The Trouble of Education Funding

The battle towards Education funding has been going on for years.  In Texas, school finance lawsuits date back to 1960s.  Since that time, districts have sued the state over for its school finance system a few times for various reasons.  According to the editorial article posted in American Statesman on Oct. 12th, a coalition of Texas school districts that included Pflugerville, Hutto and Taylor, sued the state, arguing that the school finance system is unfair, inefficient and unconstitutional.  Lawmakers slashed $4 billion from public education, the first decrease in per-student funding in Texas since World War II.  Additionally, the Legislature cut $1.3 billion from schools by eliminating state education grants, including programs that helped struggling students succeed on high-stakes tests and that backed full-day prekindergarten.  They said the cuts were necessary to balance the budget with $23 billion shortfall.  As we all know, there was plenty of money left in the state's rainy day fund, about $7 billion, which should have been sued to pay for public education.

I agree with the editor regarding the issue for low funding in public education.  Education should be a priority especially in today's economy.  Without proper funding for education, it will be very difficult to provide the exemplary education that students need to be able to succeed in this society.  Teachers need adequate resources to be able to teach properly.  From what I understand, we have the rainy day fund that allows states to set aside excess revenue for use in times of unexpected revenue shortfall or budget deficit.  The Texas Constitution says money from the fund can be spent to prevent or eliminate a temporary cash deficiency in general revenue.  With the state facing a budget shortfall estimated somewhere between $15 billion and $27 billion, some say if it isn't going to rain now, it isn't ever going to.

The only downfall I can see from using this fund is that nobody knows for sure how long this economic downturn will last.  If the fund is sucked dry, there will be nothing left if things get worse or if the economy doesn't recover quickly enough.  Bottom line, we seem to have sufficient funds to help the Education funding deficit, however, the money we have doesn't seem to be spent wisely and evenly.  Some school districts are funded more compare to others, which is really unfair.  Someone needs to re-evaluate the amount of expenses we have towards education and divide it evenly depending on each school district's necessity.