Houston Democrats

From the Austin-American Statesman:

The failure to reach a consensus on school finance will cost schools about $3 billion over two years and left lawmakers without a solution to a problem that affects voters' tax bills and children's education.

Senate and House negotiators strongly disagreed about new taxes to replace billions of dollars in reduced property taxes. Discussions over the past two weeks yielded little movement by House members, who wanted to raise more with consumer taxes, or by senators, who wanted a broader business tax.

Gov. Rick Perry and legislative negotiators tried late Saturday to salvage the other piece of school finance legislation, House Bill 2, a $3 billion proposal that would have raised teacher salaries and reworked the formulas that determine a school's state funding. Lawmakers struggled to forge an agreement on that measure during the last week as well but always talked optimistically about reaching a deal.

Read the complete article, "School finance plans rest in pieces," in the Austin-American Statesman.

The issue of school finance appears headed for the Texas Supreme Court unless Governor Perry calls a special session. The Court is schedule to hear an appeal of a 2004 ruling that the current finance system in unconstitutional, largely because of underfunding. Robert Black, Perry's spokesman, said that he believes lawmakers are close to an agreement on the education proposal and that they will be able to overcome their differences on taxes. He added that once the lawmakers reach an agreement, Perry will call them into special session.

The following is a press release from the Texas Federation of Teachers:

TFT LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE (800-764-1177)--MONDAY, MAY 30, 2005 (copyright 2005 Texas Federation of Teachers)

Letting Down the Schoolchildren and Teachers of Texas

Texas Federation of Teachers President John Cole issued the following statement as the 79th regular session of the Texas legislature neared final adjournment today:

The governor and legislature have let down the schoolchildren and teachers of Texas. We urgently need a renewed state commitment to bolster high standards of achievement with sufficient resources to help our students succeed. Instead the governor and legislature this session gave top priority to a tax shuffle that would have raised taxes on the vast majority of Texans while leaving our schools badly underfunded. The real problem began on day one of the session, when it became apparent that the tax shuffle was the main focus, with education as an afterthought.

Teachers are not naive, but they do take promises seriously--both when they are made and when they are broken. They want to believe the best about top state leaders and lawmakers. But this session's broken promises and new benefit cuts have severely eroded the credibility of any claims by the governor and legislature to be looking out for the best interests of Texas schoolchildren and teachers.

The Senate passed a plan that at least would have done more than the House version to assure funding equity, raise teacher pay, and restore benefits and programs cut in 2003. But both the House and Senate held fast to a predetermined ceiling on new educational spending, an artificially low ceiling that guaranteed school funding would remain inadequate. A state district court said last fall that meeting the standard of mere adequacy under the state constitution would require an infusion of $4 billion a year in new funding for our schools, yet the legislature never considered providing more than a third of that amount.

Both chambers wasted months conjuring up ill-judged schemes to privatize the operation of public schools, carve out exceptions to state quality standards, and tinker with merit-pay schemes, which are at best beside the point until teachers receive base pay and benefits that will help recruit them and keep them in our classrooms.

Rather than improve teachers' lot, lawmakers this session broke their promise to restore health-care dollars taken away from every public-school educator in the state in 2003. Lawmakers also failed to live up to the promise of raising teacher pay to the national average. In fact, the legislature this session managed to make matters worse for teachers, cutting more than a billion dollars out of future pension benefits for nearly 500,000 current education employees. The legislature also at the last minute reneged on a promise made earlier this session to start restoring the state's contributions to the teacher pension fund. Because the legislature has shortchanged the pension fund for more than ten years and will continue to do so, retired teachers have no hope of an overdue cost-of-living increase--even as the legislature hikes their premiums again for health-care coverage.

Before Texas teachers will believe any future promises emanating from the capitol, they first want to see state leaders keep some of the old ones for a change.

It sure is reassuring to know that we will have 66 new "Welcome signs" announcing how "proud" we are to be the home state of George W. Bush, but cannot come up with a solution to the underfunding of public education in Texas.

So, Kay Bailey Hutchison, will you officially be announcing your candidacy for Governor of Texas? I believe you were waiting to see the outcome of the education bill. Now you have it and it's "failed big time."