afford to live where they teach. 

JoLisa: I heard teachers talk about that they're doing what they need to do to make ends meet, but it can be embarrassing to see your students while you're working your second job, and yet our teachers are purchasing their own supplies because they need them to do their job. They are buying extra snacks for kids who are hungry, buying coats for kids who don't have them, and so they view their job as being part of the essential bills that they have to pay, is keeping their students supported.

Morgan: If you don’t have any public school teachers in your family or your social circle, you may be surprised to know just how many of them work second jobs to pay the bills. Teachers will tell you that on any campus, you never really have to ask who's selling what, because any brand you can think of that can be sold by a person is represented somewhere on campus.

Laura Marder: So in our particular district, I don't know a single school teacher that does not have some sort of side hustle or second job that they work. Either that or a very supportive spouse who is able to contribute to the finances of the home. And unfortunately with them doing those things, it takes away their energy because they're drug in different directions. They're not able to fully utilize themselves and put that effort into their kids. These teachers are doing everything from working retail, they're tutoring students on the side. I know some teachers that wait tables, and several teachers that own small businesses and work different company roles outside of teaching. And so they leave here from school and they go straight and they do that and then they do it all over again the next day. Those people should be leaving work, going home, taking care of their families, and taking care of themselves, so that way when they come back to work, they're energized, ready to go, and ready to put all that energy back into their students.

Morgan: This is Laura Marder. She is a high school biology teacher in a small, rural district in northeast Texas (Mineola ISD). She’s been teaching for nine years. 

Laura: So the beauty of being in a small rural school is that I have the honor and privilege of teaching just about every student that comes through our doors at the high school. And so not only do I get to build relationships with those students, but also have connections with those families as well. And so we get to kind of walk through their lives together. And I have such a huge impact on so many people's lives, and it's just very satisfying and very rewarding work.

Morgan: Laura also told me about the double bind that Texas teachers face. It’s not just that they don’t make enough to pay their own bills, they are often using their salary to pay for classroom supplies. To make her classroom materials go further, Laura has students double or even triple up on lab experiments. But the small stipend she gets from the district doesn’t cover everything her students need. So she pays out of pocket to keep stocked with much-needed basic items like school supplies, cleaning products, and provide something that’s become increasingly common in Texas classrooms — a food pantry.

Laura: There’s other things that teachers do all the time that people don't even think about. We know the importance of making sure that our students' social and emotional needs are met. And part of that is making sure that they have what they need to be successful. I know teachers here that make sure that kids have clothing, that they have shoes that have, like myself, for example, I have a mini fridge in my classroom, and I know that there are a handful of kids that on the weekend don't have food to go home with on the weekend. And they know that when they leave my class on Friday, they go in and take what they need. And I just keep it stocked and we don't ask questions. It's just one of those things that we do because we love and we care for our students, and it's just so important that those needs are met so that way they can be successful at school.

Morgan: Another common theme when you talk to Texas teachers: they aren’t in it to get rich. They chose their profession because they knew the joy they got out of being in the classroom meant more than being able to take lavish vacations or even shop at the fancy grocery store. 

Eva Goins: In all reality, we just want to be compensated for what we do. I know that I will never see six figures as a teacher, and money isn't everything. I always tell my students, "I don't do this job for the summers, and I don't do this job for the money. I do it for you. I do it for you because I care about you and your future, and I want to make sure that you have the best opportunities ever. You can rest assured, I am going to fight for you. I am going to advocate for you, and I'm going to give you my best always."

Morgan: This is Eva Goins, who’s been in the classroom for 22 years. She’s an 8th-grade teacher in Northwest ISD, in suburban Fort Worth. You can hear the enthusiasm in her voice when she talks about her kids, and what she’s willing to give up for them. Over the years, that’s included waking up at 3:50 a.m. each morning to teach English to children in China before her school day began. 

But even someone like Eva, who remains as dedicated to her job as someone could possibly be, has had her moments when she’s thought about leaving. One of those times happened on a road trip at a Buc-ees — the popular chain of mega country stores and gas stations that originated in Texas. 

Eva: We were coming home, and we decided we wanted to stop at Buc-ees, because you have to. It's just one of those things. As we were coming out, they have these huge colorful billboards, and I don't know why, I think it was the money, the numbers, it was just numbers on this sign. I read it, and it said, "A carwash manager is making six figures." I'm sitting here going, "Wait a minute, hold on. I've been teaching for 22 years. I have a bachelor's, I have a master's, I'm working on my doctorate right now. Even at my highest education level, with a doctorate, I will never see six figures as a teacher in the current state, ever. Here a guy or girl, a lady who works at Buc-ees as a carwash manager can make over $100,000?"

I'm thinking, "Why? I'm a teacher, and I take my job very seriously because these are the minds of the future, the ones that are going to be taking care of our generation. I'm trying to give them an education to become critical thinkers, and to follow their dreams, and someone can just get a job as a car wash manager and make a substantial amount more money than I do as a teacher." But, what's sad about the whole thing is that I think people have gotten to the point where they realize teachers, we're different folk. We think with our hearts.

