The Basics of Texas Public School Finance
Raise Your Hand Texas’ premiered a new video that shows how we fund Texas schools and how the current system is not serving students or taxpayers. Understanding how public schools are funded is the first step to strengthening our investment in Texas students.
There’s been a lot of talk about how the Texas public school finance system needs to be fixed. But what’s wrong the current system?
The school finance system uses a mixture of local and state sources to fund public schools. Local funds come primarily from one source—school district property taxes. State funds include a complex combination of sources including general revenue, recapture or “Robin Hood” payments, and lottery proceeds.
In our school funding system, just because local property values increase does not mean overall school funding increases. In fact, as local property values increase, the state share of funding declines, saving the state billions of dollars over time. There is no mechanism to automatically reinvest these savings back into our public schools.
The bottom line is this: Money intended for schools should stay in our schools. And now is the time for the state to invest more in our programs, teachers, and students.
This story was originally published by Raise Your Hand Texas, read more here.
