If you didn’t get a chance to come to our joint PFLASA/ PTSA meeting, I’d like to share some of what we went over, primarily learning about Austin ISD’s Prop A (not to be confused with the Travis County Prop A which will also be on your ballot), our support as a PTSA of Austin ISD’s Prop A and then further down a more comprehensive breakdown on Recapture and how we are in a serious deficit (and will continue to be in one if funding doesn’t change).
We held a brief PTSA meeting prior to hearing about Prop A.
During our meeting we talked about how our PTSA membership numbers are down from previous years and we’d love to have you join PTSA! If you or your family hasn’t joined yet, please do so here: https://form.jotform.com/222855994585172. When we have many members, it helps us have a louder and more impactful voice when we talk to our Lawmakers and Representatives. Rally Day will be coming up on February 24 and we’ll get to talk and advocate for our Texas Public Schools.
We also mentioned Reflections, please look for more info on Reflections here: https://www.lasaptsa.org/reflections and please encourage your student to submit their work!
We have an upcoming Trustee Candidate Forum, Oct. 20 at 3pm. We look forward to seeing you there! You can RSVP here: https://www.lasaptsa.org/trustee-forum/rsvp
And the last thing to mention about the meeting was to let everyone know that PTSA does a yearly “neighborhood goodwill” walk, we deliver a postcard and a little bag of treats to all our neighbors around LASA as a goodwill gesture, thanking them for being our neighbors; they usually have to deal with students (sometimes parents) who block their driveways or their trash cans, etc. This little gesture seems to go a long way and we’d love you to join us to spread some love around to our LASA neighbors. More info will be coming in the next couple of weeks.
Ok, now moving on to Prop A. We welcomed our Austin ISD School Board Trustee Ofelia Maldonado Zapata (D2) along with Trustee Lynn Boswell (D5 – former LASA parent). They shared with us why they support Prop A and why they think we should as well.
Austin ISD’s Prop A is a measure to increase the school system’s share of property taxes to the maximum percentage allowed by state law: https://www.lasaptsa.org/prop-a
Prop A will help provide money for teacher pay and more. Including the programs and courses we expect in our Public Schools, such as Athletics, UIL, Arts, Librarians. Apparently these courses aren’t considered “necessary” for a public school in Texas.
We as a district will receive about $41,000,000 additional dollars that will be used to increase teacher pay, bring back Instructional coaches and more. The $$$ received through Prop A will be subject to Recapture, about 51% of what’s collected will go back to the state. If Prop A doesn’t pass we will be under an even larger deficit, deeper budget cuts will be made; somewhere around 70% of Texas Public Schools are underfunded and in a deficit, read more here: https://www.raiseyourhandtexas.org/why-texas-school-districts-are-filing-deficit-budgets/
If Prop A passes, it will help cover some of the deficit, but not all. There will be more cuts coming in the next years, unless our funding system changes. We are one of 6 states in our country that provides funding via attendance vs. enrollment. Learn more about that here: https://everytexan.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Enrollment-Based-Funding.pdf
After the Trustees shared with us about what Prop A would do for a district and answered our questions, they left the building so we could hold a vote as a PTSA. We had a member motion that we as a PTSA should support Prop A and we had a second. The motion passed which means that we as a PTSA decided to support Prop A.
Lastly, we as a PTSA encourage you to VOTE. If you care about Public Education and our Public Schools (LASA is one of them), please vote. Early voting begins Oct. 21 and ends Nov. 1. Election day is: Nov. 5. Reminder to vote all the way down the ballot! Austin ISD Prop A will be all the way at the bottom, you’ll also find Travis County’s Prop A there. AISD’s School Board Trustees will also be on the ballot, including an at-large position which represents ALL of Austin ISD. (Come meet the people vying for your vote at our Candidate Forum on Oct. 20.)
The following is a succinct yet very detailed explainer on Recapture and what we face in the near-future that a friend shared with me, I hope you find it helpful as well.
- In a state without an income tax one of the only ways to support school funding is through property tax. This makes the schools in rich areas wealthy and the schools in poor areas poor. This does not include bond elections which can only be used for limited things, mostly physical buildings etc. It was originally called Robin Hood.
- The system is poorly designed. 1-It doesn’t actually require the recapture money to go to Education funding. All recapture money goes into the general fund. 2-Initially few districts were paying into recapture but Austin was one of the first. People think it’s because Austin is expensive to live in but that’s largely wrong. Austin is a wealthy property district due to a high amount of valuable commercial real estate which is subject to higher taxes. 3-Not only is the funding not required for education purposes but the threshold calculations don’t change with inflation or other changes. This results in more and more school districts paying into recapture. 4-Nothing about recapture forces the State (controlled by the legislature) to spend money on education. Therefore instead of bringing money to poor districts so that they had more money for necessities, the result is that all school districts are equally underfunded and starved of money.
- Texas School Funding is terrible. Depending on what info you look at Texas is one of the lowest states in per pupil spending. Usually around 48. But Texas is a wealthy state (Texas’s economy is 8th in the world) especially compared to its bottom of the pack dwellers (think Alabama). Moreover, Texas has refused to increase the per student allotment since 2019. Some of that was mitigated by the large amount of money the federal government pumped in during the pandemic but now all of that money is gone.
- Even with the low funding the State sets goals that schools struggle to meet. 1-Not only does the state provide an extremely low level of funding it has lots of unfunded mandates that schools have to pay for like the new security requirements. 2-TEA (a state agency) sets the goals for schools to meet but they change the goals constantly, and change the data it looks at. And one failing school in an otherwise good district will permit a takeover by TEA. TEA is also responsible for the terrible state of Special Education services in Texas because they instituted an artificial cap on districts and now they are punishing districts for failing to comply. 3-attendance based funding versus enrollment based funding further starves schools of needed $ with no proven benefit.
- Why can’t we change recapture. 1-The State doesn’t want to. It now has a large additional source of income that it can spend on whatever it wants. 2-The current party in charge of the legislature is responsible for these decisions. Texas is operating as a one party state which stagnates cooperation, ideas, and compromise (all the things necessary for good government) 3-For many years Austin was relatively alone in this fight and we have little political clout. People predicted things would change about 5 years ago when other wealthy districts in Dallas, Houston and their wealthy suburbs had to start paying in but that did not happen. 4-This fight got seriously worse by the Governor deciding to champion school vouchers.
- Even if Prop A passes, AISD still has a huge deficit that is going to force painful cuts. We must change how we fund our Public Schools, advocate for enrollment vs attendance and advocate to increase the basic allotment!