By Jack Fink. CBS News Texas. Read the full article here.
The Texas House Public Education Committee will vote on the school choice and school funding bills Thursday after Chairman Brad Buckley delayed the meeting so lawmakers can consider proposed changes.
In a statement he posted on “X” late Monday night Buckley said, “I made a commitment to members that they would have ample time to review and digest the changes in the committee substitute and the district runs.”
Under the House bill, most students will receive $10,000 per year from the taxpayer-funded education savings account, while students with disabilities will receive more than that, as high as $30,000. Home-schooled students could receive $2,000.
While House committee members first considered HB 3, they will now make changes to SB 2, the Senate’s version of the legislation that already passed the upper chamber.
The House is adding language that the program will be capped for the first year to $1 billion. There will be limits on students who don’t have disabilities and who aren’t low-income to 20% of the amount budgeted. Students must either be U.S. citizens or lawfully admitted to the U.S. to be accepted into the program.
Supporters said giving parents more choice in their child’s education is an important use of tax dollars, while critics expressed concerns about the state’s estimates that the cost to taxpayers grow to more than $4 billion a year by 2030.
“The concern that I have is that independent third parties have actually validated and backed up the Legislative Budget Board, which is a non-partisan organization intended to give us facts to make good decisions,” said Zeph Capo, the president of Texas. “So, their numbers have actually been backed up by third parties.”
During a news conference last week at the Texas Capitol, Gov. Greg Abbott downplayed the estimates by the Legislative Budget Board saying they are “based on fiction.”
The governor said lawmakers will decide the budget for the school choice program in future years.
“We should be really focused on making sure that our money is producing the best educational outcomes for students and really focusing on what that looks like versus just talking about where the funding goes in a building,” said Genevieve Collins, the Texas Director of Americans For Prosperity, which backs school choice told CBS News Texas.
There are also updates to the public school funding bill. The basic allotment received by school districts would now increase by $395 from $6,160 to $6,555. Originally, the House bill increased the basic allotment by $220.
There will be automatic increases to the basic allotment every two years, and that will impact what teachers earn because 40% of the new basic allotment must go to salaries under the House legislation.
If the House Public Education Committee votes out the bills Thursday, which is expected, they will head to the full House for consideration. If the House approves the bills, members of that chamber and the Senate will then negotiate differences and vote on them.
