Texas schools are wrapping up their budgets. No one knows how much they have to spend

At the beginning of the year, school leaders across Texas sounded optimistic that lawmakers would dip into the state’s $32.7 billion budget surplus to raise teacher pay and boost funding to help districts keep up with inflation.

At the end of the 2023 Texas legislative session, neither of those things happened. A bill that would have sent billions to districts across the state for teacher pay raises and other priorities died when Republicans in the House and Senate couldn’t reach a compromise before the regular session ended on May 29.

Lawmakers could still pass legislation to raise school funding in a special session. But in the meantime, school districts across the state are struggling to plan their budgets without a clear picture of how much money they’ll have to work with. With deadlines approaching for having their budgets approved, some Tarrant County school district leaders say they don’t have time to wait for lawmakers to act.

“We’re in the two-minute warning section of the fourth quarter,” said Michael McFarland, superintendent of the Crowley Independent School District.

School funding bill dies in Texas Legislature

During the regular session lawmakers considered House Bill 100, a $4.5 billion proposal that would have raised the minimum per-student allotment districts get from the state and provided funding for teacher pay raises. It also would have changed the way state allocations to districts are calculated, moving from a formula based on average daily attendance to one based on enrollment. As districts across the country have struggled with chronic absenteeism since the beginning of the pandemic, school officials in Texas have said calculating allotments based on attendance makes it more difficult to plan their budgets.

But the proposed legislation never made it to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk. With just days left in the legislative session, senators added an amendment creating a school voucher-like program, which the House had already rejected.

Abbott has said he plans to call lawmakers into special session to deal with the voucher proposal, which he identified as a priority before the regular session began. In a news conference Monday, Abbott said the call would look much like the Senate version of HB 100, meaning lawmakers would consider school funding alongside vouchers and other education-related proposals.

“All together, I will have authorized more funding for public education than any governor in the history of the state, more money for teacher pay raises than any governor in the history of the state, and per-student funding will be at an all time high,” he said.

Fort Worth schools face looming deadline to approve budgets

McFarland said he’s hopeful that lawmakers will eventually approve more funding for schools. But school districts whose fiscal years begin on July 1 must have their budgets approved by their school boards by the end of June. That means districts have to plan as though lawmakers won’t come to an agreement onschool funding, he said.

The last time Texas lawmakers took up major changes to the state’s school finance system was in 2019, with the passage of House Bill 3. But the pandemic and heightened campus safety concerns following the Uvalde school shooting have created demands on the budget that didn’t exist before, he said, so a budget that worked in 2019 won’t work today.

During a Fort Worth Independent School District board meeting Tuesday evening, Carmen Arrieta-Candelaria, the district’s chief financial officer, presented a budget proposal that called for the district to dip into reserve funds to cover expenses for the year. The proposal also included a 3% raise for teachers and other district employees, with an alternate plan that would give 2% raises to top-level administrators and 3% raises to all other employees. Arrieta-Candelaria pointed out that lawmakers haven’t appropriated money for teacher pay raises, but may still do so in a special session.

Raúl Peña, Fort Worth ISD’s chief talent officer, told the board the district needs to raise salaries for teachers in order to stay competitive with other districts in the area. Like many school districts nationwide, Fort Worth ISD has struggled to recruit enough teachers to staff its classrooms, even as enrollment declines. In proposing raises, the district is operating under the expectation that lawmakers will provide funding to cover them, Peña said. The board is expected to vote on a final budget proposal at a June 27 meeting.

Lawmakers leaving schools ‘high and dry,’ HEB trustee says

During a budget presentation Monday in a Hurst-Euless-Bedford school board meeting, board member Julie Cole praised district leaders for being good stewards of public money, but said inaction in the legislature is creating problems for local school districts. She called on community members to talk to state lawmakers “and tell them that they cannot do this to our children.”

“I cannot let it go without saying that the legislature is leaving public schools high and dry and putting us in very difficult situations in the years to come,” Cole said.

Dobie Williams, the district’s deputy superintendent of business operations, told the board there’s still hope that lawmakers could deal with the school funding issue during a special session. But he also acknowledged that there are no guarantees they will do so.

Williams said the HEB district is better equipped than some districts to deal with the consequences of legislative inaction. For years, the district has had a plan in place to weather financial storms, he said. That doesn’t necessarily mean the district wouldn’t be forced to make difficult financial decisions, he said, just that HEB administrators could hold off for longer before making them if lawmakers don’t act.

“We will be the last man standing, when it comes down to it,” he said.

School leaders must budget based on uncertain numbers

McFarland, the Crowley superintendent, said the district has a few options for bridging the funding gap. It can dip into emergency reserve funds to cover expenses like pay raises for teachers. Or district leaders can tell teachers and other employees that it won’t be able to give them pay raises this year — an option he called unacceptable because of how hard teachers have worked to help get students back on track after pandemic-related shutdowns.

The uncertainty around school funding leaves districts in a precarious situation, McFarland said, because they’re trying to finalize budgets to pay for teachers, paraprofessionals, school staff and administrators based on what they think state lawmakers might do, not what school leaders know for certain they’ll get.

The only thing that’s certain, he said, is that, no matter what state lawmakers do between now and then, the new school year begins in August.

Staff writer Eleanor Dearman contributed to this report.