School Funding: A Race to the Bottom

Kris Oliver, member of the Richardson school board, attended the Summer Leadership Institute, a training conference for the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB). He kept his Twitter followers informed with bits of trivia.

Facts from my @tasbnews finance training. Texas rank in education spending per pupil? 42

Source: Kris Oliver.

If you knew that, then you probably won't be surprised by this next bit of trivia, either.

Texas rank in percent of adult residents with a high school diploma? Dead last.

Source: Kris Oliver.

Surely, you think, the Texas legislature realizes that the correlation between school funding and academic results just might be a bit of a cause-and-effect relationship, too.

After the jump, will it be this year?

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In a word, no. Here's the latest news from the Richardson school board (RISD) about the trend in funding for public schooling in Texas. Spoiler alert: it's a race to the bottom and the Texas legislature is leading us down.

On June 18, the RISD Board of Trustees approved RISD's 2012-13 budget and tax rate as recommended by Superintendent Kay Waggoner. The district based its 2012-13 operating budget of $247,677,521 on a projected reduction in state funding of $7.5 million, in addition to the $14.2 million reduction of state funding in last year's budget. The total reduction in state funding for RISD totaled $21.7 million over the two-year budget biennium.

Source: RISD.