The 2025 legislative session doesn’t start until Jan. 14, but already lawmakers have filed hundreds and hundreds of bills on a range of issues.
Gov. Greg Abbott and the leader of the Senate, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, have made clear their priorities are what they call “school choice.”
Like last session, the governor is pushing a voucher-like program called Education Savings Accounts, which provides taxpayer money to parents for a variety of education-related expenses, notably tuition for private schooling. Critics say that will undermine efforts by public schools already struggling with shortfalls.
Texas school districts are already facing budget issues, and according to the Texas Association of School Boards, the problem at the center of the school funding crisis is what’s called the basic allotment. The basic allotment — the per student funding each district receives — has not been increased by the Legislature since 2019, despite inflationary pressures affecting school supplies and operations and a teacher shortage is forcing schools to get more creative just to retain and attract teachers.
Just this fall, voters in Austin passed increased property tax rates to inject an additional $41 million into the district. Yet despite this influx of cash, officials are preparing to make about $90 million in budget cuts by the spring of 2027 to lower its deficit.
Keri Heath, who covers education for the Austin American-Statesman, said the planned cuts follow another $29 million in cuts that have already happened this year.
“Austin ISD has pledged that they will do the utmost possible to keep these cuts out of the classroom, off the campus buildings,” Heath said. “They’re really looking now at things like contracts, vacant positions and other ways to cut costs in ways that really don’t affect the students, or will keep costs away from teachers and staff members that work directly with students. We’ll know more next week when the staff members go to the board to present a more comprehensive plan.”
Despite the deficit concerns, Austin ISD plans to put some of their new tax dollars into giving staff raises.
“The other reason they wanted to pass this tax rate election was actually to raise salaries for staff members, for teachers, librarians, counselors, bus drivers, police officers, everyone in the district, really. And that was really to try and increase retention,” Heath said.
“Retention has gotten a lot better since the pandemic years when there was a lot of this cycling through, but still there is a lot of trouble retaining staff and we’re seeing that across the state as well. And so districts are trying to increase pay for their teachers, but of course, they’re all competing for the same pool of people. So as one district increases their pay and other folks are trying to do it as well.”
Heath said she expects plenty of discussion over how Texas funds its schools during the upcoming legislative session.
“It’s going to be a really interesting conversation. We’re definitely seeing districts need a lot of help. We saw a lot of these tax rate elections across the state this fall. Some of them passed like in Austin, but a lot of them failed as well. And so there’s definitely a lot of pain out there from districts, a lot of cuts coming over the next school year. And we’re really just going to have to see this,” she said.
“There are definitely some bills filed in November addressing school finance. But we’re really just going to have to see where these conversations go over the next few months.”
