Lest I Forget: We're Under Special Session Alert

Yeah, I haven't made much mention of the current special session that has the Texas Lege under high alert. Perhaps that's due to the lack of a snazzy name for the session, such as the "Pay no attention to the maniac grandma, look at me over here" Special Session ... or the "Let's Put a Gun to the Heads of Schoolkids and use them as political pawns" Special Session. Considering that school opening for the fall is now a question with no immediate answer and that the bulk of Perry's actions were clearly timed to distract from what little political heat Texas' second favorite grandma could offer up ... I'm not entirely optimistic that much good will come of this excercise. Maybe I'm just a cynic. Dunno ... don't care. Oh well.

But be that as it may, there's a rather serious topic under discussion in Austin - school funding. Nevermind that it's an issue that Rick Perry, Tom Craddick, and David Dewhurst have failed to deliever on in the past three tries (they lock up criminals with that kind of record, don't they?).

Still ... there's three worthwhile takes on the matter in the Dallas Morning News Op-Ed pages. Since one of em is my State Rep and one of Texas' better minds on education policy, I'd be remiss to skip the subject out of hand.

State Rep. Kent Grusendorf (R-Arlington) will, no doubt, have his fingerprints all over whatever solution comes out of this mess. Unfortunately, his pronouncements don't really deliver any hope that the central sticking point will be resolved - that being that the House yearns to tax Texans at the highest sales tax rate in the nation while the Senate strives to close the business tax loopholes that even George W. Bush found ridiculous while Governor.

Craig Tounget, Exec. Dir. of the Texas PTA, also offers up some ideas. The first one, I tend to think ought to be a major point for all concerned:

Shift the debate from property taxes to school finance. State District Judge John Dietz ruled that the Texas school finance system is underfunded and unconstitutional; he did not rule that property taxes are too high. When taxpayers invest in children's minds, they also invest in the state's future prosperity. Tax reduction is a worthwhile, but secondary, goal.

I couldn't agree more. But still, there's still a nod towards simplicity here. School funding is, after all, derived from tax revenue. Well, that gets us to the second point, which I think is a strong undercurrent of this problem ...

Admit that school finance and tax proposals cannot be "revenue neutral." In January 2005, the Legislature kicked off the school finance discussion on the wrong foot with a gubernatorial directive that proposed that tax increases must be counterbalanced by tax cuts. That meant there would be no new state dollars for mundane school costs like rising electric bills and gasoline prices. Plus, there would be no new money for huge challenges like helping 600,000 English-language learners to complete a college preparatory curriculum and graduate from high school.

Herein lies the rub ... Texas is a low tax, low service state. In the past, we've proven mostly capable of expanding education because we were riding the oil gravytrain that funded public education. Well, those days have long been over. The previous solution (Robin Hood) merely held us off to this day of reckoning, whereby we must decide if this great state of ours is to be ranked up there with the big states who do a better job of paying for schools and delivering quality ... or are we just going to sit back and let this state become a more gargantuan version of Mississippi in terms of public education. Considering the Governor's desire to remake Texas in the image of Mississippi in terms of public health care, one really mustn't wonder long about the odds on this outcome.

That gets us to Scott's take, nested safely somewhere between the heady idealism of the Texas PTA and the craven sellout of the other side:

Scott Hochberg: Make sure the fix isn't worse than the problem 12:03 AM CDT on Wednesday, June 22, 2005

After not finding agreement on school finance reform during the last two regular sessions, the state's leadership is now trying to rush toward a solution. But before we simply embrace any solution for the sake of politics, let's make sure it will solve the problem and not make things worse.

Here's what a school finance plan should include to really move us forward:

Tax relief should be real for Texas homeowners. The House plan gives only the richest Texans a tax cut while increasing taxes for the rest of us. Democrats offered an alternative that would triple the property tax exemption for homeowners, bringing real relief to working families, but the leadership never considered it in subsequent negotiations.

Get real about teacher salaries. The House plan "mandated" a teacher pay raise but then told districts to pay for it using the same money already earmarked for other purposes. We can mandate all we want, but school districts can't spend the same dollar twice.

Funding should be dependable and should grow to cover enrollment growth, inflation and more rigorous learning standards. Otherwise, cost increases will again be passed along to local property tax payers, and we'll quickly be right back where we started. Any plan that relies on increasing the sales tax rate while leaving dozens of loopholes in place will provide a one-time increase but won't keep up in the long run.

We have to admit that some children start farther behind than others. It takes teachers extra time, skills and resources to bring these kids up to satisfactory levels. Funding formulas should take students with special needs into account, or our schools will fail them.

The districts with the highest property taxes also must build new schools to keep up with growth. The new state budget has only $25 million in aid for new school construction over the next two years. That's nowhere close in a state that grows by more than 80,000 students each year.

No school board should receive a windfall simply because of where the district's lines are drawn. The House plan would have given a small number of school boards millions of additional dollars to spend for no reason other than because a lot of wealthy people lived there or because that district happens to sit atop an oil field.

And we must demand complete openness and financial accountability, free from conflicts of interest. The House and Senate passed such legislation, but the leadership insisted that it not pass apart from the school finance bill. Why should taxpayers have to wait for these important protections?

All Texans, without regard to party, want our school tax dollars spent in the best way possible to make that future productive and prosperous.

The Legislature must meet that challenge.

This really ought to strike any reader as a just a boatload of common sense. Scott's been among those Dems who has worked actively for property tax restraints (including the most recent limit of 5% increases). But he doesn't confuse that with an education funding plan, which seems to be where the other side gets derailed on this issue. The last time the House tried to craft a plan on school financing, it left Scott off the committe doing the work. Simple reason for that, really ... they thought they could beat him at the ballot box if they ignored him. Funny thing, though ... he won re-election in a district that the GOP drew for one of their own. Now might be a decent time for them to stop playing political games and putting the best minds on the subject to work. If they want to avoid going 0-for-4 on this issue, there aren't many better options.