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Texas House, Senate struggle to find agreement on funding of schools – Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN — With less than a week to go, the always-volatile issue of school funding could make for a rough conclusion to the 2011 legislative session.

After House efforts to pass a school finance plan were short-circuited Monday night, House and Senate leaders began searching Tuesday for common ground on how to distribute $ 2 billion a year in funding cuts — $ 4 billion over the next two years — among the state’s 1,030 school districts.

The House was pushing a temporary plan of across-the-board cuts — with slightly larger reductions for higher-spending, higher-wealth districts — while Senate leaders touted their plan to narrow the funding differences among districts by taking more from the bigger spenders.

Dallas schools, for example, would see their funds cut 3.5 percent next year under the leading House proposal, while the Senate plan would trim 6.3 percent. The following year, the reductions would be 5.7 percent under the House version and 8.6 percent under the Senate plan.

Whatever the outcome of the negotiations between the two chambers, there is general agreement that without a school finance plan by the end of the session Monday, lawmakers will be forced to come back in special session this summer.

“If a school finance plan is not passed, we will be in special session this summer,” said Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano.

Although the Senate school funding plan and the leading House proposal — sponsored by Public Education Committee Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands — would both cut $ 4 billion from current law over the coming biennium, each gets to the bottom line differently.

Shapiro and leading senators are pushing for significant changes in the funding system to correct the wide funding disparities that now exist — amounting to a difference between districts of hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars per student annually.

The disparities were largely caused by the 2006 school finance overhaul, which protected higher-spending and higher-wealth districts like Dallas from revenue losses that otherwise would have resulted from the new finance law. Generally urban and suburban districts benefited most from the “target revenue” adjustments, while rural and medium-size districts like Lubbock fell behind on funding.

“This is a good opportunity to make the system more equitable,” said Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville. “We’ve got to rework the funding formula.”

Deuell, who will serve on the 10-member House-Senate committee that will hash out differences on school finance, said he cannot accept the House plan to spread the funding cuts more evenly among districts.

“I have a real problem with cutting those districts that have already been getting a lot less money than other districts,” he said. “And whatever problems we have now will be worse in two years.”

In the House, several members believe a temporary funding plan spreading the cuts to all districts is preferable, letting the Legislature come back and revamp the system in two years after careful review.

“Given the short amount of time left in the session, it is important to get a plan that is fair and easily explained to a large body,” said Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas, who was involved in school finance talks Tuesday. “This year was not seen as a school finance session — it was seen as a tough, tough budget session.

“It is hard to do both at the same time. This session was about getting through the greatest recession in decades. We know we have more work to do on school finance in the interim.”

Eissler said his proposal makes more uniform cuts than the Senate plan, which has not been enthusiastically received in the House.

“Many House members like the more modest cuts in our plan as opposed to the Senate plan, which has sizable reductions of as much as 8.9 percent for some districts in the second year of the biennium,” he said. “In some cases, the cuts are 50 percent greater under the Senate proposal.”

Eissler said the history of school finance in Texas has taken many twists and turns that resulted in a complicated funding system. “We need to take the time to fix it permanently and fix it cleanly without rushing through a solution,” he added.

Shapiro, who agreed with Eissler that an agreement has to be reached by Thursday or Friday, said she cannot support the House approach as now written.

“With the House plan, you are pretty much giving up and throwing your hands up, and saying we don’t want to make the hard decisions. That has never been the position of the Senate,” she said.

And Senate Finance Committee Chairman Steven Ogden, R-Bryan, said the House plan only compounds the problems in school finance by putting them off.

“I am not leaving this place in worse shape that I found it,” he said. “I am not for kicking the can down the road on school finance.”

Even if lawmakers can agree on a plan, the specter of a new school finance lawsuit hangs over the Legislature as school districts are forced to continue meeting an array of state requirements while having less money to comply with those standards. In the last lawsuit, which resulted in the 2006 funding law, hundreds of districts — including Dallas — sued the state over inadequate funding.

Texas House, Senate struggle to find agreement on funding of schools – Dallas Morning News