EAST TEXAS (TYLER MORNING TELEGRAPH) - Local legislators and school officials alike
said they were not surprised by a judge's ruling Monday finding the
state's funding system for public education unconstitutional.
All agreed it is time for legislators to roll up their sleeves and work to fix the broken system.
Rusk
ISD Superintendent Dr. Scott Davis said he hopes legislators are ready
to do the work necessary to correct the system. "The court today pretty
much said, ‘Go to work …'" Davis said. "It's not going to be one person;
it's going to have to be a bipartisan effort to get this addressed."
Davis said this is not the first time school funding equality has been discussed.
"(In)
the last lawsuit we faced the compressed tax rates and (changed)
business rates," he said. "They knew at that time it satisfied the
letter of the lawsuit, but it didn't provide any long-term fix to the
system — so here we go again. We can do it now."
In addition to
that, years of legislation containing "hold harmless" clauses render new
legislation ineffective. Davis said the clauses basically grandfather
districts receiving certain amounts of funding or services from facing
revenue changes.
Jacksonville ISD Superintendent Dr. Joe Wardell
said portions of the state's school funding model were ruled
unconstitutional about six years ago.
"This one is even more of a
comprehensive ruling than it ever had before …" Wardell said. "We were
all glad to see the ruling, but we were expecting it to be moved to the
Supreme Court and are excited to see what happens with that."
In
Tyler ISD, Superintendent Gary Mooring issued the following statement:
"We are pleased that the court system recognized the problems and
unfairness with the Texas public schools funding process. We are
interested in monitoring this process as it continues through the court
system and how it will ultimately affect our students."
Lindale ISD Superintendent Stan Surratt said he hopes the ruling sends a message to legislators that it is time to act.
Surratt said he wants legislators to address school finance this session.
It's
become the routine for the Legislature to wait for a lawsuit before
acting regarding school finance, he said. That lawsuit has happened, and
the results are in, he said.
"We just need men and women in Austin to have
(the) courage to step up for the children in Texas and do the right
thing," he said.
State Sen. Kevin Eltife, R-Tyler, said he was
opposed to the school reform package in 2006 because he believed it was
"out of balance and would not work."
Eltife said he expects the
Legislature will wait until the courts rule and lawmakers have a clear
picture of what problems they must solve within public education. When
legislators do tackle school funding, they need to solve the problem for
good, he said.
"It's going to take a lot of work and effort to
find solutions," he said. "It's going to be politically challenging, but
the Legislature has to do the work."
Rep. Dan Flynn, R-Van, said
the inadequacy within school funding is not centered on the amount of
money dedicated to public education, but rather how the money is divvied
among rural and urban districts.
Flynn said urban districts are receiving thousands of dollars more per student than their rural counterparts.
"Our
kids are just as important and worth as much as students in other
districts," he said. "They're requiring the same standard, and yet they
don't receive the same funding. When the Legislature makes these cuts,
it's like cutting a finger in Dallas or Houston, but it cuts an arm off
in our area."
Flynn said a steady, sustainable and equitable
revenue stream is the answer to the problem but that some ideas, such as
implementing a state income tax (as that funding mechanism), would be
to the detriment of the state.
Rep. Matt Schaefer, R-Tyler, said
most legislative members expected the ruling. He said he is not sure if
the question of adequate funding will be fully answered until the state
loosens regulations on independent school districts with regard to class
size, standardized testing and teacher qualification.
Schaefer
said addressing the system's inefficiencies could reveal adequate
funding is available. However, Schaefer said there clearly is a problem
with the equitable dispersal of tax dollars to individual districts.
Inequity
was "built into the system" because it is based on property and
districts such as Chapel Hill, a bedroom community, do not have the
commercial and industrial tax base to have an equal portion within the
funding formula.
"There is general consensus about bringing equity to the way we fund education and ideas on how to do it," he said.
Bullard
ISD superintendent Keith Bryant said there was no way to tell how the
Texas Supreme Court would rule, but he hoped the end result would
produce solid revenue sources for equitable funding of public education.
Bryant
said public education has been underfunded for some time, but the
recent budget cuts have made the situation almost intolerable for most
school districts.
"One biennium ago when there was a lack of
revenue there was a lot of excitement to make cuts, and now that there
is a surplus of funds I would like to see the same excitement to restore
some cuts," Bryant said. "I think that would be a step in making the
funding more constitutional."
Davis championed the decision of the court but said he is not anticipating education funding to be restored anytime soon.
"The
comptroller projections (show) that we are going to have some extra
money in the budget, but there were so many agencies that got cut last
session," he said. "That's a huge conundrum in Austin — to whom do you
restore funding and how."
Staff writer Emily Guevara contributed to this report.
