Naked City

With all the headline blood being spilled on congressional redistricting, you can be forgiven for not noticing it, but the House Select Committee on Public School Finance began holding interim hearings last week, in preparation for a special session on the subject next fall or spring. In theory, the committee will create a plan to replace the recapture ("Robin Hood") system that requires property-wealthy districts to help subsidize property-poor districts. The committee now has a whopping 34 members, although it has been heavily stacked by House Speaker Tom Craddick with members who are either hostile to public education, devoted to privatizing public education, enamored of school-voucher programs, or all three. The chair, Arlington Republican Kent Grusendorf, has made it clear he believes that "market solutions" (i.e., private-school competition via state vouchers) will fix the public schools. Notable for their omission are Rep. Jim Dunnam, D-Waco, who last session helped bring reasonable limits to the state Board of Education's zeal for fly-by-night charter schools, and Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, who is generally conceded to be the Lege's most experienced hand on public-school finance. Dunnam and Hochberg, as House Democratic leaders, have been sentenced to exile.

The size of the committee will create logistical problems (but political advantages) when the panel has to come to terms with whatever plan comes out of the Senate. Early testimony has been focused on whether the Texas Constitution requires every student to be provided an "equitable" or only an "adequate" education -- and if the latter, what amount of money can be defined as delivering "adequacy." Since some districts get by on roughly $4,500 per student, the committee leadership is suggesting that might be a good baseline to define "adequacy." Yet simultaneously, wealthy suburban districts subject to recapture (and therefore suing the state) are complaining that their schools can't possibly be expected to survive on nearly twice that much, up to $8,500 per student -- they want both lower property taxes and more money for their own kids.

Whatever system the committee comes up with, the comptroller's office testified that without more money, it's unlikely to work -- and to get more money will require a revision of the entire state-tax system, which currently survives on sales taxes, property taxes, lottery taxes, and chicken wire. The committee's next meetings are July 15 and 16.