I think about all the teachers that are in my school and people that I've worked with, and they have huge hearts for students. They have huge hearts for the kids, and they actually worry more about their kids that they teach than their own kids, because by the time they get home, they're exhausted. I think that a lot of people have taken that, and just like, "Well, you know what? They're going to figure out a way. It doesn't matter what we throw at them, or how much we don't pay them, they're going to find another job to help figure out how to pay for their living expenses. But we're going to institute this because we know that they'll take care of it, because a teacher has this huge heart, and they love their kids, and they're going to do whatever they have to do in order to be there for their students."

It was disheartening, and I was like, "I could leave. I could go and apply, and put my application in at Buc-ees, but then I wouldn't be happy." I wouldn't be happy because I wouldn't be with my kids. I wouldn't be with my students who get excited whenever they write a sentence, or whenever they write a poem, and it blows them away. They're like, "I did that?" And I'm like, "Yes, you did that. You have that inside of you." It's disheartening, but I think people, they just realize that we're going to do the job, unfortunately. It's sad, but that's the way things are.

Morgan: What Eva is describing is what Raise Your Hand calls the Texas Teacher Tax. It’s similar to a gender wage gap, but it goes beyond that. It’s the pay cut that’s forced on teachers because of their devotion to their students — a giant chasm in pay that teachers face when compared to other professionals who hold degrees and manage hundreds of people and responsibilities each day. And while teachers in other states face similar challenges, unfortunately, this particular problem is Texas-specific. Historically, as lawmakers have made cuts to public schools, Texas educators have made sure those cuts affect their students as little as possible, even if that means making deep sacrifices in their own personal lives. But even teachers have their limits — and in 2023, so many have reached them. 

Here’s Laura again. 

Laura: We want respect. And respect starts from the top down. We want to be paid for the professionals that we are, for the people that have multiple certifications that do these jobs day in and day out that other people don't want to do. And we don't want to be rich, but we want to be able to live comfortably. We want to be able to keep the lights on and not have to work two or three jobs. Teachers are tired. I literally have seen teachers before that I taught with that decided that they couldn't even afford to have children. They made the decision to go to work every day, to take care of other people's kids, to put their time, talents, effort, and energy into other people's children, but yet they won't get that satisfaction for themselves because they can't afford to do it. And it's heartbreaking. It shouldn't be that way.

Morgan: So far in this episode, we’ve heard from two current public school teachers who are sticking it out. Despite the odds, they still have the capacity to stay in the fight. Now we are going to hear from one who doesn’t. After next year — which will be her 29th teaching — Mariza DiNapoli is leaving her job as an 8th-grade special education teacher in El Paso ISD. 

Mariza: Currently I’m teaching students that struggle, that sometimes have low self-esteem, and that don't like school because they struggle. I love to help them, to see them grow, to build up their self-esteem. It's really fulfilling to me when I get to see that and when they like to come to school and when they see the growth and when they're proud of themselves. That is something that, it's a great feeling to have. So my number one thing is just being with my students and teaching them, showing them that they are capable at their different levels and that they can achieve something.

Morgan: Mariza’s superpower is an ability to connect with students with particularly difficult emotional disturbances. In other words, given her experience and talent, she is exactly the kind of educator the state should be trying to make sure stays in the classroom. But she told me that she just can’t do it anymore — eating a bar for lunch every day so she can complete paperwork so she doesn’t bring it home, managing all of her students' vastly different individual needs without the proper support, helping her students through crying episodes and severe anxiety over taking the state required tests that they will surely fail — all of this, for so very little pay. 

Mariza: I went to the profession because I loved the challenges. I loved the teaching. I knew that for sure it wasn't going to be a huge money-making adventure here. But at a certain point, like I said, after 28 years and seeing my salary, it saddens me that we're not being compensated. I mean, it's not fair that we work so hard and we have all these things that we have to do that the state's requiring us, the laws are requiring us, like all the documentation and paperwork, yet we're not compensated and we're not treated like professionals. It's kind of degrading to me, and it saddens me.

Morgan: She also feels invisible to the people in charge of making education policy. 

Mariza: I wonder if our principal knows everything that I'm doing as a special education teacher, I even wonder if our superintendent knows. I wonder if our board members know. And even higher, I wonder if our state representatives know everything that we're doing and all the time that it takes. I wish they would follow us for a day, be in our shoes for a day, see all the paperwork that we do, and experience it. I would invite them. I would love to do that so they could actually see what goes into just one day of a special education teacher.

Morgan: As this episode airs, it will be teacher appreciation week. Kids around the state will be bringing flowers, cards, and special treats to the teachers who, for many of them, are the only adults in their lives they can trust to show up. 

Here’s JoLisa.

JoLisa: I think everyone has a favorite teacher. When you think about, what does that teacher deserve to be paid, I recently was talking with some students that were visiting the Capitol, and they told me that they were going and talking about their favorite teacher, and then telling the lawmakers that they thought their teacher should be paid as much as "fill in the blank."

I said, "What are you telling them?" They would say, "My teacher deserves as much as a rockstar. My teacher deserves as much as a major league baseball player. My teacher deserves to make as much as a dentist, a veterinarian, or a doctor." And so these kids who are so close to watching what teachers do, they see the value. I think if we all kind of think through about the teachers who have made a difference in our life, we know how valuable that is. 

