Afton Partners

The House wants to pour $7 billion more dollars into public schools over two years should state lawmakers change Texas’ education funding formula and reform property taxes, according to budget documents released late Monday. Although the Senate is expected to release it’s own budget plan Tuesday, the 17.2 percent jump in funding offers a first glimpse at how Republicans propose to fulfill their promise to give a boost to schools. The proposed boost in state funding would be contingent on enacting legislation that helps public schools, such as by increasing the state share of the Foundation School Program, enhancing district entitlements and decreasing the practice of “recapture” which includes taking money from property-wealthy districts to cover education costs in property poor districts, according to the budget documents.

If there’s one thing state legislators can agree on, no matter their party affiliation, it’s that the way schools are funded in Colorado should change. But the failure of Amendment 73—which would have increased taxes to fund P-12 education—in the 2018 midterms was a reminder that solutions are hard to come by. Education has been funded mostly the same way in Colorado since 1994, when the Public School Finance Act—which dictates how the state collects and distributes revenue for education—was adopted. “We’re still allocating in ways that are not demonstrably linked to achievement,” says Leslie Colwell, vice president of education initiatives at the Colorado Children’s Campaign, a nonprofit group that advocates for education and healthcare for kids. “We allocate more than $1 billion for the cost of living factor, and that overwhelming goes to districts where it’s expensive to live, but those are also districts that have the ability to raise funds locally.”

A judge on Tuesday denied a request by state officials to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that Delaware is failing to provide adequate educational opportunities for disadvantaged students. Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster noted that, unlike many other states, Delaware provides no additional financial support for educating low-income students and virtually no additional financial support for educating students who are learning English as a second language. Laster said allegations regarding how the state allocates financial and educational resources, and how disadvantaged students have become re-segregated by race and class, suggest that Delaware’s public education system has “deep structural flaws,” profound enough to support a claim that the state is failing its constitutional mandate to maintain a “general and efficient” school system that serves disadvantaged students.