House Bill 2 is a top priority for the Texas House. Lawmakers expect the school funding bill to receive committee approval next week.
Students raise their hand in a classroom at the Bowie Fine Arts Academy in Grand Prairie on Monday, Oct. 23, 2023.AUSTIN — At a Thursday hearing at the Capitol, dozens of public school teachers and officials testified that a bill proposing $7.
5 billion in school funding does not go far enough.proposes raising the per-student allotment by $220 to $6,360 a year, but teachers, administrators and advocates told the House Public Education Committee the increase falls short of meeting the needs of the state’s school districts., a 10th grade English teacher at an Austin-area high school. “They are getting the message that Texas doesn’t value them or their future.”The basic allotment would need to rise by $1,300 to keep up with inflation since 2019, when the Legislature last increased the payment, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The proposed $220 increase is also less than half of the $500 increase that was proposed in 2023 but died after Gov. Greg Abbott said he would veto any bill increasing school funding that did not create a program allowing public money to be spent on private schools.HB 2 includes other mechanisms that provide money to public schools, but in more targeted fashions aimed at special education and pay boosts for high-performing teachers. The House’s proposal to raise teacher pay is part of a “Texas two step” Republicans have proposed in tandem with a voucher-style school choice proposal. Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Salado, is the author of the school funding bill, the voucher proposal and another bill that would scale back the STAAR test and replace it with a different standardized testing system.This week, the House Public Education Committee heard two days of testimony on the bills. Buckley, who chairs the committee, said he expected committee approval of the school finance bill March 18, sending it to the full House.to teachers with five or more years in districts with fewer than 5,000 students. Teachers in larger districts with equivalent experience would get a $5,500 raise, and those with three years of teaching would get $2,500 more a year. Rich Sena, a Boerne ISD school board member, said increasing the basic allotment by $220 would allow his district to close a budget deficit, leaving enough funding to provide a $1,000 pay increase to teachers.In Texas, the average teacher made $62,500 in 2024, according to the Texas Education Agency. That ranks about 30th nationally. HB 2 also takes aim at reducing the growing number of uncertified teachers in Texas. In 2015, the Legislature created a program that allowed districts struggling to attract new teachers to seek designations allowing them to hire noncertified teachers. Participation in the program has grown to 81.7% of districts, including Dallas, Fort Worth, Denton and Plano ISDs. Roughly 10% of Texas public school teachers are uncertified, and some school officials have estimated that about half of teachers hired last year were uncertified. Jacob Kirksey, a Texas Tech University professor focusing on education policy, testified that students taught by uncertified teachers can lose up to a third of their school year. Kirksey published a study last year that examined the consequences of the growing number of uncertified teachers in public schools.“These teachers step into classrooms with no prior experience, no student teaching, no formal training on how to manage classroom kids,” Kirksey said. “One day they aren’t teachers, and the next day they are responsible for a full class of students with no preparation.” The bill would prohibit districts from hiring uncertified teachers for core curriculum classes, such as math, reading and science. To encourage certification, HB 2 would give districts $1,000 for every recently hired uncertified teacher who earns a standard certificate by the end of next school year. The bill also would give pay bumps to teachers rated as top performers that can scale to as high as $36,000 for teachers who achieve a “master” designation in certain circumstances.Philip Jankowski has covered government, politics and criminal justice in Texas for 17 years. He previously worked for the Austin American-Statesman, the Killeen Daily Herald and the Taylor Press. Philip is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin.
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