When we think about all the things you might own, all the things that are important to you, what's more important than your children? Why wouldn't we reimburse the people who care for the thing we care most about in a significant way that shows how important our kids are to us?

Morgan: The legislative session ends on May 29. There’s still time for Texas lawmakers to show up for our teachers, just like these teachers show up for our children every day. 

Here’s Laura, our rural high school biology teacher, again.

Laura: The future of Texas, the future of the world, is sitting in our classrooms right now. Every single one of those children are going to go out into the workforce and they are incredible and they're talented and they need to be supported. If we do not have quality educators standing in front of them every day pouring into them, we're going to be in big trouble. Now is the time that they need to be making these decisions. We cannot continue to hold off and mess around and wait to increase teacher salaries. We need to do it right now. Teachers are leaving the profession in a mass exodus, and we have got to find a way to keep them in the classroom, to support them financially, and give them what they need so they can best serve the students of Texas today.

Morgan: I want to say a very heartfelt thank you to the three teachers — Laura Marder, Mariza DiNapoli, and Eva Goins — who shared their experiences with me for this episode. 

With just a few weeks left in the legislative session, now is the time for lawmakers to act to give teachers a meaningful pay raise. If you would like to help advocate for a real teacher pay raise, you can find a link that will allow you to email your legislators quickly. Go to Raise Your Hand’s Twitter and Facebook accounts and look for the “Give Teachers a Real Raise” posts. 

And I also want to let you know that to stay informed on critical education issues, you can sign up online for Raise Your Hand’s Across the Lawn weekly newsletter at www.raiseyourhandtexas.org/get-involved.  

To receive text alerts that will allow you to join Raise Your Hand in taking action at key moments this legislative session, text RAISEMYHAND – all one word – to 40649. 

Today’s episode was written by me, Morgan Smith. Our sound engineer is Brian Diggs and our executive producer is Anne Lasseigne Tiedt. 

Thank you for standing up for our Texas public school students.

Morgan Smith: You're listening to the Raise Your Hand Texas Intersect Ed Podcast where the stories of public education policy and practice meet. I'm your host Morgan Smith, and today, we're taking on a topic that has become a marquee fight of the 88th Legislature, private school vouchers. 

On one side, we have our state's two most powerful elected officials, Governor Greg Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who say every parent should get the freedom to decide how to use taxpayer money in educating their children. On the other, we have every public education advocacy group in the state, including Raise Your Hand Texas, who say that vouchers will do nothing but harm students, teachers, and communities.

To help us dive in today we have superintendent Randy Burks of the Hamlin Independent School District, and Bob Popinski, the senior director of policy at Raise Your Hand Texas. Dr. Burks and Bob Popinski, thank you both so much for being here. So first, let's define what we're talking about. There are a lot of different terms we might have heard to describe vouchers, school choice, education savings accounts, and tax credit scholarships. It gets even more confusing because school choice is also used to describe the array of options already available to Texas public school students, like charter schools and magnet programs.

Right now, a plan known as an education savings account is what's gaining the most traction at the legislature. The basic gist is that the state gives parents a certain amount of money, $8,000 in Senate Bill 8, the main bill that we're watching, to use for our private school tuition or other educational expenses. On its face, maybe this doesn't seem like a bad idea. Bob, is this proposal, the education savings account, is this a voucher?

Bob Popinski: Don't be fooled. No matter what they call them, whether it's an education savings account or a tax credit scholarship, or a virtual voucher, they're all the same thing. Vouchers are a scheme that’s used to divert public funds to private schools and vendors, and the keywords there are private schools and vendors, with no accountability, such as public schools have. And then they will continue to undermine traditional schools, including charter schools, in the future because those funds are taken from public schools to invest in our teachers, to invest in our students, and they're investing them into a program that has no accountability whatsoever. So it doesn't matter what you call them – education savings accounts, special education vouchers. They are bad public policy for the state of Texas.

Morgan: Dr. Burks, your district is about 40 miles northwest of Abilene in Jones County, Texas. You've been a superintendent there for six years, though, you've worked in public education for more than four decades. Your district is rural and small, with just over 400 students and those students are primarily from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Give us a little sense for your community. What are you most proud of there? What are you struggling with?

Dr. Randy Burks: Well, Hamlin was what might commonly be referred to in some circles of school finances as a CTD district –“circling the drain district,” declining enrollment and loss of some industry that was here previously, and so the district has seen better days definitely. And the city itself is probably typical of a lot of rural Texas, crumbling infrastructure and substandard housing is pretty common here. And, you know, I grew up in a background that's not too different from a lot of our kiddos. And so I really felt like I had something to offer the school and the community because I had a background in school finance.

So we moved to a collegiate model early on in my time here, because we just felt like that, so many of our kiddos were struggling with finding a pathway that would be better than the pathway that they could see. They couldn't really envision a better life than what their parents had. So, we're a P-TECH school, early college high school, we have Montessori Elementary School, and we have college and career pathways available for our kiddos. And so we try lots of innovative things, and we fail fast and dust ourselves off when we do and get up and try again, because we think that's what's best for our kids and to help improve our school and, in essence, lift the community up as well as we move forward.

