The Red Apple Project: Highlights of Education Spending in Texas

Texas' revenue shortfall presents a budgeting challenge that requires there be no “sacred cows” – spending on K-12 education needs to be cut.

The Texas Association of School Boards said school districts would have to cut as many as 100,000 teaching jobs to make up for the reduced funding. We disagree.

We can cut spending without firing teachers, shortchange students, or asking hard-working Texans to dig deeper into their pockets.

According to Texas Education Agency data, most of our education dollars aren’t directed at priorities – classroom instruction, excellent teachers, and student performance. This is what we found:

Education funds need to be focused more on instruction:

(Source: Texas Education Agency 2009 School District Snapshot)

  • Texas school districts currently spend less than half their funding on instruction.
  • The dropout rate in Texas is more than 20% on average and as much as 40% in some school districts.
  • Over the past decade, state funding has increased 63% per pupil and since 2005, spending on the Foundation School Program, which finances the state's basic educational curriculum has increased $14 billion — "more than twice the rate of inflation." Still, about 65% of Texas public school students take the SAT or ACT – but of that, only about 27% meet or exceed criterion. More money is not improving student performance.

School districts have become top-heavy:

(Source: TEA 2009 Snapshot; TEA 2009 Superintendent Salary Report)

  • For every public school teacher in Texas, school districts have one non-teaching staff position.
  • State-wide, teachers earn an average of $9,000 a year less than “other professional staff,” $22,000 less than school administrators and $38,000 less than central administration staff.
  • The turnover rate for teachers is about 15%, with almost 38% of teachers having less than 5 years teaching experience.
  • Superintendents on average take home six-figure salaries, with the highest-paid superintendent, Thomas Carroll of Beaumont ISD (19,000 students), earning $346,778 per year – nearly 2 ½ times more than the Texas governor!
  • Superintendents typically enjoy a number of perks, like an expense account, retirement contribution, car and housing allowances, bonuses, and more.

    School Districts are carrying tremendous debt:

    (Source: Texas Bond Review Board – FY2009 ISD Debt)

    • School districts in Texas carry a combined total of $101.6 billion in outstanding debt.
    • Nineteen Texas districts carry more than $1 billion in debt individually. Of those:

      • o Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, Dallas ISD, and Houston ISD taxpayers are more than $3 billion in debt!
      o Frisco ISD, Leander ISD, North East ISD, and Northside ISD (Bexar County) taxpayers are more than $2 billion in debt; and
      o Austin ISD, Clear Creek ISD, Conroe ISD, Denton ISD, Fort Bend ISD, Grand Prairie ISD, Katy ISD, Keller ISD, Lewisville ISD, Mansfield ISD, Plano ISD and Spring ISD taxpayers are more than $1 billion in debt.

    • Cy-Fair ISD has made its spending priorities clear: In 2001, voters approved a bond to build the $72 million Richard E. Berry Educational Support Center – a multipurpose sports complex – only to find that the Center costs between $35,000-$48,000 per month just to keep the lights on.
    • Allen ISD is the latest example of putting instruction on the back-burner. The district just completed a $60 million football stadium, yet school officials complain that they will have to fire teachers if the Texas Legislature makes cuts to the education budget.

    Share this information at your school board meetings, talk with your administrators, and let your State Representative and State Senator know that you support education funding choices that put instruction first and eliminates too many over-paid administrators and other non-essentials in public education.

    Click Here to get a printable version of these talking points.

    For more information on education spending, please visit www.RedAppleProject.com.

    Attachments