The contradiction strikes you as soon as you enter a Somerset ISD classroom on a Tuesday afternoon, even before anyone speaks. The lights are humming. The air conditioner is sputtering. The campus ran out of pencils two weeks ago, so a teacher in her mid-forties gives one to a child from a personal stash stored in a desk drawer. A district is starting construction on a $70 million stadium if you drive ninety minutes north. same state. the same year. The funding formula is supposedly the same.
From the outside, it’s difficult to ignore how odd this appears. Comptroller Glenn Hegar once calculated that Texas has an additional $27 billion in state funds. In theory, there is a surplus in the Foundation School Program, which is the primary source of state funding for public education. Nevertheless, districts in Texas are quietly requesting printer paper from parents, passing deficit budgets, and firing employees. There’s a problem with the plumbing.
A single number that hasn’t changed since 2019 contains part of the solution. The per-student funding that each district receives, known as the basic allotment, has remained unchanged despite inflation driving up the cost of almost everything by nearly 19%. Cafeteria food, utilities, transportation, and the cleaning supplies a janitor needs at three in the morning are all more expensive. The state’s check doesn’t. The pencils vanish in that gap, which gets bigger every year.
Enrollment comes next. Many districts saw a decline in attendance following the pandemic, which never fully recovered. Texas finances schools according to average daily attendance, a system that penalizes districts for losing pupils despite the fact that operating costs are not commensurate. The cost of a class of twenty-one students is nearly identical to that of a class of twenty-two. Power is still required for the lights. The route is still driven by the bus. However, the math eats away at everything else, and the funding continues to decline.
The political debate surrounding this has intensified, but it hasn’t become any clearer. Only about 40% of the $93 billion the state spends annually on public education, according to organizations like the Texas Public Policy Foundation. They cite stadium debt, consultant contracts, and administrative overhead. In response, the Texas Association of School Boards points out that up to 85% of district budgets go toward paying salaries, administrators make up only 4% on average, and 99% of districts pass the state’s own financial accountability rating. Numbers are cited by both sides. Everybody has a point. You can tell that neither side is telling the whole truth.
Additionally, the Legislature neglected to address the $2.3 billion shortfall in special education during its most recent session. Additionally, the one-time lifeline of federal ESSER pandemic funds is no longer available. Districts that used the funds to create tutoring programs and employ counselors are currently facing the bill.
When you consider all of this, you begin to realize that “Texas schools” are more than one thing. A rural district losing families to larger towns operates in a different economic universe than a district sitting on valuable property tax rolls in a developing suburb. The state’s funding formula was intended to balance this out, but equalization hasn’t kept up, and the disparities continue to grow in ways that the headline figures don’t show.
It’s still unclear if any of this will change in the upcoming legislative session. Speaking with people in the education community gives me the impression that something needs to change, but no one seems to know what. Teachers continue to purchase pencils in the interim. Districts continue to reduce their workforce. And the excess continues to sit somewhere in Austin.