Morgan: Now, it's no accident that we're featuring a superintendent from rural Texas today, because that is where Governor Abbott has decided to wage his fight for vouchers, too. Since the start of the legislative session, he's taken the pro-voucher message to the road, stopping at private schools in three to four towns a month around the state. Let's take a quick listen here to the Governor speaking at a private school in Tyler in March. 

Governor Abbott (audio from an “Education Freedom” March 2023 event in Tyler, TX): I cannot stand alone in getting this across the finish line. I need you standing with me, every step of the way, to make sure we empower parents to educate our kids, better than any state in America.

Morgan: Dr. Burks, we just heard the emphasis on parental freedom as an argument for vouchers, and I want to get your thoughts on what that means for rural schools in a second. But Bob, first, can you give us an idea why we're seeing this strategy of targeting rural communities from the Governor? And as we're seeing the conversation evolve at the legislature, we're hearing more discussion about vouchers and special education students. What's the strategy here?

Bob: I've always run up to a problem in rural school districts, and rural communities are the center of their communities. And, so what happens is, in the past, you've had Republicans and Democrats alike in the House stopping vouchers. There's an amendment offered, usually during the state budget debate that says, "Our public dollars cannot go towards private schools or vouchers." And that's typically what's known as the Representative Herrero Amendment. And that was a few weeks ago here in the Texas House and passed 87 to 51.

And it's an important moment for the House because it sends a signal that we believe in our public schools. They keep saying that overwhelmingly, Texans believe in a voucher program. But I think what's actually happening out there is that Texans really don't know what a voucher program is. When you actually say, "Hey, if a private school or a private vendor actually takes public dollars, are they held accountable?". And in a recent Charles Butt Foundation poll put out at the beginning of the year, it says, “If private schools and private vendors actually take public dollars, what kind of accountability would you like to see?"

And overwhelmingly, 88% said, "Yes, we'd love to see how they're actually spending our public dollars." "Yes," 84% said, "We want to see that they provide special education services to all students and not just a select group of students, and that you have to accept students with all special education needs, you have to follow the state curriculum guidelines, you have to administer state standardized tests, and you have to kind of accept all students, even if they have a discipline problem."

And so overwhelmingly, when you look at Texans, whether they're from rural Texas or urban and suburban Texas, they want a voucher program that's held accountable underneath all of those standards. I think at that point, what you have is a public school system. And so I think we should take some time to invest in our public schools. Right now, public schools are funded $4,000 below the national average when it comes to per-student funding. We're $7,500 below the national average when it comes to teacher salary.

And I think we need to kind of focus on that before we start spending a billion dollars on a voucher program that doesn't accept all students, and it even says within the bill, that parents have to be notified that private schools and vendors don't have to provide the same special education services, under state and federal law as public schools do. There's a lot to unwrap in here. And I think as more Texans actually understand the linkage of what's going on in this voucher program, the more they're pushing back against it.

Morgan: And so we've seen that rural communities have been out of this firewall against vouchers in the past and this session, it seems even this main bill, SB8 that we're looking at, it includes a carve-out for rural schools as possibly a way of getting around this opposition that we've seen. And rural school districts like yours, Dr. Burks, they make up about 40% of Texas districts, they educate about 180,000 students in the state.

Under SB 8, they would actually get paid if they lose any students to a voucher program. So currently, that amount is $10,000. So all in all, school districts under 20,000 students, the state would be paying $18,000 a year for five years for students to take part in this program. That's $8,000 that goes to the family and $10,000 to the school district. What would a program like this mean in your district, Dr. Burks?

Randy: I would say first of all, things are really on a high note financially in Texas right now. And because I've done this for a long time, we know that there are lean years and there are prosperous years. And this is a time that the legislature has a lot of money at its disposal. So this sounds really good. And if you don't understand like Bob was saying, you may not understand all the moving parts here. But for them to commit $18,000, and the price tag that goes with that, at some point that's going to go away, it pulls money from what's available to us.

And so I really am opposed to it. Now, we're rural, and it's going to be difficult for our folks to find a private school to attend. They would have to drive to Abilene. We, in fact, bus children from Abilene to our school, because of some of the things we're doing. We have such a high number of disadvantaged folks, and that micro-schools, and homeschooling and different things that pop up would probably pull some of our students for that. Those students are going to come back to us.

If you've ever tried to teach a child to read or teach algebra, I believe that there are going to be some hardships created for parents, especially in rural communities where there's already chronic economic hardship and long work hours for parents, and many of them work two jobs or they're single parents. It would be very difficult for our folks to provide a good education for our kids, and they'll come back to us and then the consequences will be back on our shoulders to make sure that we catch them up and provide the high level of education that we already do. I think that the $10,000, it’s a carrot for votes. And we'll just call that what it is. 

Bob: Morgan, if I can jump in there, too.

Morgan: Sure.

Bob: The bill is actually saying what those who are in favor of vouchers are kind of denying. They're saying "No, we're not going to defund our public schools. The money's going to be there for our kids." But what they're actually saying in the bill, is that, "For those right now, with 20,000 students or less, we're going to provide $10,000 and hold harmless money for you." And it started off as a two-year period, and on the Senate floor, they actually extended that to a five-year period. And so they're actually saying, "Yes, we understand that it's going to actually hurt our public schools, so we're going to hold you harmless for that five years, but we're only going to do it if you're under 20,000 students."

