by | June 14, 2012 · 3:18 pm

Unfunded Mandates Bankrupt Local School Districts

Under the new testing guidelines, high school students that attained low scores on the end-of-course exams or EOCs will have to retake those tests in July. State law requires the local school districts to prepare these students for the retests in summer school, but the Texas Legislature did not appropriate any money to offset the costs of this mandate. This is a prime example of a state unfunded mandate. That is, Austin politicians and bureaucrats come up with “good ideas”, but you local school district has to find the money to pay for them.

This would have never happened if the Texas Legislature would have passed my proposed constitutional amendment, HJR 46 , and sent the proposal to the people of Texas for eventual passage.

In rural East Texas, the challenges are unique. Angelina County’s Hudson ISD has never offered summer school because her school board realizes something that state legislatures and Congress won’t face up to: if you can’t afford it don’t do it. So therefore, Superintendent Mary Ann Whiteker and her staff concentrates on doing the job right the first time, during the school year, and based on mountains of data she achieves this goal. Transportation for students in the rural East Texas district often ends up costing more than paying the teachers to be there for the remedial instruction.

Last session, legislators spent a lot of time passing legislation to cut your classroom teachers’ salaries without even knowing if this would have provided any fiscal relief for your local school district and telling school boards how to implement corporal punishment. Yet, your Legislature does know that unfunded mandates impact local school districts to the tune of hundreds of millions dollars annually.
Next session, I will file this legislation again and hopefully with a new set of public education committee chairs and members serving on these committees in both chambers of the state legislature this amendment will not collect desk dust in some committee room while the bills stack up in your local school board meeting.
Read more here from the Texas Tribune.

8 Comments

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8 Responses to Unfunded Mandates Bankrupt Local School Districts

  1. Charlotte Faulkner
    June 14, 2012 at 5:13 pm

    Good luck. Maybe, if the atletic budget was not so high, the schools could pay for the re-testing out of the money already appropriated. Don’t get me wrong, I love sports as much as anybody but education is still my top priority. It is like Brookeland ISD sitting there with 9 buses in their parking lot and only run 4 buses to pick up and deliver the students. Just saying.

    • James
      June 19, 2012 at 9:34 am

      Your concerns are very thoughtful. This is why we need more local oversight and accountability.

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