House Democrats: Texas should tap surplus for public schools, teacher pay raises, retirees

AUSTIN — House Democrats are proposing to spend much of the state’s record-setting surplus on public education by doling out $15 billion to boost funding for schools, salaries for teachers and pensions for retirees.

Not coincidentally, the amount is the same that GOP leaders earmarked from the start of this year’s session for school property tax cuts.

House Democrats’ four-point education plan, unveiled Wednesday afternoon at a Capitol news conference, would increase public schools’ “basic allotment” funding by $1,340 a student. That would provide teacher pay raises of $7,000 on average this fall, followed the next year by an additional $3,000 bump.

The plan also would peg school funding to student enrollment, not attendance, giving schools more financial certainty — and more money. Retired teachers would see a cost of living increase.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Trey Martinez Fischer said the proposal is “neither radical nor unattainable,” and he didn’t rule out supporting some property tax relief. But the San Antonio lawmaker noted that House GOP leaders’ introduced budget bill actually would shave the amount of state discretionary money used to fund the Texas Education Agency. The state dollars used to buy down school taxes don’t flow to schools.

“We have real money,” Martinez Fischer said of the surplus, and the $27 billion of rainy-day fund savings. “If we’re doing a budget about public education, we’re going to lead. … We can do better.”

This year, lawmakers have as much as $69 billion in “new money” to spend as they write the next two-year budget. In their “base budgets” filed in January, both the House and Senate set aside $15 billion for property tax relief.

Earlier this month, Speaker Dade Phelan of Beaumont and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Meyer Morgan of Dallas, both Republicans, upped the House tax-cut plan’s price tag to $17 billion. On Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Senate’s presiding officer, and the Senate’s leading GOP tax-policy writers increased their tax-cut proposal to $16.5 billion.

On Wednesday, House Democrats said they put forward an “Invest in Texas Children” plan to show what spending $15 billion to help the schools would look like.

Traditional public schools are reeling from inflation, a crippling teacher shortage and the prospect that federal COVID-19 aid they’ve relied heavily on will vanish in Year 2 of the upcoming budget cycle, which begins Sept. 1, Democratic House members noted.

While inflation has robbed schools of 28% of their purchasing power over the last three years, the basic allotment has remained unchanged since 2019 — at $6,160 per student. House Democrats are proposing a 23% increase, which would cost $11 billion over the next two years. They say so far, House GOP leaders only have offered a basic allotment bump of $50 a student.

When schools get more state aid, about half of it goes to increased pay for teachers, librarians, nurses, counselors and speech pathologists. So about $7 billion of the new spending would go to salary increases.

“The higher basic allotments also will provide funding that school districts can use to increase pay for support staff,” said Ovidia Molina, president of the Texas State Teachers Association, which endorsed the Democrats’ plan.

Pegging state assistance to attendance, not enrollment, caused about 300,000 students not to be funded in the 2021-22 school year. Switching to enrollment-based funding would cost $3 billion more in the next budget cycle.

“We punish our schools and kids when kids get sick,” said Austin Democratic Rep. Gina Hinojosa, recounting how her son, a high school junior, missed two weeks of class this year because of COVID.

“The pandemic has laid bare the problem with the way we fund schools,” she said. “We are only one of six states in the whole country that still uses this archaic form of funding.”

Retired teachers

Republican leaders in both chambers are proposing a cost of living increase for thousands of retired teachers. House Democrats favor a three-tier approach laid out by leading House Republicans. It would give those who retired before 2004 a 6% increase, those who retired before 2014 a 4% raise and those who retired before 2021 a 2% increase. Retirees who are 70 years old or older would receive a supplemental payment of $5,000.

House Democrats, though, want to spend an additional $1 billion of the surplus to ensure that active educators won’t have to contribute more to the pension system, said Rep. John Bryant of Dallas.

“There is no greater scandal in public life today than the treatment of retired teachers by this Republican Texas government,” said Bryant, who spoke of “the immorality” of turning life-changing mentors such as teachers into virtual beggars, as inflation gouges their already-modest pension checks.

Republicans have pointed to one-time “13th checks” they have approved in some recent cycles, and have said they want to use some of the surplus to help make inflation adjustments more frequent.

While Democrats control only 64 seats in the 150-member chamber, Republicans will need some of their votes because GOP leaders want to sidestep around a “state tax spending limit” in the Texas Constitution.

Republicans would do that by proposing to dedicate chunks of the surplus for specific purposes, such as new state-run mental hospitals. If they package such spending as a constitutional amendment that requires voter approval this fall, the billions of dollars dedicated would no longer count in this session’s calculations of the spending cap.

And to pass constitutional amendments requires a two-thirds vote in each chamber. In the House, it takes 100 “aye” votes. For the Democrats to exert leverage, they have to stick together. They can’t afford any more than 13 desertions.

All four Democratic goals on education can be accomplished as amendments to the budget. Phelan’s leadership team hopes to have the House debate and then pass the budget off the floor before the Easter recess.