For a majority of districts that have students above 20,000, they're not getting that hold harmless. So they're going to see an impact right away. Every time a student leaves a school district, and goes either to a private school or even a charter school that school district loses about on average $10,000. It could be a little bit higher in some districts, a little bit lower in others. But that $10,000, leaving the district means that they're going to have a hard time funding all of their staff, all of the teachers they need, to make sure that they can staff their classrooms properly. All of the folks driving the school buses and the cafeteria workers and all of the aides that help out. There's 375,000 teachers, there's another 200,000 or so staff around the state, and all of that will be impacted once you start diverting funds from public education.

Morgan: You bring up a good point, Governor Abbott himself said in his State of the State address this year that even with a voucher program, public schools would remain fully funded. And then you have this provision in the bill that seems to conflict with that, because you're holding harmless the $10,000. I think that's a really good point to bring up. I want to shift back again to the special education services. Dr. Burks, we have a number of bills out there that are focused on vouchers for special education students. Can you talk a little bit about what services for special education are provided in your district?

Randy: Well, we're required by law to provide services for all students that reside in our attendance zone. So we have a variety of needs – with learning disabilities, emotional issue – and we have to provide services for those kiddos. And we're happy to do so, but it is expensive to do so. I don't see that private schools are going to take on this responsibility. Now I have been in places where we have actually contracted with a private school for a particular student whose parent had a situation where they moved to our district but did not want to change for their student because of the emotional strain of that.

There are isolated cases where that could happen. But, for the most part, we provide services for all of our students, whether that's residential placement, which costs us dearly, or to provide speech services, or the whole gamut of things that we provide for our kiddos. It's our responsibility, that's what public schools do. We take all the children who show up at our door, do our very best to provide a great education for them, whether they have special needs, or whether they're gifted and talented, or anywhere in between.

Morgan: And you talk about you're required by law to provide these services. Bob, how would a special education voucher program be conducted to federal guidelines for special education students?

Bob: Yeah, and every voucher bill moving through the process, there's provisions in there that clearly state, "You have to notify the parents that private schools and private vendors are not subject to the same federal or state laws regarding special education services in the same manner as public schools." That means they don't have to provide the same services, they don't have to actually accept or admit a special education student under any circumstances. And so they're spelling this out in the bill saying that private schools and vendors don't have to offer the same type of special education services. And so when we move forward, we just have to keep that in mind, and make sure we're doing what's best for all children in the state of Texas.

Morgan: I want to talk about oversight for a second, we alluded to this earlier. But when taxpayer dollars start going to education expenses outside of the public school system, it's really hard to design a system that keeps track of how that money is spent. Bob, what accountability measures are attached to the voucher proposals at the legislature right now?

Bob: Very little. Right now how these voucher proposals are set up, and we'll look at Senate Bill 8, as one of them. It is a $10,000 hold harmless for school districts that have students using the voucher, but it's an $8,000 voucher. But by the time the education organization that oversees it takes a 5% cut, and the Comptroller takes a 3% cut to oversee it, that amount is diminished. And the oversight that the Comptroller has is just an audit for compliance. They're not looking at student achievement or student progress. They don't have to compare them to the STAAR assessment or the A through F accountability rating system for our campuses and school districts.

They don't have to have the same type of certification standards that our teachers do in our school districts. They don't have to follow the same financial integrity rating system that our school districts do. And they're not overseen by an elected body like all of our local school boards do. And so there really is no oversight for this, except for some compliance audits, and a provision that says you have to offer some sort of nationally norm-referenced test and be accredited by one of our state's private school accreditation services. But besides that, they don't have to fall under the same guidelines as our public schools by a long stretch.

Morgan: And this brings us to the equity part of this issue, the beauty and the challenge of public schools is that they're required to take students from all backgrounds, regardless of religion, the color of their skin, whether they can or can't speak English, and students whose parents can't afford to feed them breakfast or lunch. All of those students are welcomed at a public school. Dr. Burks, talk a little bit about public school versus private school when it comes to equity.

Randy: Well, if they're school age, we serve them regardless of their academic ability, disability, or socioeconomic status. In fact, we take early head start down to three-year-olds, we even have two-year-olds. We feel like we have to intervene as soon as we can, because they're going to come to our school at some point. Private schools just aren't held to that standard. They don't take all of them, and they're not required to make accommodations. They have an acceptance process –  and it is a stringent process.

And we hear stories all the time about students who maybe go to a private school, and then they get excluded or sent back to their public school because they had too many tardies, or because they didn't follow the rules. It becomes a screening process for the best and the brightest, who will leave [our public schools]. And, it will not do any favors to public education, whether it's in rural or in urban areas.

Bob, when you describe the standards that the private schools would be held to, a national norm-referenced test and some, good financial bookkeeping, it sounds like the way public schools were when I went to school, where there was a lot of local control, and school districts still provided a very good education for kiddos without all of those strings attached to the dollars.

