Texas School Finance System Is Legal, Supreme Court Rules

[Purveyor]

Source: Austin American-Statesman

12:13 p.m. Friday, May 13, 2016 | Filed in: News

The way Texas funds its public schools is far from perfect, but it’s good enough, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday, dealing an abrupt end to a years-long legal fight to increase state funding for public education.

The unanimous decision was an emphatic victory for state officials and Republican leaders who argued that education problems could not be fixed simply by directing more money to schools.

The long-awaited ruling — the court’s seventh decision on school finance lawsuits since the late 1980s — also will likely limit future legal challenges by emphasizing that school-finance decisions belong to the Legislature, not the courts.

“Our judicial responsibility is not to second-guess or micromanage Texas education policy,” Justice Don Willett wrote for the court. “Our role is much more limited, as is our holding: Despite the imperfections of the current school funding regime, it meets minimum constitutional requirements.”

Read more: http://www.statesman.com/news/news/texas-school-finance-system-is-legal-supreme-court/nrMSz/

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Texas AG Sees End To 'parade' Of School Lawsuits

12:20 p.m.

Texas' attorney general is celebrating the state's surprise win in the school finance trial.

Attorney General Ken Paxton said Friday that the Texas Supreme Court's 9-0 ruling that declared the way Texas pays for its public schools flawed but constitutional a win "for the people of Texas."

He said state residents had "faced an endless parade of lawsuits following any attempt to finance schools."

Paxton did not personally argue the case that began in 2011 when the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature cut $5.4 billion from classrooms. More than 600 school districts statewide sued, saying they no longer had adequate funding to function.

A lower court twice ruled against Texas, but the state Supreme Court decision brings the largest school finance case in state history to a close.

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11:55 a.m.

Lawyers representing 88 of the 600-plus Texas school districts that sued over the state's school finance system are calling the state Supreme Court ruling against them "a dark day" for school children.

Mark Trachtenberg is an attorney for school districts known collectively as the Calhoun County plaintiffs. He said Friday that Texas "simply cannot afford to be bringing up the rear" nationally in public education funding.

more...

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCHOOL_FINANCE_TRIAL_TEXAS_THE_LATEST?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-05-13-13-21-27

[Lithos]

1. Surprise, Surprise, Surprise

A GOP bought and dominated branch of government supports the stupid workings of another GOP branch of government in their drive to undermine Texas Education...

[Dustlawyer]

5. Our all Republican Supreme Court is a joke!

Whatever the Plutocrats want is what they get.

[Purveyor]

7. We have the exact same problem here in Michigan... eom

[kentauros]

13. When I first opened this thread, I thought "US Supreme Court"

and wondered how the vote went.

But, the moment I saw it was from the Texas Supreme Court, I stopped reading. It's quite rare that they ever make a decision that is surprising.

[JCMach1]

2. Been following this since Ross Perot stepped into the political morass of school funding in the 80's

Shocking no, in the commission he chaired he proposed a massive overhaul of the school funding system in Texas (a small part of which was implemented). Imagine, the inequality used to be much, much worse.

Now the inequality is JUST BAD! Win, hell no.

Poor districts suffer to keep schools up. Meanwhile, other systems build marquee stadiums (63M) and think nothing of it. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/10/texas-high-school-to-build-628-million-football-stadium.html .

[scscholar]

4. Wait, you're praising Perot?

WTF

[JCMach1]

6. Probably the only time, but here is a synopsis of what his commission did...

Three decades after it became law, the landmark schools package passed by the Legislature in the summer of 1984 still affects Texas children and teachers every day — and fuels ongoing debates about education in the state.

The no-pass, no-play rule, the 22-pupil limit in elementary schools, prekindergarten classes for disadvantaged children and high school graduation tests were all provisions of the law, pushed by Dallas billionaire Ross Perot... http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20140706-school-reform-law-of-1984-still-touches-millions-of-texas-students.ece

Note, it was also backed by the Democratic Gov. at the time.

But seriously, the things it calls for are the things most progressives are still pushing for in education: smaller classes, equal funding, Universal Pre-K., etc.

[Lithos]

11. It's still horrible

It's still a sucking chest wound... Yes, it could be worse in that you could be bleeding out of an artery somewhere else, but it's still a fatal blow.

There are so many things wrong with the current system in terms of "fairness":

- Cost of living differences. This tends to skew things towards Suburban and rural areas. Urban areas suffer.
- Offloading of traditional expenses to other tax entities (Cities, PTA's, etc.) (i.e., where the City picks up social and administrative costs; anything directly non-educational, allowing the School District to put all of their limited funds towards education. Some PTAs directly fund teacher salaries (Our own elementary school PTA funds 1 1/2 FTEs plus pays for many cap-ex supplies/improvements, continuing education for teachers and after school programs). This tends to also benefit rich Suburban and rich cities (Midland, not Odessa) more.
- Urban areas also seem to suffer from dilution of monies by numerous non-traditional schools (Voucher programs) which also dilute the money available.
- And more important - the Texas Lege has had a history of leaving millions of dollars of Federal funding out of the system.



L-

[JCMach1]

12. I actually read the Perot plan as part of a graduate research project... what happened in reality

was far, far less ambitious than Perot's plan.

And yes, it sucks.

[Javaman]

3. if texas were it's own nation...

it would be a banana republic.

[Igel]

8. My district was hoping for the money.

Not sure what we'd have done with it.

Increase teacher salaries? Would that really increase the quality of education. (Gee, I guess at $50k/year you're not teaching as well as you could. You'd teach better making $70k/year.)

It wouldn't provide new buildings. Most of the "new building" talk is playing CYA. Too many new schools have been built for decrepit student bodies and result in schools that continue to fail. There are exceptions, but we hear about a few horrible buildings for failing schools and assume that this is the cause. It's not. In the district I live in, the worst high school was failing the year it opened with new, state of the art everything; the best school was partly remodelled 15 years ago but is the oldest high school building.

Class size could be reduced, but it averages at the high-school level at around 25 or 26. It's overcrowded, a new high school will come online in a couple of years.

We have little money for lab supplies. But that's mostly an excuse. Give us $20k for lab equipment and supplies and we wouldn't change much because we don't have time. Or we'd drop out 30% of the curriculum to make time.

I know. Yet another training center. Higher administrative salaries. A few more principals per school wouldn't be amiss. And the lovely game consoles student computers would be refreshed more frequently.

The only thing I could think of would be textbooks. But there's an ideological push against on-dead-tree textbooks.

[Yupster]

10. How's your football team?

Is that getting cut?

[noneof_theabove]

9. You can not control....

a population that is

well educated
well fed
well funded
healthy

#1 - educated people will call you bluff

#2 - Food processed to be nothing more than simple starches with two dozen flavorings,
stabilizers, sugars, artificial ingredients, antibiotics and pesticides added to make it appear
to be food -- is not "food".
It is "feed" -- what you give to livestock to fatten them up for slaughter.

#3 - #1,#2 and #4 are not Open Source <FREE as in beer>

#4 - Ask Napoleon how that middle of the winter attack on Russia worked out.

Remove any one of the four and you control that population.

<sarcasm>
And once again Texas has reached a 100% status. Remember a few years how hard
Governor Good Hair Rick Perry worked to get Texas all the way up to #49 on the Education Rating.
</sarcasm>