Texas school districts head back to court this week, challenging the state legislature’s $5.4 billion in education budgetary cuts. The districts will argue before Texas District Judge John Dietz that the remaining system is too inefficient to properly educate students and, in fact, violates the Texas Constitution.
In a trial which starts tomorrow and is expected to last through January, lawyers for the plaintiffs—600 of the state’s school districts—will cite lack of resources to meet the state’s ever-increasing academic standards—including standardized tests that are more difficult for students with each passing year. In 2011, the state legislature’s cuts caused funding to drop by more than $500 per student, even as enrollment increased by 80,000 pupils. The cuts brought with them eliminated teacher positions, and the higher enrollment saw classroom sizes surge.
“That equation doesn’t work,” Brian Woods, superintendent of San Antonio’s largest school district, Northside ISD, which lost $61 million to legislative budget cuts last year, told the San Antronio Express-News. “You have to fund the system commensurate with the standards that you set.”
The trial will be the sixth such legal battle Texas districts have fought against the state since 1984. Still, some lawyers for the plaintiffs say merely restoring funding to pre-2011 levels will not correct the flawed Texas system.
“That’s not all it’s about, but that would be a start,” John Turner, an attorney representing about 60 of the school districts, told ABC.
Turner states that the statewide increase in low-income students—who cost more to educate—calls for increased financing. However it’s not just poorer districts suing the legislators. Because the Texas education funding system is geared toward a “Robin Hood” scheme where wealthy school districts that derive funding from higher tax revenue from, for example, oil resources, must allocate portions of said funding to poorer districts, the system still leaves those districts short on necessary funds. Many of such “property wealthy” districts hesitate to push for voter-levied property tax increases, because most of the taxes would be sent to poorer districts.
“The result has been that children in districts all across the state are kept at an educational and financial disadvantage, even as the taxpayers in those districts are forced to pay higher property taxes,” Wayne Pierce, executive director of the Texas Equity Center—which filed the case’s first suit—told the Express-News.
Still, many districts argue inequality between districts is abundant. For example, according to the Texas Education Agency, the Alamo Heights ISD district receives $6,666 per student while the South San ISD district receives is funded just $5,369 per student. The disparity can equal more than $30,000 each year per classroom.
“The inequities created by the state are deliberate, intentional, unjust and unconstitutional,” school finance lawyer for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund David Hinojosa told the Express-News. “In this day and age of more rigorous standards, it is of utmost importance that Texas provides all children the opportunities they need to succeed.”