And I also have a concern that we're still talking about a static amount of money and some window of time here. And when the dollar amount that goes to private schools, we know that over a very short period of time, the tuition at those private schools is going to increase at least to the amount of the voucher. And so I would say to you that over time, that amount is going to increase because it's still not going to cover the amount and this is just going to be the camel's nose under the tent, and it's going to continue to balloon, if you will.

Morgan: So right now we're in the crunch time of the legislative session. The Senate has passed out a voucher bill, SB 8. Meanwhile, the House has passed its budget with a provision that would prevent public money from being spent on private schools, which seemingly would mean that SB 8 or any other voucher proposal wouldn't have the votes to make it out of the House. Bob, what does that mean for vouchers this session? Is it stead?

Bob: Even after multiple bills have been heard this session, both in the Senate Education Committee and the House Public Education Committee, there continues to be more bills heard on Education Savings Accounts, specifically for special education students. And so as more bills move through the process than ever before with the six weeks left, there’s a lot of vehicles out there for Education savings accounts, for vouchers, for virtual vouchers to be heard and advanced through the legislative process. So it’s incredibly important when the House debated the Herrero Amendment during the state budget process, that says they are not willing to accept a voucher program this legislative session. With that being said, as I mentioned, there’s a lot of time left, and a lot of legislative vehicles that can move this type of legislation forward. So you have to remain vigilant. 

Morgan: Well, we're going to have to end here today. Dr. Randy Burks and Bob Popinski, thank you again for being with us. And thanks to you, our audience, for listening. 

Today’s episode was written by me, Mogan Smith. Our sound engineer is Brian Diggs. And our executive producer is Anne Lasseigne Tiedt. 

To stay informed on vouchers and other critical education issues as the session progresses, you can sign up online for Raise Your Hand Texas Across the Lawn weekly newsletter, at www.raiseyourhandtexas.org\get-involved. 

To receive text alerts that will allow you to join Raise Your Hand in taking action at key moments this legislative session, text RAISEMYHAND, all one word, to 40649. 

Thank you for standing up for our Texas public school students.

Morgan Smith: You're listening to the Raise Your Hand Texas IntersectEd podcast where the stories of public education policy and practice meet. I'm your host, Morgan Smith. And today we're talking about the amount of money Texas pays to educate a student in public schools. 

This topic is notoriously complicated and can be very dense, but I've tracked down some very knowledgeable people to help guide us through it. We have three guests with us today, Laura Yeager, a public school parent and founder of Just Fund It TX, a nonpartisan group of parents, students, and community members, Bob Popinski, Raise Your Hand’s, resident school finance and policy expert, and David Pate, the assistant superintendent of finance for Richardson Independent School District, which operates 55 campuses and serves more than 39,000 students in the suburban Dallas area.

So right now, we are in the middle of the legislative session we've been hearing since last summer about this record-breaking budget surplus, lawmakers have to work with a historic $33 billion surplus. Plus there's tens of billions more in estimated growth in revenue over the next two years. Meanwhile, depending on what measure you use, Texas ranks at least in the bottom 10 states in public school funding. So the money is there. It's clear Texas is behind where we should be. So why can't we just give the schools what they need? Well, as I said, this is complicated. Here we go.

Bob, so today we're going to be focusing on what's known as the basic allotment or the per-student sum the state uses as the foundational building block to determine how much money it will pay to educate a student. Could you start us off here by explaining how the basic allotment works in conjunction with the rest of school funding.

Bob Popinski: Yeah, absolutely. The basic allotment is actually the building block of how we fund our students and our schools, and pay for our teachers and the operations of everything that goes on within a campus and a school district.

So back in 2019, when they went through a lot of school funding changes, they set the basic allotment at $6,160. That's the basic building block per student. Now, if you have special characteristics, say you're a special education needs student or you qualify for free reduced lunch or you're in the bilingual program or you're in the gifted and talented program, you get additional dollars attached to that way. And so as you use that basic building block, you create what's known as an entitlement and that entitlement varies from school district to school district. But on average, it's about $10,000 per student. Now, it could be a couple $1,000 more in a school district or a couple $1,000 less in a school district. But on average it's $10,000. So that's kind of where we start. That $6,106 has kind of been set in stone for school districts for the last three years. 

And so there's really only a few ways to increase revenue for your students. You could either go out for a tax rate election or you could get additional revenue through enrollment increases or attendance. So we're really dependent on the state to do one thing and that's increase the basic allotment. So it flows through the rest of the formulas so that our school districts can actually give teachers pay raises and staff pay raises and operate the schools with our 5.4 million kids and over 375,000 teachers.

Morgan: So David, what does the basic allotment mean to you in practical terms as you're working on a school budget? And why don't you also give our listeners a sense for where budget matters stand in Richardson.

David Pate: On where budget matters stand for Richardson, our demographers are predicting that we're going to lose about 8000 students over the next 10 years. And we adopted a $26 million deficit for fiscal year, 22-23. And, for us, right now we're trying to figure out how we're going to provide raises to teachers, how we're going to provide for our cost increases. So the basic allotment, it is the major driver. 

When we're looking at 16% or 17% cost increases, we're having difficulty staffing. We're competing with quite a few districts here in the North Texas area for staff trying to raise our teachers starting salary.

For instance, in our case, which we are different from all the other districts on this measure here in Dallas County, about 40% of our students are not economically disadvantaged. And then we've got another 20% of our students are not only economically disadvantaged, but they're living in the highest level of poverty according to the state measures. And so trying to meet the needs of those two groups in a situation where costs are increasing in revenue is declining is very challenging.

Morgan: So you use the basic allotment, you pay for teacher salaries, you pay for support staff like classroom aides, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, I mean, the basic allotment really is the biggest part of your budget.

David: Yes, it funds the basic needs of the district.

Morgan: Laura, I want to bring you in here because you experience the hardships that districts go through when they have budget shortfalls from the parent side. Can you tell us what happened in 2018 when your child was a junior in high school in the Austin Independent School District?

Laura: Sure thing. Thank you, Morgan. Yes, my three kids went through Austin ISD and my youngest was a junior at McCallum High School here in Austin. And she came home from school and said, “Mom, kids are crying in the halls and people are up in arms. We're worried they're going to close our Fine Arts Academy,” which is this beloved institution, one of many choices within Austin ISD. And a few of us got together to try to understand what was going on and it ended up being that Austin was facing a $30 million budget deficit and looking at things to cut. And that's when several of us decided to get together and try to help parents and community members understand how school funding works because that $30 million budget deficit was something Austin was facing. But really, it was a result of how our state funds our public schools. 

And so that's when Just Fund It started. And it was interesting because parents don't always think about funding. There are things that kids and parents think about every day. But funding was really hitting us at home because it was getting to the point where it was threatening just basic programs that we all rely on and parents pay, they see these growing property tax bills and think when they are paying them to the school district that they are either going to their district or a different school district through our recapture Robin Hood, what you want to call it, what people didn't understand is we're paying billions of dollars in that are then being just not given to any school district, they're going to the bottom line or to the surplus in this case. 

And I believe, Bob may be able to tell you better, but I think it's $8.2 billion of local school property taxes that have been paid in by parents that are going to the surplus. So we thought there was some educating that had to be done to help parents understand, to learn how to advocate, and also to educate legislators on how far behind we really are and that parents and students care that their schools are funded.

Morgan: Well, so that brings us back around to the legislature. Bob, Governor Greg Abbott has been very vocal on education issues this session and one thing I've been hearing a lot from him and some other lawmakers as they talk about public schools is this idea that they have more money than they've ever had before. Is that true? And how do we square that with what we're hearing from parents and educators around the state?

Bob: I think if you look at what your own household budget has done over the last three years, you can get a good glimpse of what's happening to a school district in terms of just purchasing power being the same as it was in 2019.

Since 2019, inflation has gone up double digits, and the Comptroller has estimated inflation has gone up 12.5%. In some cases, it's even more than that. If you look at individual things that you're spending your money on. For some districts, fuel has gone up 40% if not more, insurance for their building and their buses have gone up double digits, food service, 25% in some instances. Even health insurance has gone up drastically and construction has gone up 50%. And so school districts are in a pinch just to keep up with inflation. And so if you look at what's needed to kind of keep up with that basic allotment of $6,160 for the same purchasing power they had back in 2019, it needs to be $1,000 higher.

And so that's what we're aiming for, is to make sure that the basic allotment actually keeps pace with inflation and so with that, we're recommending that they invest more into public education. And, Laura is right. It’s kind of the basics of school finance – if you don't want to kind of get into the weeds, is that as local property values increase, that means local taxpayers are paying more for the overall school entitlement and the state has to pay less. So the state, because the local value increases, saved roughly $8.2 billion last biennium for last state's budget and we want them to reinvest that back into our 5.4 million students.

Morgan: So let's talk about inflation for a second. We've mentioned the last time the state increased the basic allotment in 2019. That's four years ago now. And then depending on what measure you use, there's been between 12% to 16% inflation. David, can you give us some specific examples of how that's affected your budgeting process in Richardson?

David: Yes, our utility costs have been increasing substantially and Bob mentioned property insurance. That's one of the things that for us that we just recently did property insurance and it increased $900,000. So that increase of $900,000 is about 13 teachers for us.

Morgan: Wow. So Bob, if I'm understanding correctly, there's not a mechanism that adjusts state funding for schools based on inflation. School districts have to come back every so often and ask for more money. And it kind of sounds like you're just asking to be funded at the same levels as you were in 2019, accounting for inflation.

Bob: At a minimum, absolutely.

Morgan: Yeah, at a minimum.

Bob: I think because we're $1,000 below where we needed to be from 2019 because of inflation, that doesn't even consider that Texas is in the bottom 10. We're $4,000 behind the national average. And so what we're recommending is not only to catch up for where we need to be, but actually create an inflation adjustment so that school district don't have to come back every other year during a legislative session and say, “Hey, look, we, we need more funding just to keep pace with what's going on out in the world so that we can cover all of our expenses, so that we can give teachers a pay raise.”

If you look at the Charles Butt Foundation poll from earlier in the year, 77% of our teachers are considering leaving the profession, and pay is a big important factor in that. We're $7,500 below the national average and inflation is catching up with our teachers' pockets books as well. Living expenses, being able to afford a home in some of these cities across the state. It's very difficult to keep teachers in the profession and school districts need to be able to compete.

Morgan: Laura, I want to come back to you because through your work with Just Fund It and other grassroots education efforts, you have so much experience helping parents and community members develop political literacy around these issues. 

Can you tell us a little bit about what is at stake here if the legislature doesn't provide an increase to the basic allotment this session?

Laura: I mean, it's hard to overstate it. There's just so much at stake. I mean the ability of our public schools to educate 5.4 million kids. We need more funding to keep up with kids around the country. We did increase funding in 2019, but everyone else did too and the national averages moved up and we are really no better than we were then and worse off because of the inflation situation that you just heard about. I mean, our schools need funds to address student needs so they can thrive.

And as we mentioned before, funding is a little tricky because it's not felt directly, people feel it and then they blame the district and, there may be issues within a district but really it's so confusing. Administrators work so hard to shield students and teachers as much as possible and do whatever they can with the limited resources they have. And we are ranked better than we are funded in terms of actual output, but it just shows that we have been really squeezing our educators to do what they can with so little resources and it's unsustainable.

It's being felt more and more by teachers and students and families from teacher burnout to overcrowded classrooms. We need counselors and mental health resources and more. And so all of this really comes back to increasing the basic allotment to make sure every single kid in the state of Texas has what they need to thrive.

I'll mention that well-regarded economist, Dr. Ray Perryman, updated a study on the return on investment of every single dollar in public ed. And it's, it's almost unbelievable.

It's the single best investment the state could make. And what they found was every dollar the state invests in Public Ed yields a lifetime economic benefit of almost $57. which includes benefits to the private sector, personal income. I mean, it's literally the highest return on investment of any public or private sector investment. And then just lastly I'll say, when we started Just Fund It we made a very clear point of doing something different.

That we were not going to let the legislature do what they're so good at doing, which is dividing to conquer, dividing rich against poor, large, against small urban, against rural.

And that we fight for every single kid in the state of Texas to be better than bottom-of-the-barrel funding. The way you do that is by increasing the basic allotment. 

Morgan: Please, David, why don't you give us a sense for what's at stake in Richardson?

David: Well, so as we've been going through our budget meetings with the board, really since January, we've been presenting options for the opportunities we have to increase revenue here in the district. And there's really three options for us. We're one of three districts in Dallas County that still offers a local optional homestead exemption. That is an option our board could exercise and eliminate that. That would give us one-time funding of about $7.8 million.

We can open our enrollment to students that are not residents of the district and that's going to generate somewhere between about $7,000 to $10,000 per student depending on the specific educational attributes of those students, whether they're, in generating bilingual funding or CTE funding, etc. And, that really just depends on how many students want to choose to come here who don't live here. We could have called a V A T R E. Our voters approved a tax ratification election back in November of 2018, which was then compressed.

So we've got about a little over three cents. We could go back to the voters, which would generate about $3 million net to recapture. And then it's really a matter of, what can we do to reduce expenditures? When we start backing out the things that we have to do. So, I've got to pay the utility bill and I've gotta have property insurance. I've got to pay the Dallas Central Appraisal District. When you start backing out those kinds of activities, you're left really with people. And so, we had a staffing study performed and we're presenting that information to the board and it will be tough making any of these decisions.

Everybody is attached to their individual campus and the staff in those campuses, those are their friends and neighbors. And so any time you start talking about making cuts in the school district, it's difficult.

Morgan: Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you're doing what good school administrators do and is trying to kind of consider all options before you start kind of hitting things that are really going to affect the people in your district community. So we set up top that there's plenty of money to go around this session. What Bob is the challenge to getting this accomplished? 

Bob: Texas has a pretty substantial two-year budget. A lot of moving pieces. There's other programs other than public education, but public education is one of the largest expenses our state has. It's a $70 billion per year system when you take into account state and local revenue. Right now we have a house budget that's moving through the process. They're going to hear that pretty soon. We have a Senate budget that's moving through the process and they both have $5 billion in there for public education.

Now, you remember what I said, we need at least $1,000 increase in the basic allotment just to keep pace with inflation. The price tag on $1,000 basic allotment increase is about $14 billion for the state budget and both sides right now are putting in $5 billion and it's not just for the basic allotment. There's a lot of other programs that they're funding on top of that. So what actually flows to school districts and to our students is going to be a lot less than that for operating expenses. And so we need to make sure that our members know as they continue these budget discussions that we're woefully short of where we need to be. And, so as they start moving through the process with less than 60 days left here, I think the more school districts and teachers and the general public and community leaders speak up that schools actually need more funding just to keep pace with inflation, is very important. We've got a long way to go in the session. And so I think it's time that our members hear from our communities.

Morgan: Well, thank you. We're going to have to end here today.

Thanks to Laura Yeager, Bob Popinski, and David Pate for being here and to you our audience for listening. And I also want to let you know that to stay informed on school finance and other critical education issues

Today’s episode was written and narrated by me, Morgan Smith. Our Sound Engineer is Brian Diggs and Executive Producer is Anne Lasseigne Tiedt.

As the 88th Session progresses, you can sign up online for Raise Your Hand Texas' Across the Lawn weekly newsletter and you can find that at www.raiseyourhandtexas.org/get-involved. 

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